N.B. Greens say government ‘dropped the ball’ on paid sick-day report

With just four scheduled sitting days left until the legislature rises ahead of this fall’s election, Green MLA Megan Mitton says she’s frustrated that the governing Conservatives have not move forward on a bill from her party to mandate paid sick days.

“(The government) dropped the ball on this and made it clear they don’t care about workers rights and don’t care to bring in paid sick days like we’ve been urging them to do,” she said.

The Greens tabled a bill last year to mandate 10 paid sick days  as well as government support for small businesses. The bill was booted to the law amendments committee for further study and, following public hearings, the committee prepared a report.

1:47 N.B. sick day legislation changes on hold

Greg Turner, minister for post-secondary education, training and labour minister, says the report will be released before the legislature rises for the summer.

“It will be released before the end of the session, which we all know is in the next week, so looking forward to it becoming public and we can speak to it then,” he said.

But the report was completed months ago. During a committee meeting in February, Daniel Mills, deputy minister for post-secondary education, training and labour, confirmed it was ready.

“We’re prepared to report back to law amendments whenever they’ll have us,” he said.

Turner did not provide details on why the report has yet to be tabled. He told reporters that there was a specific timeline being followed but insisted that wasn’t being done to limit legislative scrutiny of the report.

“I don’t always get to make those decisions,” he said.

To Mitton, the delay is evidence that the government is trying to bury the report and its recommendations to quietly kill the proposal.

“What is in it that they don’t want us to see until the like the very last day that we’re sitting here,” she said.

Turner wouldn’t say if the government will accept the recommendations and repeated his desire to see a national agreement on the issue.