Jobs and the Economy

A Place to Grow Economic Dignity

Give every worker access to benefits and 10 paid sick days

Around half of working people in Ontario don’t have access to basic workplace benefits like prescription drugs, dental care, vision care, mental health care, parental leave and retirement savings. We’ll create a package of high-quality, affordable benefits that everyone can use, including self-employed, gig, contract and creative workers. Employers without comparable benefits would be required to enroll their staff while offering employees the option to opt-out. As we navigate our way out of the pandemic, we’ll also provide 10 paid, job-protected sick days for all workers. We’ll also reintroduce a ban on employers making their workers produce a sick note in order to access the leave they need, and give businesses up to $200 a day to compensate for the costs of workers taking more sick days.

Build to a four-day work week

During the pandemic, you showed remarkable flexibility and resolve in embracing new ways of doing work. Adopting a four-day work week would be another change, but one that experts say could boost your quality of life and work-life balance without a loss in productivity. We’ll work with businesses and labour groups of all types to design and evaluate the model. If a four-day work week demonstrates potential in Ontario, people could have many more “Family Day Weekends” – extra time to invest in their wellbeing and spend with loved ones.

Support small businesses hit hard by the pandemic by eliminating their corporate taxes for two years

Small businesses are the heart of Ontario’s economy, so they are central to our recovery plan. The Ford Conservatives’ inadequate business grants left too many businesses without help during the biggest disruption in a generation. We’ll suspend corporate income tax for small businesses most impacted by the pandemic for 2022 and 2023 – with relief scaled to losses in revenues and eliminated entirely for businesses that lost more than 50% of revenues as a result of the pandemic. We’ll also eliminate incorporation fees for new business start-ups and launch a one-stop 311-type service to help businesses navigate government supports.