Canadians are working too much

I hope your holidays went well and that the start of 2020 has been full of happiness and personal progress after a well-deserved rest and reflection over Christmas and New Years.

If for whatever reason you weren’t able to enjoy some vacation time during the holidays and instead were stuck at work, know that you’re not alone. In Saskatchewan, we are entitled to three weeks of vacation, while most of the rest of Canada it’s only two. That’s right - two weeks. In a supposedly-progressive country with a growing economy that will soon surpass Brazil and Italy to be the worlds’ eighth largest, Canada lags behind almost all other first world countries in guaranteed paid time off.

We have been deceived into believing that the more hours we work, the more productive we are (certain jobs exempted) or that working long days and weeks some how make us better people for it. We are constantly fed the fallacy that we must remain competitive with the United States, which guarantees no time off for workers. What is for certain is that Canadian workers are being overworked - and it is showing. Anxiety, depression, drug addiction and suicides are on the rise. Parents are spending less time with their kids, if they are even able to afford kids. We are all being spread thin beyond our limits.

Canada has for some time now had a skilled-labour shortage and in some places, there are low-skilled worker shortages as well. To attract skilled workers to come to Canada, we could be looking at what Finland is considering by moving to a four-day work week, which has proven in cases to increase productivity, happiness and health, while decreasing carbon emissions. Instead of making Canada better for all workers who deserve a proper work-life balance and a living wage, the powers at be are content with either maintaining the status quo or enabling the weakening of labour even further, such as doing little or nothing about the growth of precarious gig employment, allowing abominations like the temporary foreign worker program, and considering race-to-the-bottom right-to-work legislation like the Sask Party has in the past.

As unionization dwindles and the prospects of working at the same company for 25+ years is all but impossible to think of in today’s ever more global and automated service-based economy, it is time we rethink the typical 40-hour work week and the relatively small amount of guaranteed time off that hard-working Canadians get. In a growing economy that is seeing our wages only match, or more likely, lag, inflation, we deserve much better. It is time we start reshaping our culture to improve our happiness and well-being. If it can happen in places like Finland, Sweden, Norway, Spain and even work-obsessed Japan, it can happen in Canada.