TORONTO – Premiere Ford has clarified that Ontario will not be introducing mandatory paid sick leave as he does not want to reinforce the harmful idea that hourly and frontline workers are people.
“It’s vital that we combat the spread of misinformation, folks,” Ford said at yesterday’s press conference. “Misinformation like the recent hoax that employees are people and not indestructible non-human entities.”
Most Ontario employers replaced their hourly staff with cyborgs back in 2018, around the time Ford scrapped the previous government’s labour legislation giving workers two paid sick days. “That’s when we decided it was too dangerous to have actual humans working these frontline jobs,” commented Public Health Ontario representative Dr. Jean Gregerson with a haunted, faraway stare.
Ford’s team emphasized that many hourly workers already qualify for the Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit – a $450 per week payment that’s not enough to live on but is enough to make Conservatives very annoyed. “I do get frustrated when people empathize with the cyborgs,” Ford admitted; “But I get it – they look very lifelike, with their big sad eyes.”
The continued calls for paid sick leave have allegedly irked Ford, who sees them as a dangerous slippery slope. “If we start providing sick leave for these workers, what’s next?” he complained. “Lunch breaks for ATMs? Vacation days for Roombas? Proper PPE for the life-sized action figures that replaced human doctors and nurses? The government can’t do everything for people, especially people who aren’t people.”
However, when approached for comment while in line at Loblaws, Ford was able to laugh at the controversy. “When I saw the hoax saying hourly employees are people, it did freak me out! Imagine if we kept human beings working in a pandemic with no paid sick leave – I’d feel awful!”
