Monday, May 18, 2020

CONSUMERS KEEP CAPITALISM FUNCTIONING
 NOT BILLIONAIRES AND NOT WALL ST.

35% of Americans say they’re making impulse buys to cope with coronavirus stress — ‘It is part of self-care in a weird way’

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‘When this pandemic ends and you’re $10,000 in debt, it’s going to be a real wake up call’

‘It is a really cute and creative cat bed, but I also can’t think of a practical reason for a cat to need a functional tent,’ said Carrie Harris, who impulsively bought a cat tent, pictured.

Carrie Harris, 31, never thought she would buy a $60 cat tent.
“I was zooming ZM, +4.12% with my friends from college and I admired one of their cat beds in the background that sort of resembled a tent,” Harris, a Fairfield, Conn.-based polar scientist, said. “A different friend then told us about this Australian company that made tiny realistic tents for cats that her co-worker had bought.”
“We all looked at the website and jokingly picked out a tent for my cat. They all know I’m very into camping and very into my cat, but I’m not sure they believed that I actually purchased it until it showed up a few weeks later.”
The site she bought it from, catcamp.co, has seen “an uptake in sales over the past couple of weeks, which has been great for our small business,” Cat Camp co-founder Jaclyn Benstead told MarketWatch.
“With everything that is going on in the world right now, people are wanting to spend money on the little things that can bring some joy or happiness during quarantine, even if it’s a present for their cats,” Benstead said.
Over the past two weeks, the company has seen a 110% increase in sales compared to early April, Benstead said, adding that “April sales were up 50% higher than March, so we are pretty happy.”

Carrie Harris, pictured, said made an impulse of $60 for a cat tent.

 Carrie Harris
Although Harris’ cat, Milo, seems to enjoy napping in her new tent alongside Harris while she is working, she says she wouldn’t have bought the feline-oriented outdoor gear if she wasn’t “on lockdown” because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“It is a really cute and creative cat bed, but I also can’t think of a practical reason for a cat to need a functional tent,” she said.
Harris is hardly alone.
Some 35% of Americans say they have made impulse purchases to cope with the stress of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a recent survey conducted by Credit Karma, a personal-finance website where consumers can check their credit score.
Despite the fact that consumer sentiment has taken a huge dive and more than 33 million Americans have filed for unemployment over the past month and a half, nearly one in five people say they are spending more money now than before the coronavirus outbreak hit, Credit Karma found. Among the people who said they’re spending more, 1 in 10 said they have gone more than $1,000 over their budgets since sheltering in place.
Impulse purchases and a hoarding mentality make “complete sense” to Kelly Goldsmith, an expert on consumer behavior in the face of scarcity, and a former contestant on the TV show “Survivor”.
‘When people started seeing pictures of empty shelves at stores, many for better or worse stocked up on necessities because they feared they wouldn’t have access to them in the near future’
When shelter-at-home orders began in several states in early March, consumers flocked to supermarkets and stores like Walmart WMT, +2.04%, Costco COST, -0.17%, BJ’s BJ, -0.42% and placed orders on sites like Amazon AMZN, +0.87% and eBay EBAY, +0.17%.
Goldsmith, who teaches marketing at Vanderbilt University, refers to this as the “secure the basics phase”.
When people started seeing pictures of empty shelves at stores, many for better or worse stocked up on necessities because they feared they wouldn’t have access to them in the near future, she said.
After panic buying and hoarding mentality began to wane, and foot traffic slowed at brick-and-mortar stores, phase two began: comfort buying.
Making impulses purchases is one way consumers feel they regain their sense of control in the face of unprecedented uncertainty stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. “Since most of us aren’t leaving our homes, it’s not even about looking good at this point, it’s about feeling good,” Goldsmith said.
This was certainly the case for Heidi Hudson, 42, a scheduling coordinator and adjunct American history professor at Hawkeye College, a community college based in Waterloo, Iowa.
On Saturday she went to Menards, a chain home improvement store, intending to purchase a hammock and wooden base. Instead, she came home with two garden gnomes which cost $99 each.
“I could not decide between the two so I bought them both,” Hudson said. “Three years ago when I bought my house [Menards] had a giant gnome and I wanted it, but just couldn’t do it at the time. So when I saw these I literally jumped at them.”

