Steering Through Change: Bill 148

A Handbook to Help Ontario Businesses Understand and Manage Bill 148

Today the Ontario Chamber of Commerce alongside MNP, Canada’s leading accounting, tax and business consulting firm, released a comprehensive handbook to help Ontario’s business community navigate the incoming changes from Bill 148 (Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act).

The handbook outlines the potential risks employers can expect from Bill 148, and offers human resources and operational strategies to help mitigate the impact.

Bill 148 will bring in a number of reforms to Ontario’s current labour and employment standards laws, most notably instituting a $15 minimum wage by January 2019, representing a 32% increase. The handbook outlines the impacts businesses are likely to see from the numerous changes and identifies that small businesses are most likely to face four main issues:

Profitability: businesses may not be able to keep up a sustainable profit margin;

Staffing levels: businesses may not have the capacity to maintain current staffing;

Competition: to keep their doors open, businesses will be forces to raise prices; and

Taxation: with higher wages comes higher payroll taxes and contributions to EI and CPP.

Read the full handbook.