SOCIO-POLITICAL ACTION
A brave minority government?

The Québec Committee on Public Finance has made several astute recommendations to the Canada Revenue Agency to strengthen the latter’s tax collection and recovery measures, fiscal accountability requirements, and actions to fight tax havens. For example, the Committee is proposing to criminalize intermediaries that organize and sell tax avoidance schemes, and to publicize country-by-country reporting by transnational corporations operating in Canada.

Will the results of the October 21 election have a positive impact on the adoption of concrete solutions by the federal government? The anti-tax-haven collective Échec aux paradis fiscaux, to which the APTS belongs, is continuing to monitor the situation and promises to keep pressing its demands.

LABOUR RELATIONS
Premium for psychologists applies to disability insurance and gradual return to work

The APTS and psychologists have scored a major victory involving the retention premium for psychologists. An arbitrator declared that under the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, psychologists on disability are discriminated against as a result of their disability-related absence from work, and those benefiting from a gradual return to work are discriminated against as a result of their inability to fully perform their work due to functional limitations. Both of these situations violate their fundamental right to working conditions free of discrimination based on handicap.

The arbitrator ordered the employer to rectify the situation by applying the psychologists’ retention premium to their disability insurance benefit and to their hours remunerated as part of a gradual return to work.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY
For a better suicide prevention strategy

The APTS and the Collectif pour une stratégie nationale en prévention du suicide published an open letter in Le Soleil, in conjunction with the Forum Adultes et santé mentale that took place on October 28 and 29. This public call for a provincial strategy that is separate from the Québec government’s mental health action plan is supported by some 30 organizations. The initiative was launched by the Association québécoise de prévention du suicide, which provided valuable advice for suicide prevention workers on its website.

COMMUNICATIONS
APTS en conseil général available online

About 170 delegates from each of your institutions gathered in Québec City at the October 22–25 General Council meeting. The General Council focused on union demands in view of the upcoming contract talks that are set to begin with the government. On October 24, following a demonstration and a march uniting members of the APTS and the FIQ, our intersectoral demands were officially filed with the Treasury Board.

In conjunction with the General Council, three conferences were offered to the delegates, on women’s economic equality in 2019, the centralization of services and devitalization of communities, and the issues of inclusion, diversity and social solidarity. The aim of these conferences was to prepare participants for the talks set to take place at our convention later this month for the adoption of a political platform for 2021.

For more details, consult our online newsletter L’APTS en conseil général.

ORGANIZATION OF WORK AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES
OPTILAB Montérégie – new hub lab in St. Bruno

The local APTS executive for Montérégie-Centre was stunned to learn the news, which was announced while
the whole executive team was away. Despite the sense
of concern expressed by the local union president, management decided to break the news to the employees that very afternoon. This lack of consideration for the employees directly concerned unfortunately reminds us of former health minister Gaétan Barrette’s regime. Lab technicians suddenly learned, after being without news since 2017, that the new hub lab would be located in the
St-Bruno-de-Montarville industrial park and that 400 employees would be relocated there in the next three years. This is a grim return to the realities of government bungling and uncertainty, despite a promise from health minister McCann in the spring of 2019 to do things differently.