David Piccini, Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development, issued the following statement on the minimum wage increasing and the passage of the Working for Workers Act, 2023:
“Starting Sunday, October 1, Ontario’s minimum wage will increase from $15.50 to $16.55 per hour, helping more than 900,000 hard-working men and women across our province earn more take-home pay for themselves and their families.
This 6.8 per cent raise means up to $2,200 more in workers’ pockets every year and brings Ontario to one of the highest minimum wages in the country.
Our government is continuing to deliver steady and predictable annual increases, helping families offset the rising cost of living while also providing certainty to businesses by announcing this increase six months in advance.
Minimum wage jobs should be for the start of a worker’s career, not the end. Under the leadership of Premier Ford, we are giving workers a hand up to even better jobs and bigger paycheques.
Earlier this week, our government continued our mission of introducing common-sense changes to protect workers and prepare them for the future of work through passing our Working for Workers Act, 2023.
For those who think health and safety is just the cost of doing business, we passed the highest health and safety fines in the country, along with new penalties for those who try to abuse vulnerable temporary foreign workers by withholding their passport or work permit.
Ontario is also the first province in Canada to ban unfair or discriminatory Canadian work experience requirements in more than 30 regulated professions and trades to help newcomers work in the fields they trained for. This will ensure more immigrants are getting a fair shot. In December 2023, all unfair or discriminatory requirements for Canadian experience in these professions will be gone.
We’re also making job-protected leave for military reservists the most flexible and comprehensive in all of Canada and protecting remote workers during mass layoffs.
Finally, to complement our legislation, we are requiring women’s-only washrooms on construction sites and protective equipment that actually fits them, and we have expanded cancer coverage for firefighters who run into burning buildings while everyone else runs the other way.
All these changes build on measures our government passed in our Working for Workers Acts, 2021 and 2022, which are already changing lives and improving working conditions for millions of workers and their families.
In the coming months, I will be introducing more legislation as part of our plan to make Ontario the best place in the world to live, work and raise a family.”