Ontario to freeze minimum wage, eliminate mandatory paid sick days
The current Progressive Conservative government in Ontario, Canada, holding to its campaign promise to treat businesses better, has revised some of the previous administration’s Bill 148, which had determined that the province’s minimum wage would rise to $15 this year and that 10 personal days would be granted to employees (two of them paid). The current government will freeze the minimum wage at $14 until 2020, whereupon it will be raised annually with ties to inflation. It’s also cutting personal leave days to 7 days, all of them unpaid. Part-time employees will be paid less than full-time employees doing the same job. Businesses had complained that the passage of Bill 148 led to great hardships that required cutting staff and raising prices; the current administration thus ran on the platform to (make) “Ontario Open for Business”. Labor groups and some business owners were not happy with the decision that “removes workers’ rights”.
See "Ontario to freeze minimum wage, eliminate mandatory paid sick days", Brenda Bouw, The Globe and Mail, October 25, 2018