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CELPIP Practice Reading: Reading for Viewpoints ID: #60230 Hard Room to Switch Off at Night

Read the following editorial from a website.

Nobody can pay attention to everything. Most of us now receive well over a hundred messages a day at work, and each one competes for a mind that can hold only a few things at once. That is the quiet reality behind the province’s proposed right-to-disconnect rule, which would require employers with twenty-five or more staff to write a policy limiting work emails and messages after hours. We support the rule, but it needs two changes to be fair to the people it affects most.

Genevieve Cadieux, an employment lawyer, argues that the rule is overdue. “A phone that buzzes at ten at night keeps a worker half at the office,” she told the committee studying the bill. She wants every policy to name the hours when replies are not expected and to protect workers who ignore messages during that time. Marius Dion, who owns three restaurants in the city, warns that small employers work differently. Shifts change at the last minute, cooks call in sick at midnight, and a text is often the only way to fill a gap before breakfast service. He wants scheduling messages exempt, and he fears that fines would fall hardest on owners without a human resources department.

Aditi Deshpande, a workplace psychologist, says the research supports the rule’s purpose. After each alert, she explains, it can take several minutes to return to deep work, and those minutes add up to hours by the end of a week. She believes the most useful fix is technical: company messaging tools should hold non-urgent messages until morning by default. Octave Bonneau, who represents hospital staff for a large union, adds a warning. Some jobs require people to be reachable, he says, and the honest answer is to pay them for being on call rather than pretend the phone never rings.

We agree with Cadieux on the core of the rule, and we think Deshpande’s default settings would make it work in practice. Our province should add an exemption for last-minute shift changes, as Dion asks, but it should not exempt small employers entirely. It should also require on-call pay where a job truly demands after-hours contact, as Bonneau suggests. A rule that respects both attention and real emergencies is worth passing this fall, and we hope the legislature does so.

Using the drop-down menu (▾), choose the best option according to the information given on the website.

This editorial is mainly about 1.
.

Who most clearly worries that the rule’s penalties could be unfair to smaller businesses? 2.
.

Aditi Deshpande’s position would most likely be supported by 3.
.

What outcome does Octave Bonneau’s proposal call for? 4.
.

The editorial’s main purpose is to 5.
.

The following is a comment by a visitor to the website page. Complete the comment by choosing the best option to fill in each blank.

My phone buzzed with a work message while I was reading this editorial at 9:40 last night, which felt a little too perfect. Genevieve Cadieux wants every policy to name 6.
, and I would print that page and tape it to my fridge. The restaurant owner explains that a text is often the only way to fill a gap before 7.
, and I had not pictured that side. In my office the worst offenders are managers who send questions on Sunday evenings and then forget they ever asked them. The psychologist would set company tools to hold 8.
 by default, which sounds far easier than changing every manager’s habits. Octave Bonneau, who speaks for 9.
, raises a point that nobody else in the debate makes. I was surprised the rule would cover only employers with 10.
, because my own small workplace has the same late-night habits.

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