In this edition:
- Ontario to do away with sick note requirement for short absences
- Honda to build Canada’s first comprehensive electric vehicle supply chain
- Number of unfilled jobs inches upwards in February
- Town of Lincoln passes development charge bylaws
- AI could boost Canadian business productivity: Microsoft Canada president
- Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestle, Danone are top producers of plastic waste: Study
- Focus on Human Resources
Ontario to do away with sick note requirement for short absences
Ontario will do away with sick note requirements for short absences as part of a larger effort to ease the administrative burden on doctors, the province’s health minister said Wednesday.
The province will soon introduce legislation that, if passed, will no longer allow employers to require a sick note from a doctor for the provincially protected three days of sick leave workers are entitled to.
Employers will retain the right to require another form of evidence from an employee such as an attestation or a receipt for over-the-counter medication, the labour minister’s office said.
Honda to build Canada’s first comprehensive electric vehicle supply chain
The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, officially welcomed Honda Canada’s milestone investment of approximately $15 billion to create Canada’s first comprehensive electric vehicle supply chain, located in Ontario.
This large-scale project will see four new manufacturing plants in Ontario. Honda will build an innovative and world-class electric vehicle assembly plant – the first of its kind for Honda Motor Co. Ltd. – as well as a new stand-alone battery manufacturing plant at Honda’s facilities in Alliston, Ontario. To complete the supply chain, Honda will also build a cathode active material and precursor (CAM/pCAM) processing plant through a joint venture partnership with POSCO Future M Co., Ltd. and a separator plant through a joint venture partnership with Asahi Kasei Corporation. Once fully operational in 2028, the new assembly plant will produce up to 240,000 vehicles per year.
Number of unfilled jobs inches upwards in February
Job vacancies in Canada increased to 656,700 in February, up by 21,800 (+3.4%) from January, but were little changed from December 2023.
Meanwhile, the number of employees receiving pay and benefits from their employer—measured as “payroll employment” in the Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours—decreased by 17,700 (-0.1%) in February, following an increase of 35,700 (+0.2%) in January. On a year-over-year basis, payroll employment was up by 154,700 (+0.9%) in February.
In February 2024, monthly payroll employment decreases were recorded in 7 out of 20 sectors, led by accommodation and food services (-10,000; -0.8%), manufacturing (-9,500; -0.6%), and retail trade (-8,200; -0.4%).
Town of Lincoln passes development charge bylaws
The Town of Lincoln has passed a set of new bylaws pertaining to development charges in the town. Development charges (DCs) are fees collected from builders and developers at the building permit stage to help pay for the cost of infrastructure required to provide municipal services to new development, including roads, fire protection, parks and recreation, library, water, wastewater, and stormwater drainage.
The town’s previous bylaw was set to expire this month.
AI could boost Canadian business productivity: Microsoft Canada president
“The truth is Canada has unfortunately a long history of not adopting new technologies as fast as others, in particular, the U.S., and some of that does show up in the labour productivity stats,” said Chris Barry, President of Microsoft Canada.
Canada’s labour productivity eked out a small gain to close out 2023, but it had previously sustained six straight quarters of decreases, Statistics Canada data shows.
In November, BMO Capital Markets chief economist Douglas Porter declared the country “listless and lagging U.S. trends” because it had fallen behind its neighbour, the Nordic countries, most of Western Europe and Australia in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s productivity rankings.
Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestle, Danone are top producers of plastic waste: Study
A global research study, led by scientists at Dalhousie and a dozen different universities in the United States, Australia, the Philippines, New Zealand, Estonia, Chile, Sweden and the U.K., found that 56 global companies are responsible for more than half of all branded plastic pollution. A paper in Science Advances states that the top five producers of branded plastic pollution were Coca-Cola Company, which was responsible for 11 per cent of roughly 910,000 branded items, followed by PepsiCo (five per cent), Nestle (three per cent), Danone (three per cent), and Altria/Philip Morris International (two per cent).
Did you know?
Focus on Human Resources
While many employers have made a push to bring workers back to the office, many workers say they can still be part of the company culture without seeing their colleagues often, according to a report.
Nearly six in 10 (59 per cent) Canadians believe that you don’t need to see coworkers in person every day to form strong relationships, consistent across different age groups, found IWG.
And taking that option away from workers and demanding that they commute to the office five days a week can be very costly for employers: Nearly all (95 per cent) of Gen Z employees and 84 per cent of Millennials would anticipate some form of salary increase if they are forced back to the office; 71 per cent of Gen X and 61 per cent of Baby Boomers have the same claim.
Through the Daily Updates, the GNCC aims to deliver important business news in a timely manner. We disseminate all news and information we feel will be important to businesses. Inclusion in the Daily Update is not an endorsement by the GNCC.
