The pandemic has laid bare the deep cracks in our systems, from education and health to employment standards and income supports. We have been forced to face up to longstanding inequities and injustices that Indigenous people, women, Black people, and other racialized groups have borne for years. They have suffered some of the worst impacts of the virus.
Confronting the immediate economic fallout from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic will be the primary focus of the federal government in the weeks and months to come, according to experts and economists, especially as the ‘second wave’ is likely to flatten any economic growth Canada has seen following the reopening of major parts of the economy in the summer.
Lyft Canada Inc. is looking to the federal government for clarity around several issues concerning its ride-share app.
According to its latest log in the federal Registry of Lobbyists, Lyft wants to get in touch with staff in Transport Minister Marc Garneau’s office about it’s commitment to having only electric vehicles drive for the company. It’s also interested in talking to Labour Minister Filomena Tassi about the status of gig workers in Canada.
On July 30, 2020, the Ontario government quietly released a study on staffing in long-term care. The government-initiated report recognizes "the critical importance of staffing in long-term care homes" and says the government must "urgently address the staffing crisis in long-term care, make long-term care homes a better place to live and work, implement staffing approaches that reflect and respond to the complexity of the sector and diverse resident needs."
It’s taken a pandemic for the Ontario government to finally grasp the vital role that personal support workers play in our health-care system, acknowledge how overworked they are and do something about how poorly they’re paid.
Carsharing returned to Calgary last month with the arrival of Montreal-based Communauto.
The news was celebrated with roughly the same fervour as car2go's abrupt departure in 2019 was mourned. Although Communauto's initial rollout will feature a much smaller zone of operation, smaller fleet and more restrictive parking measures than car2go, many hailed it as a step in the right direction.
Of course, that depends on where it is we're trying to go.
Canada’s largest bank, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), has quietly become the first major financial institution in the country to refuse to fund any oil and gas development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska.
In the fall of 2008, at the age of 48 years, Joan McArthur started upon an oilsands adventure. On the advice of friends, she applied for a job with the PTI Group, a subsidiary of Houston-based Oil States International. McArthur, who had just moved to Kelowna, B.C., knew little about the firm except that it was opening a new lodge called Wapasu Creek, which had been named after local Cree trappers, to accommodate some 500 workers from Suncor. Like everything in Fort McMurray during the oil boom days, PTI needed staff yesterday. After submitting her application McArthur got hired in two days.
With the COVID-19 pandemic shifting where people live and work, the next few years could be tough ones for landlords in Canada’s largest cities.
But they could be better for some of the country’s long-struggling secondary cities ― and for renters, who might finally find a good deal on housing after years of soaring prices.