Ontario Government to Review Public Holiday Rules

Ontario will conduct a review of the public holiday system under Part X of the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA) following feedback and discussions with stakeholders. The review will be conducted in 2018 by the Ministry of Labour and forms part of the Ontario government’s on-going response to the Changing Workplaces Review (CWR), the first comprehensive review of the province’s labour and employment legislation in a generation.

The Changing Workplaces Review found that public holiday rules were the source of the most complaints under the ESA and needed to be simplified. The CWR helped inform the Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, 2017 (FWBJA), which amended the public holiday pay (PHP) formula.

As an interim measure the government has made a new regulation, O. Reg. 375/18, that reinstates the PHP formula that applied prior to the FWBJA for all employees. The regulation will come into effect July 1, 2018, and can be reviewed at: http://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/r18375