Hearing on minimum wage coming to Windsor

The proposal to raise Ontario’s minimum wage to $15 per hour is open for discussion, with public hearings scheduled in cities throughout the province over the next two weeks, including Windsor on Friday.

It’s part of the public consultation phase of Bill 148, the Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act — a group of labour legislation reforms that would controversially boost the minimum hourly wage to $14 by Jan. 1 and to $15 by 2019.

Ontario’s minimum wage is currently $11.40 per hour, and is set to rise to $11.60 per hour in October due to inflation.

The proposed jump to $15 per hour has been touted by the Liberal government as the biggest increase to minimum wage in Ontario history.

Premier Kathleen Wynne formally announced the proposed changes on May 31, and now the legislature’s standing committee on finance and economic affairs has scheduled a series of meetings to hear comments from the public.

Windsor’s hearing will take place downtown in the International Room at the St. Clair College Centre for the Arts (201 Riverside Dr. West) for eight hours on Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Anyone can attend the meetings as an observer. To attend as a speaking delegate required signing up in advance.

There are 19 approved delegations for the Windsor meeting, including representatives of Unifor Locals 240 and 444, CUPE Local 543, the Windsor University Faculty Association, the Windsor-Essex Economic Development Corp. and small businesses such as Sunrise Farms and Antonino’s Original Pizza.

Each delegation will have 20 minutes to speak to the committee.

Among the delegates: Matt Marchand of the Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce, who has stated opposition to the $15 minimum wage.

The regional chamber of commerce is backing the Keep Ontario Working coalition — describing the proposed increase as “arbitrary” and “too much, too fast.”

“Ontario’s employer community is concerned that the pace of change will seriously injure our economic growth,” the coalition said in a news release.

Along with hiking minimum wage, Bill 148’s reforms will also affect pay equality among parttime workers, increase vacation time entitlements and expand the terms of emergency personal leave.

The Keep Ontario Working coalition includes a wide range of business groups and associations, including Food and Beverage Ontario, Restaurants Canada, the Retail Council of Canada, the Ontario Real Estate Association, the Tourism Industry Association of Ontario, and many more.

But Tim Deelstra, who will speak in Windsor on Friday for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 633, believes that significant improvement to minimum wage in Ontario have been a longtime coming.

“Our position as a union is that the increase has been long needed,” Deelstra said.

“We had, for the life of the Conservative government in Ontario, almost nine years of no minimum wage increase, while costs continued to go up for workers.

“I understand that from (the business sector) perspective, this is a big increase very quickly. But it is needed by many workers in the province.”

UFCW Local 633 members in Windsor-Essex include meat handlers at Metro, Food Basics, and Real Canadian Superstore locations.

The committee’s public input sessions began in Thunder Bay on Monday and will also be held this week in North Bay, Ottawa, and Kingston.

Next week’s hearings are scheduled to take place in London, Kitchener-Waterloo, Niagara Falls, Hamilton and Toronto.

The hearings will also be streamed live on the Legislative Assembly of Ontario website, ontla.on.ca.