Heidi Hudson of Waterloo, Iowa, purchased these two garden gnomes for $99 each.

 Heidi Hudson
‘It is part of self-care in a weird way. It makes me smile to see [the gnomes] in my yard...This will be over someday, but until then I am doing what I can to make myself feel happy.’
The next day she went back to buy the hammock and stand for another $99. Hudson has been working from home since early March and said she wanted the hammock so she would have an excuse to go outside more, especially during the summer.
Like Harris, she said if she wasn’t social distancing, she wouldn’t have purchased the hammock and the gnomes, but she doesn’t regret her decision.
“It is part of self-care in a weird way,” Harris said. “It makes me smile to see [the gnomes] in my yard and the sun warms my soul in my hammock. This will be over someday, but until then I am doing what I can to make myself feel happy.”

Heidi Hudson intended to buy a hammock, but instead spent $200 on garden gnomes.

 Heidi Hudson
‘It’s like gaining a pound here or there and saying ‘when life gets back to normal I’ll look fine.’ But if you have to lose 20 pounds that’s going to be really hard.’
— Kelly Goldsmith, marketing professor at Vanderbilt University
Spending a couple of hundred dollars here and there “feels inconsequential at a time and place when so many scary things are looming in future,” Goldsmith added. But if people continue to spend impulsively it could become problematic.
“It’s like gaining a pound here or there and saying ‘When life gets back to normal I’ll look fine.’ But if you have to lose 20 pounds that’s going to be really hard.”
The same goes for debt.
Already millions of Americans are skipping their credit-card and mortgage payments as the coronavirus pandemic puts them out of work.
“When this pandemic ends and you’re $10,000 in debt, it’s going to be a real wake up call,” Goldsmith said. But people won’t likely realize the damage they’ve done until their application for a credit card or a loan is declined because of a lower credit score.
How you can stop yourself from making impulse purchases
One way to stop yourself from purchasing something impulsively is to wait 24 hours to see if you still want to make the purchase, said Credit Karma CEO and founder, Ken Lin.
Another good rule of thumb is to consider whether you have enough cash on hand to make the purchase in the first place. “If you have to borrow or are thinking about a buy now, pay later option to make it work, you should probably sit on the purchase and save up for it instead,” Lin said.
Finally, don’t be tempted to buy things based on what your friends are posting on Instagram or Facebook FB, +1.96% FB, +1.96% or other forms of social media.
“Don’t buy something just to keep up with friends or influencers on social media, it isn’t worth it,” Lin said. “Ask yourself if you’d want to make the purchase if you hadn’t seen it on social media.”

 
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CPPIB, PSP participating in financing round for cancer testing business
Staff | May 8, 2020

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board are participating in a $390-million series-D round of financing for Grail Inc., a U.S. health-care company focused on cancer testing.

The financing is aimed at boosting the company’s balance sheet to support its continued development, as well as the commercialization of its cancer testing method.

Read: CPPIB invests in cancer drug royalties, food manufacturing

“GRAIL is making significant progress with our blood-based, multi-cancer early detection test,” said Hans Bishop, chief executive officer at Grail, in a press release. “Nearly 80 per cent of cancer deaths result from cancers for which there is no screening test today and Grail’s mission is to change that through the early detection and localization of more than 50 cancers.”

Copyright © 2020 Transcontinental Media G.P. Originally published on benefitsc
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Miners’ union seeking court guarantee for Dominion Diamond to meet pension obligations

