There is another pandemic.<\/p>\n
Depression, drug abuse, and suicide are its symptoms.<\/p>\n
Canada\u2019s Chief Public Health Officer reported the grim story<\/a> last month: \u201cThe situation is most stark in British Columbia, where there have been over 100 illicit drug toxicity deaths for six consecutive months from March to August 2020,\u201d says Dr. Theresa Tam in her State of Public Health report<\/em>: \u201cThe highest monthly death toll, in June 2020 was 181, up from 76 in June 2019.\u201d In July, B.C. paramedics got 2,700 calls for drug overdoses, an increase of 35 per cent \u2013 700 calls above the monthly average<\/a>. That is 700 more people screaming into the phone demanding an ambulance to save someone from overdosing.<\/p>\n Ontario and Alberta opioid deaths have spiked 50 per cent during the lockdown. Statistics Canada has reported<\/a> the percentage of Canadians reporting good mental health dropping to 48 per cent this year from 68 per cent in 2018.<\/p>\n \u201cCalls to one national suicide prevention line have risen 200 per cent<\/a> over last year,\u201d reports the CBC. Conservative MP Todd Doherty\u2019s parliamentary motion calling for a new national suicide prevention call-in line (988) could save many who suffer in these tormented times.<\/p>\n But it all raises the question: why are so many so desperate?<\/p>\n Part of the answer is worklessness, the pandemic no one discusses. It is the pandemic of people losing the purpose, pride, and place to go that comes from working. Sure, the media report a lot on unemployment, but not the devastating effect on the health and happiness of people deprived of work for long periods of time. It is a much larger pandemic now that our jobless rate is the second highest in the G7. And it could be just as deadly as a virus.<\/p>\n About 9 million<\/a> people lost work since COVID began and rightly got the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB). Many, despite their best efforts, have no way back to employment.<\/p>\n And replacing their incomes \u2014 while necessary \u2014 is not the same as replacing their work. \u201cStatistics Canada found lower life satisfaction among unemployed Canadians and noted that this relationship is about more than just money<\/strong>,\u201d [emphasis added] the Chief Public Health Officer reported<\/a> last month. \u201cThis is echoed by systematic reviews exploring unemployment and mental health, unemployment and health, and unemployment and mortality risk.\u201d<\/p>\n Put bluntly: worklessness is lethal.<\/p>\n It can lead to deadly drug overdoses, according to a 2017 working paper<\/a> for the National Bureau of Economic Research in the U.S. \u201cOur main findings are that opioid deaths and [emergency department] visits are predicted to rise when county unemployment rates temporarily increase,\u201d the authors write. \u201cAs the unemployment rate increases by one percentage point in a given county, the opioid-death-rate rises by 3.6 percent, and emergency-room visits rise by 7 percent,\u201d write<\/a>s<\/a> Olga Khazan of The Atlantic<\/em>.<\/p>\n A recent University of Calgary study found<\/a> that a one per cent increase in unemployment boosted the suicide rate by 2.8 percent in Alberta and 2.1 percent across Canada. A study in The Lancet calculated<\/a> that a one per cent jump in the unemployment rate increases suicides 0.79 percent in Europe and 0.99 percent in the U.S.<\/p>\n We warn people all the time of workplace hazards but less about the health hazards of not <\/em>working. Researchers studied<\/a> \u201c310 men laid off when a ball bearings manufacturer shut down during the 1981-82 recession. Those still jobless after two years reported greater stress, poorer overall health, more visits to physicians and more medications taken than<\/strong> when they were working<\/strong>.<\/em>\u201d [emphasis added]<\/p>\n If worklessness had a warning label, it would read like this: \u201cUnemployment raises the chance by about a third that a man will die in the next decade,\u201d to quote<\/a> the former editor of the British Medical Journal, Dr. Richard Smith. \u201cAnd for those in middle age \u2014 with the biggest commitments \u2014 the chance doubles. The men are most likely to die from suicide, cancer, and accidents and violence.\u201d<\/p>\n And the correlation does equal causation. A study<\/a>\u00a0co-authored by economist Tim\u00a0Diette\u00a0found that\u00a0when\u00a0\u201cresilient\u201d people\u00a0\u201cwithout previous bouts of poor mental health\u201d\u00a0experienced long-term unemployment,\u00a0they were 125 per cent more likely than those who kept working to \u201cexperience their first ever bout of poor emotional well-being.\u201d Worklessness came first. Mental breakdown followed. The former caused the latter.<\/p>\n And losing work is about more than losing money. \u201cEconomists Andrew Clark and Andrew Oswald have documented the huge drop in happiness associated with unemployment \u2013 about 10 times larger than that associated with a reduction in earnings from the $50,000\u2013$75,000 range to the $35,000\u2013$50,000 bracket,\u201d wrote<\/a> Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because happiness takes work \u2013 literally. Far from being a misery needed to pay the bills, work is a basic human need. It activates our brains and bodies in service of others. It makes us players not observers; powerful not powerless. As the poet William Ernest Henley wrote<\/a>: \u201cI am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.\u201d<\/p>\n A piece by the Dalai Lama and Arthur Brooks titled Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded<\/em> states that \u201cvirtually all the world\u2019s major religions teach that diligent work in the service of others is our highest nature and thus lies at the centre of a happy life.\u201d Martin Luther King called it \u201cthe dignity of labour.\u201d<\/p>\n That is why we must end the war on work \u2013 the endless governmental penalties that block businesses from hiring and workers from earning.<\/p>\n Take the tax and benefit system, which abruptly claws back child benefits, social assistance and other supports as the working poor start to earn income, making them worse off when they work more. \u201cNewly released documents show Finance Department officials calculated that workers near the bottom of the income ladder are dinged hardest\u2026\u201d wrote<\/a> reporter Jordan Press.<\/p>\n \u201cIf that worker is a single parent with one child, this rate can rise to over 60 percent, and with two or more children, rises to 80 percent or more,\u201d Finance Canada finds<\/a>. Because these effective tax rates only apply to labour, the government is imposing a much heavier burden on the output of workers than on the output of machines, a financial incentive to automate away jobs.<\/p>\n For centuries, the left has complained that too much income goes to shareholders and not enough to workers. The world\u2019s most prominent left-of-centre economist, Thomas Piketty, has argued<\/a> that returns on capital have outgrown the rest of the economy for decades, leaving relatively less for wages. A simple and direct solution is for governments to lower labour taxes and let workers keep more of their wages.<\/p>\n The war on work also includes federal government obstacles blocking First Nations communities from developing resources or opening businesses. That perpetuates the colonial powers of federal bureaucrats and politicians while denying industrious people the pride of a job and the independence of a paycheque.<\/p>\n