Will Doug Ford’s new apprenticeship rules lead to more workplace injuries?

Ontario’s business lobby, including the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, various builders’ associations, anti-union construction groups and others, have pushed for years to gut regulations overseeing the province’s construction industry.

Now with Ford as Premier of Ontario, it seems they’ll finally get what they want — a stripping of protections for apprentices, in the direction of the B.C Campbell government, to lower labour costs. And, that is bad news for the province’s trades workers.

The Ontario Progressive Conservative government’s Open For Business Act, passed last year, did many bad and dangerous things: it cancelled a minimum wage raise, restricted the right to unionize for workers in key sectors and eliminated paid sick days.

But less reported were the act’s changes to the running of apprenticeships, as outlined in the 2009 Ontario College of Trades and Apprenticeship Act. 

To this end, Schedule three of the Open For Business Act reads:

“Section 60 of the Act, which provides for review panels to make determinations about journeyperson to apprentice ratios, is repealed. Related provisions are also repealed. A new section provides that the journeyperson to apprentice ratio for all trades that are subject to ratios shall not exceed one apprentice for each journeyperson. This ratio may be changed by regulation.”

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