123rf_Wawrzyniec Korona
Kelsey Rolfe | May 11, 2020
The union representing 400 Dominion Diamond Mines employees is attempting to guarantee that the company honours its multi-million dollar pension shortfall as it goes through a court-ordered creditor protection process.
If the shortfall isn’t prioritized, the Union of Northern Workers said it’s concerned that active members and pensioners would all face reduced pensions. “How much that would affect those pensioners and the current participants is not known, and would have to go through the court process to wind up and assign those assets,” says union president Todd Parsons.
He said the union is attending all of Dominion Diamond’s court hearings to advocate for its members. “The union will take the position [that] the pension earnings should be a priority before creditors are considered, in the event that this company is unable to succeed.”
According to its most recent valuation, Dominion Diamond’s defined benefit pension plan had $90.3 million in assets and a $99.5-million windup liability as of Jan. 1, 2019, leaving the company with a roughly $9-million shortfall.
However, according to a sworn affidavit by Kristal Kaye, Dominion Diamond’s chief financial officer, the deficit had risen to $20.3 million as of Dec. 31, 2019, with its obligations sitting at $111.6 million and its assets at $91.2 million. Kaye noted those figures “may have changed materially given recent market volatility and interest rate changes.”
The Union received documentation on the $9-million shortfall in April, says Parsons, but only learned about the larger deficit figure through Kaye’s submission to the court. “The union is trying to better understand that number and we’ve requested additional documentation from [Dominion Diamond].”
The company, which operates two diamond mines in the Northwest Territories, sought creditor protection in April when it couldn’t pay a US$20-million interest payment and another $16-million payment to its joint venture partner on one of its operations. Missing those payments could have led to a cascade of defaults, said Kaye in the affidavit, and could ultimately bankrupt the company.
In an emailed statement to Benefits Canada, Pat Merrin, chief executive officer of Dominion Diamond, said the company’s commitments to employees and local communities remain a priority. “We are working diligently to secure sufficient financing to continue operations and allow Dominion to emerge from the [Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act] process an even stronger company.”
Copyright © 2020 Transcontinental Media G.P. Originally published on benefitscanada.com
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CPPIB buying stake in French wind farms

Staff | May 12, 2020
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is acquiring a 49 per cent of the entity that holds Enbridge Inc.’s stake in Éolien Maritime France SAS, Enbridge’s partnership with EDF Renewables.
The investment is set to support the development of three offshore wind farms in France. The CPPIB is paying €80 million for its stake, with a further €120 million committed to follow-on investment as the first project moves through construction. It may also make an additional €150 million investment in two other wind farm projects. Together, the planned wind farms will have a total-installed capacity of close to 1.5 gigawatts and are expected to become operation in phases between 2022 and 2024.
“France has established renewables as a cornerstone of its long-term energy plan and this partnership with Enbridge represents significant opportunities to invest in and develop flagship offshore wind projects across France, alongside France’s premier energy company EDF Renewables,” said Bruce Hogg, managing director and head of power and renewables at the CPPIB, in a press release. “This investment will provide additional diversification to our existing portfolio of assets and deepen our access to future high-quality offshore wind development projects in Europe and Asia.”
The investment builds on previous deals the CPPIB has made with Enbridge. In May 2018, the fund finalized an agreement to acquire a 49 per cent stake in the company’s North American onshore renewable power assets, as well as a 49 per cent interest in two of the company’s German offshore wind projects.
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Regulatory reform required to address today’s workplace pension landscape: report

