(Montreal) Labor Minister Jean Boulet invites employers and workers to respect the new rules that restrict access to COVID-19 screening tests and reduce the isolation period from 10 to 5 days.
On Tuesday, Public Health announced that because they are overwhelmed, testing centers will now restrict access to PCR tests to certain categories of people, such as healthcare workers in direct contact with patients, members of First Nations. Nations or itinerant people.
However, workers who have symptoms of COVID-19 and who are not in the priority categories are now in a wobbly situation, when their employer requires the presentation of such a test as proof that the employee has indeed COVID-19.
And access to rapid tests is still problematic in Quebec, although the situation is expected to improve over the next few days.
“I invite workplaces to follow public health recommendations on isolation. The CNESST (Commission for Standards, Equity, Health and Safety at Work) continues its inspections to ensure compliance with health measures, ”Minister Boulet said in a tweet.
What if an employer continues to require such a test as proof of COVID, either for sick leave or to demand a return to work? Should an employee who considers himself aggrieved complain to the CNESST?
Contacted on this subject, the cabinet of Minister Boulet said that “details will be provided by the Minister tomorrow [jeudi] and tools will be made available to workers and employers through the CNESST site, as we have done since the start of the pandemic ”.
Tests for everyone
In the meantime, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which represents thousands of small and medium-sized businesses, argues that its members have little choice, since they must have healthy employees in order to function and that, in order to operate. to do this, screening tests must be made available.
“It is important, necessary and strategic to restore access to PCR tests for all sectors of economic activity and to improve the supply of the population with rapid tests. This is one of the keys to being able to live with COVID-19 and, currently, small businesses and citizens do not have access to these keys, ”argued in an interview François Vincent, vice-president for the Quebec from the CFIB.
He argues that the CFIB was asking for easier access to rapid tests as early as February 2021. “And we were being told ‘this is unreliable’. ”
Mr. Vincent points out that many SMEs have fewer than five employees and that for one of them, having a single employee with COVID-19 and in isolation means depriving yourself of 20% of its workforce, in a context of labor scarcity.