HELPING WORKING CANADIANS GET AHEAD
Canadians are among the most skilled and highly educated workers in the world. Here at home is no exception. Whether it is the skilled trades workers employed in every trade, those graduating from NSCC and working in every community, or the world-class researchers at StFX, many of Canada’s best and brightest are right here in Central Nova.
But, even at a time of record-low unemployment, the changing nature of work can make finding and keeping a good job a challenge. We will give working Canadians the help they need to get ahead and keep our economy moving forward.
Help When People Need It Most
We will give more help to long-term workers who are laid off.
Canadians work hard every day – supporting their families and keeping our economy strong and growing. When people unexpectedly find themselves out of work because of a business closure, they shouldn’t struggle to get the support they need.
To help workers transition to a new job following the loss of long-term work, we will move forward with a Career Insurance Benefit. This benefit will be available to people who have worked continuously for the same employer for five or more years and are laid off when the business closes.
The Career Insurance Benefit will kick in after Employment Insurance ends, providing an additional 20 per cent of insured earnings in the first year following the layoff, and an extra 10 per cent in the second year. This will give workers up to an additional $15,900 over two years, providing significant new help at a difficult time.
Unlike other Employment Insurance Benefits, the Career Insurance Benefit won’t be “clawed back” if other income is earned. It is guaranteed help that will give workers greater peace of mind, make it possible for workers to go back to school, or help pay the bills when money is tight.
Help to Find and Keep a Good Job
We will continue to help all workers get the skills they need to succeed.
For generations, middle class Canadians and those working hard to join them could be assured that with a good job came a good quality of life. Families were able to pay their bills, save for their retirement, and set aside money for their kids’ education.
Today, the evolving nature of work means that people may change jobs many times over the course of their working lives, presenting workers with a new challenge: how to get the training they need to keep their existing jobs, or prepare for a new one.
To help give people the time and money they need to keep their skills relevant and in-demand, we will move forward with the Canada Training Benefit, which gives workers money to help pay for training, provides income support during training, and will also offer job protection so that workers can take the time they need for training, knowing they will have a job to come back to when their training is done.
Better Working Conditions
We will strengthen employment benefits and make Canada an even better place to work.
In the last four years, we have helped make work more flexible and secure for more people, but many workers still struggle to live a balanced life. For some people, this means missing out on important family events because they have to work late or be constantly available online; for others, it means suffering in silence because they are afraid to talk about the mental health challenges they are facing at work.
People deserve better.
To help make life less stressful and to give people more time to do the things they love, we will move forward with new federal labour code protections, including:
an extra day to spend with family and friends, through a new federal Family Day holiday;
a federal minimum wage of $15 per hour, starting in 2020 and rising with inflation, with provisions to ensure that where provincial or territorial minimum wages are higher, that wage will prevail;
better support for the mental health of workers, by including mental health as a specific element of occupational health and safety, and requiring employers to take preventative steps to address workplace stress and injury;
greater labour protections for people who work through digital platforms; these are often contract or freelance workers (such as drivers for ride-sharing companies) whose status isn’t clearly covered by provincial or federal laws, so we will give them greater protection by developing relevant federal rules for this growing area of the economy; and
new provisions, to be developed with employers and labour groups, that give workers the “right to disconnect.”
This will preserve workers’ ability to work overtime, while giving people the right to request that they not work extra hours. To help workers who fall ill and need help to pay the bills while they rest and recover – such as those recovering from cancer treatments – we will also move forward with extending Employment Insurance sickness benefits from 15 weeks to 26 weeks.
Guaranteed Training for Apprentices
We will help Red Seal apprentices get the work experience they need to finish their certification and find good, well-paying jobs.
People in the skilled trades are a vital part of our economy – helping to build our homes, feed our families, and keep our communities powered and moving – but too often, apprentices miss out on good jobs because they can’t get the job experience they need to complete their training on time.
Today, only one out of five Red Seal apprentices is able to complete their certification on time, with the lack of stable jobs cited as the most common reason. This is true even for trades where workers typically earn more than $100,000 per year.
To give apprentices more certainty and more opportunities to gain work experience, we will move forward with creating the Canadian Apprenticeship Service, in partnership with provinces, territories, employers, and unions. With this new help, apprentices who enter the Red Seal trades can be more confident about the future, knowing that jobs will be available when they need them.
To support this effort, we will work with our partners to create more opportunities, providing up to $10,000 per apprentice, over four years, for every new position created. This investment will help 12,500 more apprentices finish their training on time.
We will also lead by example – directly hiring up to an additional 250 apprentices each year, requiring that government suppliers participate in the Canadian Apprenticeship Service, and requiring that federal construction contracts meet targets for greater inclusion of women in the trades.
Help for Workers in Seasonal Industries
We will make permanent changes to Employment Insurance, to give workers in seasonal industries more reliable support between jobs.
Industries like tourism and fish processing are an important source of jobs in many communities, but their seasonal nature means that people are often without work for months at a time, through no fault of their own.
To give these workers more security and support, especially when Employment Insurance is disrupted because of changing labour market conditions outside of their control, we will move forward with improvements to a recent pilot project that has given extra help to tens of thousands of workers in seasonal industries.
Once this pilot concludes, we will introduce a permanent program to give these workers more consistent and reliable benefits – making it easier for them to support themselves and their families between work seasons. We will also work with Statistics Canada to strengthen local labour market data, so that Employment Insurance can better reflect local labour market realities, especially in large and diverse regions.
More Accessible Workplaces and Schools
We will make it easier for people with disabilities to work or attend school.
Across Canada, nearly 650,000 people with disabilities have the potential to work or attend school, but aren’t able to do so because they don’t have access to the accommodations that would make this possible.
To help more people with disabilities go to school, enter the workforce, and join the middle class, we will move forward with a new $40 million per year national workplace accessibility fund, with a special focus on making small and medium-sized businesses more accessible.
This fund will match costs with employers and schools, providing up to a combined $10,000 to cover the cost of an accommodation. Employers and schools will continue to be required to meet their accessibility obligations under provincial and federal law.