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Kelsey Rolfe  | May 14, 2020
Canadian pension rules and regulations are in need of reform in order to properly address the reality of the 21st century workplace pension landscape, according to a new report by the C.D. Howe Institute.
The report, authored by Bob Baldwin, a pension industry veteran and chair of the C.D. Howe’s pension policy council, argued that the age-old debate between the merits of defined benefit and defined contribution pension plans obscures the myriad plan design changes that have taken place on both sides over the years and the risks that plan members face in all cases.
“The diversity in the design of the plans, combined with current financial and economic circumstances, has varied results for all types of pension and retirement savings plans, making it difficult to generalize the merits of each plan,” said Baldwin in a press release.
The most important priority, according to the report, is to assess plan members’ retirement income needs and the risks they face and “make sure they are addressed in a way that is fair among plan members and is reasonable in terms of the level and volatility of required contributions.”
The exclusive focus on pension plans’ gross replacement rate is too limited because contributing to a pension plan affects members’ living standards before and after retirement. “In the pre-retirement period, we have to be concerned with the extent to which the pension plan is depressing the ability of plan members to buy goods and services,” wrote Baldwin. “Ideally, the pre-retirement sacrifice will combine with post-retirement benefits so that living standards will be the same in both periods.”
Instead, he noted, it would be more appropriate to focus on a net replacement rate, which takes into consideration expenses plan members have during their working lives that they aren’t likely to face during retirement — such as mortgage payments, financial support for their children, a higher tax burden and pension contributions — and the support they’ll receive from government pension programs including the Canada Pension Plan or Quebec Pension Plan and old-age security.
“The [net replacement rate] comes much closer to defining the actual standard of living enjoyed in the pre- and post-retirement periods than does a [gross replacement rate]. An appropriate target [net replacement rate] would be close to 100 per cent,” he wrote.
The report also suggested that plan sponsors add employer contributions into the calculation of what plan members sacrifice during their earning years in order to see a better pension in retirement. “In most situations, it is fair to surmise that an employer is most worried about total labour costs not the component parts of the cost. To the extent this is true, a rational employer will discount other elements in the compensation package of employees to take account of the contributions to the pension plan that are predictable. Thus, the economic burden of employer contributions will be shifted from employers to employees — rather like sales taxes being shifted from vendors to consumers.”
While DC plan sponsors generally have predictable employer contribution rates, DB plan sponsors don’t have that same certainty and may suddenly be hit with special contribution requirements after an actuarial valuation report, noted Baldwin.
As well, muted investment returns, lower interest rates, rapid growth in wages and salaries and increasing life expectancies have all placed an upward pressure on DB contribution rates and played a role in the shift from DB to DC plans in the private sector. These factors have also pushed a move in the public sector to place more financial risk on the benefit side of the plan and to introduce target-benefit plans.
Baldwin urged plan sponsors to adopt measures that would help reconcile the uncertainty between pension contributions and benefits. He also suggested they make their plans more transparent, including establishing a clear appreciation of existing and future members’ financial needs through their retirement, balancing their retirement income requirements with the impact on their pre-retirement living standards to achieve continuity between them.
Plan sponsors should also be clear about cross-subsidization within the plan and be clearer with members about what will happen to contributions and benefits if liabilities increase substantially and/or investments don’t provide sufficient returns.
“Pension plan design is more like a spectrum of choice rather than a binary choice between clearly defined DB and DC plans,” wrote Baldwin. “The position of plans on the spectrum will be established by the way that financial risk is allocated between contribution and benefit variability and between and within cohorts of plan members and employers — to the extent that the latter bear financial risk. Plan governors have to decide where they will fit on the spectrum.” 
Regulatory and tax policy should also be adapted to allow for that spectrum of choice and the incorporation of both DB and DC elements, he added.
He called on regulators to incorporate measures already identified as good practice for plan sponsors, such as requiring them to identify an outer limit of acceptable contribution rates, set out a process for what happens when that limit is reached and assess and disclose the likelihood of hitting that limit.
On the target-benefit side, while such plans have previously been restricted to multi-employer pension plans, Baldwin suggested that the provinces that are adopting or looking at the option for single-employer plans only allow for a reduction in accrued benefits if joint governance is in place.
He also recommended that regulatory law be revised so jointly governed plans face a more “principles-based” regulation. Plans that have employer-dominated governance structures should continue to be rules-based. Plans choosing to incorporate flexibility around benefits and financing rules should be encouraged to turn to a joint-governance model to ensure safety for plan members.
“The regulatory law that governs [workplace pension plans] was crafted at a point in time when most members of [workplace pension plans] in both the public and private sector belonged to DB plans,” wrote Baldwin. “The objective of the law was to protect DB plan members from errors and/or abuse by employers. . . . [Regulatory law] needs to be complemented by more flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances.”

THE C.D. HOWE INSTITUTE IS NAMED AFTER THE FAMOUS WWII LIBERAL GOVT MINISTER OF EVERYTHING. AND IRONICALLY MR. HOWE WAS NEVER A FREE MARKETEER, HE WAS A STATE CENTRAL PLANNING NATIONALISING CANADIAN INDUSTRY....UNLIKE THE CONS WHO RUN THIS INSTITUTE 
Copyright © 2020 Transcontinental Media G.P. Originally published on benefitscanada.com
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Charting a new course at the Air Canada pension plans

