When Doug Ford became premier in 2018, he moved quickly to halt policies, like an increase in minimum wage, from his Liberal predecessor Kathleen Wynne. Mr. Ford steps off his campaign bus in Milton, on Feb. 20.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Over his seven years leading Ontario, Doug Ford has fashioned himself as an ally of the working class.
Mr. Ford, who is running for a third term as Premier in the Feb. 27 election, can point to a raft of work-related policies brought in by his Progressive Conservative Party, from a minimum wage for delivery-app workers to “right-to-disconnect” rules to mitigate workplace burnout. Between 2021 and 2024, Ontario has brought in six tranches of the Working for Workers Act.
But some of Mr. Ford’s other moves, such as freezing public-sector wage increases and scrapping plans for paid sick days, have drawn rebuke from labour advocates. Critics also say his work legislation is weak on enforcement, resulting in little change in the workplace.
“If you really dig deep, Mr. Ford’s track record towards workers is not great,” explained Carlo Fanelli, associate professor of work and labour studies at York University. While there may be some positive results from legislation, he said, “the net result is workers in Ontario are worse off.”
When Mr. Ford became premier in 2018, he moved quickly to halt policies from his Liberal predecessor Kathleen Wynne.
The provincial minimum wage, which was slated to increase to $15 an hour from $14 at the outset of 2019, was instead frozen for 33 months. And a plan to introduce two paid emergency-leave days was replaced with three unpaid sick days.
“We are still paying the price for these swift changes that took place in 2018,” Dr. Fanelli said.
Ontario’s minimum wage is now $17.20, and it will increase to $17.82 come this October, to account for inflation, per the rules of the Employment Standards Act. As of January, the average hourly wage in the province was $36.62.
Perhaps most significant for workers, from the perspective of many labour advocates, was the 2019 introduction of Bill 124, which restricted wage growth for public-sector employees to 1 per cent annually for three years.
Venai Raniga, a researcher with the Canadian Union of Public Employees, argues in a new book that Bill 124 eroded the real incomes of workers in critical sectors, such as health care, and subsequently contributed to the departure of skilled professionals during the pandemic.
JP Hornick, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), said conditions for public-sector workers have significantly deteriorated over the Ford government’s tenure.
“I’m not going to suggest that previous Liberal governments were super friendly to workers. But what is concerning is the Ford government’s target on public-sector workers in the name of saving money. They say they want to help workers, and they introduce bills that sound worker-friendly, but in reality they are starving the public sector,” Mx. Hornick said.
After various labour organizations, including OPSEU, argued that Bill 124 undermined their collective bargaining rights, the Ontario Superior Court declared it to be unconstitutional at the end of 2022. The government appealed the decision but was overruled by the province’s Court of Appeal last year, forcing it to repeal the act altogether. Retroactive wages to public-sector workers as a result have cost the province more than $6-billion.
The province’s Financial Accountability Office has been particularly critical of the Ford government’s lack of public spending on health care. In a 2024 report, it said that the province allocated $21.3-billion less between 2022 and 2028 than it will need to fund health-sector programs to which it has committed. The FAO has also noted that Ontario’s total spending per capita in 2022 was the lowest in Canada, mainly because of its shortfall of spending on health.
None of the country’s public-sector unions with members in Ontario have endorsed Mr. Ford.
It’s a different story with the province’s private-sector unions, which argue that he has helped their members, especially auto and construction workers. This month, the PCs gained a rare vote of confidence from Unifor Local 1285 in Brampton, whose member base consists primarily of auto workers at Stellantis’s Brampton assembly plant. Mr. Ford’s government had agreed in 2023 to an auto pact with Ottawa to pay one-third of production incentives in deals with Volkswagen, Stellantis and LG Energy Solution for their electric-vehicle battery plants. Last week, Mr. Ford upheld his commitment to the auto sector, saying that he would continue to support electric vehicles if re-elected.
“Several construction unions – including the Labourers’ International Union of North America, and Canada’s Building Trades Unions, a conglomerate union representing 600,000 skilled-trades workers across the country – have indicated their support for Mr. Ford.
CBTU has not issued a formal endorsement, but its executive director, Sean Strickland, said the Ford government’s efforts in the skilled-trades industry have “clearly indicated to contractors and construction workers alike that this government really understands us.”
Mr. Strickland pointed to money the province has pumped into the construction sector since 2018, including $14.8-billion allocated to building highways and $7-billion for road and bridge maintenance. The province has also promised $30-billion for public-transit projects over the next 10 years.
“I’m not going to say this doesn’t help us. Of course it does. And Mr. Ford has rolled over his promises into actual legislation,” Mr. Strickland said.
The fifth Working for Workers Act, announced in mid-2024 and given royal assent earlier this year, was geared toward female workers in the trades. It requires all trades sectors to have properly fitting personal protective clothing and equipment for women, and for washrooms provided to workers to be kept clean and sanitary, with strict records of cleaning.
“I think you can applaud the Ford government for making so many legislative changes to provincial labour laws through the various Working for Worker acts,” said Neena Gupta, an employment lawyer at Gowling WLG. “But in my view, most of these changes are so minor they do not fundamentally improve much for any group of workers.”
In early 2022, new legislation compelled employers to adopt internal policies giving employees the right to disconnect from work after hours – a move that was initially welcomed by labour advocates.
But years later, there appears to be little tangible change in the workplace as a result.
“Employers view the legislation as extra compliance work they have to undertake that does not change much for employees,” said Ms. Gupta, whose clients are major employers in Ontario. She said the introduction and implementation of right-to-disconnect legislation shared parallels with other aspects of the Working for Workers Act: They are ultimately thin pieces of legislation that are hard to enforce and do not accomplish what they claim to do.
In July, 2024, digital-platform workers such as drivers and delivery couriers for Uber and Lyft, who are classified under provincial labour law as independent contractors and not employees, will see minimum-wage rules take effect. Under the Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act introduced by the Ford government in 2021, these workers must be paid minimum wage for the time they spend engaged on the app doing delivery or rides.
But the legislation – the product of multiple rounds of stakeholder engagement with labour advocates and tech-giant lobbyists – still does not address the fundamental issue of low and unpredictable pay for gig workers.
A guaranteed minimum wage for engaged time does not factor in idle time or the time workers spend waiting for the next job. A recent City of Toronto report estimated that rideshare drivers get paid just $6 an hour when factoring in idle time.
“I think this is a perfect example of Doug Ford’s approach to workers: The language appears to be one that helps workers, and you can get a great headline out of it, but it simply does not do much,” Dr. Fanelli said.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified CBTU executive director Sean Strickland’s title as president, and implied that the CBTU had endorsed Doug Ford. This version has been corrected.