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Decentralized Democracy

Hon. David Piccini

  • MPP
  • Member of Provincial Parliament
  • Northumberland—Peterborough South
  • Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario
  • Ontario
  • 117 Peter St. Port Hope, ON L1A 1C5
  • tel: 905-372-4000
  • fax: 905-885-0050
  • David.Piccini@pc.ola.org

  • Government Page
  • Feb/20/24 11:20:00 a.m.

It’s so nice to be back here with everyone, and thank you to the member for that important question.

Speaker, I think, yesterday, on Family Day, many people likely spent a lot of time with Ontario’s fantastic restaurant and hospitality workers. I’d like to thank Kelly, Tracy and the incredible team at Restaurants Canada for the work that they do. In fact, it’s 400,000 diligent workers in Ontario’s service sector who get up each and every day, working hard, and that’s why we’ve tackled to implement significant measures to support them.

In our latest Working for Workers bill, we’ve introduced measures that, if passed, will disclose salary ranges in job postings, ban unpaid trial shifts and prohibit wage deductions in instances like dine-and-dash. These are important measures we’re taking to ensure that we stand with these great workers who help make our precious time with friends and family worth it. I want to thank them for the great work that they do. This government will always have their backs.

Thank you, Speaker, for the question.

I want to touch on two other measures we’re taking. One, we’re ensuring the disclosure of policies related to sharing of pooled tips in restaurants—that’s another important measure we’ve heard from workers is important—and empowering those workers to take home more of their tip pay. We’ve seen in many restaurants they use apps on your phone now to access your tips, and that’s taking deductions off of the hard-working pay of these workers. That’s why we’re empowering them to select where and how those tips get deposited into the bank accounts of these hard-working workers.

But I will just close saying, for these workers to work, you actually need to create the conditions for jobs. That’s why our government has worked so hard. You’ve heard from the Minister of Economic Development the incredible conditions we’ve put in place to attract these high-paying jobs in Ontario that support our hospitality and service workers—

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