Yaelle Gang | May 15, 2020
In 2009, when Vincent Morin walked through the doors of Air Canada as the vice-president of asset allocation and strategy for its investment division, he faced a tough situation.
The company’s eight defined benefit pension plans, which buy units of a single master trust fund, were facing a $2.6 billion deficit. In the following years, the deficit grew, reaching $4.2 billion in 2012.
Tackling the investments
As of year-end 2019, all of the airline’s Canadian pension plans are at least 100 per cent funded on a solvency basis.
“When I joined, the mandate was to create a whole new strategy [that was] much more focused on liability-driven investing and reducing the risk coming from the pension plan, because it became a very big enterprise risk management issue at Air Canada,” says Morin.
Back in 2009, the pension plans’ fund was in a traditional portfolio of 60 per cent equities and 40 per cent bonds, all managed externally. Morin and his team led the investment turnaround through many small steps, which included adding fixed income exposure and building an alternative portfolio comprised of real estate, infrastructure, private equity, private debt and other sub-asset classes. The team also implemented a portable alpha — or hedge fund — program to try to generate additional returns on top of the traditional asset classes.
Getting to know
Vincent Morin
Job title: President of Trans-Canada Capital Inc.
Joined Air Canada: In September 2009 and launched TCC in 2019
Previous roles: Investment consultant at Mercer Canada
What keeps him up at night: The current coronavirus crisis and its unknown short- and long-term impacts on the global economy and asset prices
Outside of the office he can be found: At his cottage, skiing or travelling
In terms of asset mix, the investment fund currently sits at 87.5 per cent fixed income, 10 per cent equities, 20 per cent alternatives and 10 per cent hedge funds, totalling more than 100 per cent because it uses leverage.
“Over time, gradually, I think we did over 30 different steps in de-risking the plan and changing the asset allocation,” he says. “You just cannot move that big a plan. It was a very big boat to turn around.”
Opportunities in fixed income
With fixed income yields at historic lows and 87.5 per cent of the investment fund’s portfolio invested in the asset class, it pursues a liability-driven investment strategy and is a very active manager. In addition, it keeps a pure separation between alpha and beta, notes Morin. “Beta is the benchmark. It’s built to make sure that there’s good and sound risk management done to match our liabilities’ structure.”
The portfolio is largely comprised of long-term, investment-grade Canadian bonds and doesn’t take big bets on duration, but the fund does arbitrage trades and curve trades globally without taking any foreign currency or high-yield bond risk. For example, if the team believes there’s an interesting point on the curve in France, it will play it, he says. “It will be a long-short position, so there’s no actual exposure to France’s interest rates, but we’ll try to arbitrage that market and be able to capture some return on this.”
The team has had significant success in fixed income. The asset class’ active value-add has been above one per cent on average over a 10-year period, highlights Morin. Plus, since fixed income makes up 87.5 per cent of the fund, the value added in dollar terms is equal to the value-add targeted by the fund from its alternative book. A value-add above one per cent is also significant when expected yields are at two per cent, he adds.
Trans-Canada Capital
By turning Air Canada’s large pension deficit into a surplus, the investment team solved a problem for the company. It also shifted the team responsible for the airline’s pension investments to a new subsidiary called Trans-Canada Capital Inc.
While TCC will continue to manage the investments for Air Canada’s pensioners, it will also make certain funds available to other institutional investors. “We built a great track record over the years, a very different approach than we could see in the market,” says Morin, who is president of TCC.
The team believed it had something to offer to other investors, he adds, noting that, as the fund reduced risk, opening up its investments to others would allow the investment team to continue growing, retain its talent and also diversify Air Canada’s activities.
TCC is offering two fixed income strategies and two hedge fund strategies for institutional investors to buy into, and it plans to expand its offerings.
TCC’s internal hedge fund, launched in February 2019, is its flagship fund. It originally started with the Air Canada investment team using sophisticated transactions to implement its tactical asset allocation. The team was executing these trades using options, volatility contracts and over-the-counter derivatives, says Morin. “At some point, we realized early in the process that what we are managing . . . looks much more like a hedge fund than an actual tactical asset allocation book; better implementation, better diversification, a lot of breadth as well, looking
at different markets.”
Opening up the hedge fund
While the TCC team manages assets for Air Canada’s defined benefit plans, they’re members of its defined contribution arrangement.
The investment team has been using an internal hedge fund strategy for the DB plan since 2013, but it launched a formal fund in 2017 so employees could participate with their own assets.
While it wasn’t mandatory for employees to invest, everybody did, since they could access investments — such as complex derivatives transactions with low trading costs — they couldn’t reach as individual investors.
Next, the team focused on portfolio construction for this strategy. Today, it includes quantitative strategies, systematic strategies, fundamental analysis and alternative value transactions. In 2013, the internal hedge fund began operating as a segregated account; in 2017, it became a separate investment vehicle.
In September 2019, TCC launched a fund of hedge funds. “We have a 10 per cent allocation to external hedge funds and we repackaged it to be able to offer that approach to potential external clients.”
The fund is market agnostic and aims to have no correlation with equity markets, says Morin. “The last thing we want to do is to bring a portable alpha program, which will react exactly in the same direction if there’s a market correction. If it reacts in the same direction as the equity market when there’s a crash, it doesn’t do its job.”
Currently, TCC has $2 billion invested through external hedge funds and $1 billion invested in its internal strategy, notes Morin. “We know what we’re good at. We also know what we are not good at. So what we cannot realistically do internally we’ll give a mandate to an external manager to do.”
Final destination
The Air Canada pension plans are maturing quickly, with about 60 per cent of liabilities tied to retirees and the DB plans mainly closed to new entrants.
At some point, it will make sense to lock in the benefits for pensioners instead of continuing to take risk, says Morin, noting this influenced the airline’s decision to start its own life insurance company to purchase annuities.
Many pension funds are buying annuities to lock in the pension promise. In fact, according to a report by Willis Towers Watson, Canada’s group annuity market hit $5.2 billion in sales in 2019, up from $4.6 billion in 2018 and $3.7 billion in 2017.
While annuitizing is a natural move for many DB pensions, the Air Canada plans are valued at about $21 billion, making their total size much larger than many plans. Indeed, the airline’s plans were paying out more than $750 million in annual pension payments two years ago; and when looking at the 2018 annuity market, the biggest insurance company active in the space was paying a similar amount in total pension payments, notes Morin.
As well, despite the active growth in Canada’s annuity market, he believes the Air Canada plans will be difficult to annuitize because of their total size. “The transactions are bigger, but the liabilities have grown over the past few years, and there’s some scarcity as well in the fixed income world to find interesting securities . . . to back those liabilities.”
In addition to market capacity, pricing is also a consideration, notes Morin. “You can purchase a big amount of annuities, but we believe the structure we are proposing will result in a better price for the plans.”Air Canada has applied to the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions for approval to launch its life insurance company. If approved, the company will operate as a subsidiary of Air Canada with capital seeded by the airline. And TCC will manage assets for the life insurance company, in addition to the assets for the pension plans.
While the mandate would be different for the pension plan assets and the life insurance company assets, fixed income will be core to both, says Morin.
Yaelle Gang is editor of the Canadian Investment Review.
Copyright © 2020 Transcontinental Media G.P. This article first appeared in Benefits Canada.
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    NDP calling for two weeks of sick leave for all Canadians

