Who thought employment standards weren’t exciting?! Yesterday, the Ontario government passed Bill 47, Making Ontario Open for Business Act, 2018, reversing most of Bill 148. 2018 has seen a slew of changes to the Ontario Employment Standards Act, most of which are now all undone.
See our recent blog post on Bill 47 for a summary of the changes. Here is a link to the full Bill 47 on the government website.
Earlier this year the federal government amended the Holidays Act to include Remembrance Day as a legal holiday. You can read more about this in our past post Remembrance Day Enacted as a Legal Holiday. In Ontario, Remembrance Day has not been added to the Employment Standards Act as a public holiday and consequently, workers governed by provincial legislation do not get the day off.
Why Don’t We All Get the Same Days Off?
The answer to this question goes back to our Constitution and the division of powers. Different spheres are governed by the provinces versus by the federal government. This is why workers in Ontario (or any province) do not all get the same days off. Workers in Ontario (or any province) also do not all have the same employment rights because federal and provincial spheres are governed by different laws.
Last week the Ford government tabled Bill 47, Making Ontario Open for Business Act, 2018. This legislation would repeal many of the amendments made by the Bill 148, Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, 2017, most of which came into force in January 2018 but some of which are slated for January 2019.
Not surprisingly the changes proposed by Bill 47 are employer-friendly, in direct response to the employee-friendly changes brought in by Bill 148. The current versions of the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (“ESA”) is still in force and it is important that employers continue to comply with the Bill 148 version of the ESA until the new revisions are passed.
Here are some highlights of the proposed changes. Check out Bill 47 or the Ontario government’s new release for more details.
Pot has now been legal in Canada for one week! Hell has not frozen over, or broken loose, as far as we can tell. Legal marijuana has been reportedly selling out and even illegal dispensaries are apparently having trouble keeping up. This suggests an uptick in cannabis consumption. I guess some people really were deterred by the small matter of recreational consumption being illegal, prior to last Wednesday.
With seemingly more people using recreational cannabis, questions about the impact of cannabis on the workplace, and particularly the employer’s ability to ban employee use off-duty have been flooding our inboxes.
The big question from the employee perspective seems to be: Can my employer ban me from using cannabis off-duty?
And from the employer: Can I restrict my employees from using cannabis off-duty? And if so, how much?
We have also been getting questions about the legality of drug testing, now that drugs are purportedly being more heavily used.
Legislatively speaking, a lot has happened in the Ontario workplace law space over the past year. The biggest shake-ups being the Bill 148 changes to the Employment Standards Act and today’s legalization of recreational cannabis. The state of workplace law continues to evolve as the Doug Ford government takes steps to undo the Liberal legislation.
You can read all about Bill 148 on our blog here. Bill 148 ushered in lots of changes, probably the most significant being the increase in the Ontario minimum wage from $11.60 to $14.00. The general minimum wage was set to increase again to $15.00 on January 1, 2019, but the Ford government has announced that this increase will be indefinitely postponed and further that the Bill 148 changes will be “scrapped.” No legislation has been tabled to undo Bill 148 just yet, but it is no doubt coming. We will keep you posted.
In our connected age, work often creeps beyond the set hours of the workday. See my last post about legislating the right to disconnect for more on this. We often get questions from employers and employees about whether salaried workers should be getting paid for these extra hours and what exactly counts as “overtime.” Let’s dive in.
Maximum Hours of Work
Under the Ontario Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA) most employees can legally work a maximum of 8 hours per day and 48 hours per week. It is possible for an employer to require that the employee work more than this, but in this case an agreement must be made in writing and the employee must be provided with this information sheet about hours of work and overtime pay first. Other jurisdictions have similar rules.
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