CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. — A private member’s bill that would eliminate provisions in P.E.I.’s labour laws allowing employers to require their staff to provide sick notes proving their illness has been defeated in the legislature.
The bill, an amendment to the Employment Standards Act, was brought forward by Green MLA Matt MacFarlane as a measure intended to alleviate strains on health providers. MacFarlane said requiring workers to obtain sick notes places an administrative burden on already over-stretched health-care staff in the province.
Discussion of the bill involved a rare debate between a frontline emergency room doctor and Premier Dennis King.
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Kay Dingwell, a doctor who works at the Prince County Hospital in Summerside, said she regularly sees patients coming to the ER who do not require medical assessment.
Dingwell said doctors often don’t actually verify whether the workers are sick or not. Instead, Dingwell said doctors simply believe their patients.
“A medical certificate for a sick day is nothing more than a confirmation of the request being made,” Dingwell said.
Dingwell said often these patients “just need to be at home.”
She also said these requests end up adding an administrative burden for physicians, which she said is a common reason for burnout of clinicians.
“My job is to serve the health of the environment. My job is to take care of the person in front of me. It is not to police their attendance for their employer,” Dingwell said.
During debate, King said he agreed with removing administrative burdens from frontline health workers. But he also said he believed some employees likely take advantage of sick day provisions.
“You have to recognize, whether you want to personally admit it or not, that there are people out there who will take full abuse of this system, particularly if they’re being paid," King said.
“It’s not out of the realm of normalty that we would ask the question ‘how would we police this?’”
“I am not a police officer, Minister,” Dingwell replied.
“I am not asking you to be a police officer. I want you to be removed from it. I’m talking about the other aspect of this which is how do we have checks and balances in place?” King said.
MacFarlane noted that Dingwell had said doctors do not verify employees' level of sickness.
“The examination that results in that certificate being prepared is not complete. It’s not thorough. It’s a farce,” MacFarlane.
The Employment Standards Act allows employers to require employees to produce a medical certificate after they have been out sick for three consecutive days.
The province commissioned a systematic review of the Employment Standards Act, the results of which were released last fall. A panel, composed of representatives of labour and employers, did recommend changes to the Act, increasing the threshold for which employers can require a sick note from three consecutive days off work to four.
That review also called for the expansion of health-care workers that could provide sick notes to include nurses, pharmacists and others. The Act currently says the certificates must be written by an individual who is licensed to practice medicine.
The review also proposed more than 100 additional changes to the province’s labour laws.
King argued that it was prudent for legislators to consider these recommendations when making changes to laws.
“Do you think it’s good policy to just dismiss that two years of work that have gone in and the recommendations they brought forward?” King said.
MacFarlane noted the proposed recommendations have yet to be introduced in the legislature.
“Why are we not implementing what they suggested?” MacFarlane said.
King said the recommendations were comprehensive and complicated.
“I want a fix. I want to remove it. But I need some comforts to know what we replace it with and we don’t have any solid answers,” King said during debate.
Health Minister Mark McLane also did not support the bill. Earlier in the session, before the bill was introduced, McLane had indicated he would support removing the sick note provisions in the Employment Standards Act. But on April 17, McLane said he had been "surprised by the pushback I received from business."
"I support the premise but I do worry about an employer's ability for, I'll call, progressive discipline," McLane said.
"Unfortunately, we have abusers of our system. That'll never stop."
The bill was defeated by a 17-6 vote. All Progressive Conservative members present voted against the bill, including King and McLane.
Stu Neatby is a political reporter with the SaltWire Network in Prince Edward Island. He can be reached by email at [email protected] and followed on X @stu_neatby.