    The Canadian Press | May 15, 2020
    The federal New Democrats say all Canadians require access to two weeks of sick leave benefits as provinces start moving to reopen their economies while fighting the coronavirus and the federal government should pay for it.
    NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Wednesday that workers without sick leave who are put back on the job during the pandemic will be left to decide between protecting others from infection and paying their bills. “We need paid sick leave, there is no question about it. It should no longer be an option.” 
    Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, has been reminding people almost daily to stay home when they’re sick, even with mild symptoms, or else risk further transmission of the coronavirus.
    The government should be paying people to do just that, said Singh, suggesting the cost could be covered by the Canada Emergency Response Benefit or the employment insurance system.
    The NDP pitched the idea to the Liberals but they declined to include it in a bill presented to the House of Commons on Wednesday in the weekly opportunity to pass legislation. Singh tried to put the idea forward as a motion himself, calling on the Liberal government to work on paid sick leave with the provinces, but didn’t receive the unanimous vote required to present it on short notice.
    Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough said the federal government is in talks with the provinces about how they can deal with the issue. “We are very aware that a key component to our return to work safely, and positioning businesses and workers to feel confident they can go back to work, will be making it easier to stay home if you’re feeling sick,” she said at a briefing on Wednesday. “We’re going to look to see how we can continue to support Canadians moving forward and in what way we can best do that.”
    In the meantime, people who’ve received no income for 14 days while sick with the coronavirus or while under quarantine qualify for CERB payments of up to $500 a week.
    According to a briefing note by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, only 38 per cent of illness or disability leave was paid by employers in Canada in 2019. Low-income workers, who’ve often been on the front lines of the pandemic, are more likely to be paid only if they work, creating an obvious incentive to go to work sick.
    Just one in five workers making $15 an hour or less is able to take paid leave for more than week, according to the briefing note. Singh said that should change and the fix shouldn’t be temporary. “We want to see this as a permanent change, knowing that what we’re faced with as a crisis has changed the reality for our country, for the world,” he said.

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    56% of Canadians say coronavirus negatively impacting mental health: survey


    Staff | May 11, 2020
    More than half (56 per cent) of Canadians said the coronavirus is having a negative impact on their mental health, with social isolation the top contributing factor, according to a new survey by Sun Life Canada.
    The other factors include concern for loved ones (57 per cent), fear of contracting the virus (56 per cent) and financial concerns (51 per cent). The survey also found the virus is having a greater negative impact on the mental health of women (62 per cent) compared to men (49 per cent).
    “The COVID-19 pandemic is the most serious public health emergency of our lifetime,” said Jacques Goulet, president of Sun Life Canada, in a press release. “Canada was already facing a mental-health crisis. The pandemic adds new layers of stress and we’re deeply concerned about the long-term mental-health implications that may follow. At Sun Life, we’re focused on supporting our employees, advisors, clients and all Canadians to manage their mental well-being.”
    Read: Webinar: Coronavirus and workplace mental health
    Close to 60 per cent of Canadians whose mental health has been negatively impacted said they aren’t receiving treatment or social support. When they were asked what barriers were stopping them from receiving support for their mental health, the responses were: they can’t afford it (22 per cent); they don’t know where to go or who to ask for help (17 per cent); and they’re embarrassed to ask for help (12 per cent).
    “During the pandemic, people are feeling a mix of emotions including anxiety, stress, fear and nervousness,” said Dr. Sam Mikail, director of mental-health solutions at Sun Life, in the release. “It’s important to listen to your body, understand how you’re feeling and reach out for help. Connecting with a friend or family is a great first step. But don’t hesitate to seek professional advice. There are many resources either through your employee benefits or free in the community that can help you manage your mental health. We’re all in this together.”
    Read: Social connection can build or erode mental-health, resilience

    Coronavirus negatively impacting mental health of 50% of Canadians: survey


    Kelsey Rolfe | May 8, 2020
    Half of Canadian employees said their mental health has been negatively impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new survey by Teladoc Health Inc.
    The survey, which polled more than 1,500 Canadian workers, found women (57 per cent) were more likely to report a harmful impact on their mental health than men (43 per cent). More than half (52 per cent) of respondents between the ages of 18 to 34 felt their mental health had taken a hit. In comparison, respondents over the age of 65 — notably those most at risk of the virus — experienced the lowest mental-health impact, with just 37 per cent saying their mental health had worsened.
    David Sides, chief operating officer at Teledoc, says the high number of people experiencing negative effects doesn’t come as a surprise. “The burden that’s been placed on everyone, [with] working at home, childcare, you might be homeschooling — I can see why that’s the case.”
    The survey also found an increasing number of Canadians are open to remote mental health-care solutions. Two-thirds (62 per cent) of respondents said they’re open to using virtual mental-health care, compared to 40 per cent who said the same in an October 2019 survey. As well, 85 per cent of Canadians who have access to an employee benefits plan said those plans should offer virtual mental-health care as an option.
    “I was pleased to see that people are more open to remote forms of mental-health care — maybe partly by necessity, but that’s a big increase,” says Sides, adding he expects this interest to continue after the pandemic.
    Employers are also taking a variety of actions to support their employees’ mental health, with 39 per cent of respondents saying their employer has offered additional mental-health support, raised the discussion of employees’ mental-health needs and/or waived fees for mental-health support.
    Indeed, Teladoc is one of these employers. In the wake of the pandemic, the company made its own service available to employees’ families. Within the first two weeks, several hundred new users accessed the platform, says Sides.
    “The health of your immediate family or extended family also affects your mental health. If your spouse or your parents are having difficulty, it could impact you, especially as many families are compressing right now. Everyone’s in the same space at the same time now. We thought that was an important benefit to make available.”
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