Committee asked to study anti-HST bill in B.C. • Ontario ESA changes affect complaints • Quebec construction levy stays put • Manitoba’s minimum wage increases
BRITISH COLUMBIA
Committee asked to study anti-HST bill
A provincial legislative committee has been tasked with figuring out what to do with a petition and draft legislation to end the new harmonized sales tax (HST). The move comes after a British Columbia Supreme Court judge ruled in August the petition, which gathered 557,383 signatures, was valid. A group of B.C. businesses in favour of the HST had gone to court to try to stop the petition and draft legislation. With the court’s ruling, the province’s chief electoral officer forwarded the petition and legislation to the committee for review. By law, the committee has 30 days in which to meet to consider the petition and draft bill (the first meeting was held Sept. 8, 2010) and another 90 days after that to decide on whether to send the draft legislation to the legislature for a vote or hold a referendum on it next year. The HST came into effect July 1, 2010. Groups and individuals opposed to the tax have been working for months to try to stop it. The draft bill would stipulate the HST is not in effect and would reinstate the seven per cent provincial sales tax (PST) with the same exemptions as were in effect as of June 30, 2010. It would establish the provincial sales tax as the only sales tax in B.C. for the purposes of raising provincial revenue. The draft bill would be retroactive to June 30, 2010.
ONTARIO
ESA changes affect complaints
Proposed changes to the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA) would require workers who wish to file a complaint with the Employment Standards Board to first inform their employer. Bill 68, the Open for Business Act, 2010, would amend a number of acts — including the ESA — with the aim of making government-business interactions simpler, faster and better, Minister of Economic Development and Trade Sandra Pupatello said in a news release.The proposed changes to the ESA would allow the director of employment standards to require that claimants (with some exceptions) provide specific information and inform their employer about their employment standards complaint before assigning the claim to an employment standards officer. The proposals would allow the director to specify that the worker inform the employer that he or she feels the employer has violated the Act and, if wages are owing, the amount owing. The worker would then have to notify the director in writing of the information given to the employer, how it was provided and the employer’s response. If the worker failed to do this, the director would have the authority to not assign the complaint to an officer for investigation. Other proposed amendments would give employment standards officers the authority to settle complaints and would allow them to make decisions on claims when parties fail to show up for decision-making meetings or provide evidence on time.The Ministry of Labour says the proposals are part of an initiative to modernize employment standards.
Other steps the ministry said it is taking include:
•Establishing a new online severance pay decision tool for employers and employees;
•Setting up a termination of employment and temporary layoff tool that determines when a layoff becomes a termination, the termination date and any termination pay owing; and
•Launching a task force to eliminate a backlog of 14,000 claims in two years.
QUEBEC
Construction levy stays put
The levy the Quebec construction commission imposes on employers and employees in the industry is expected to remain unchanged for 2011. In draft regulations published in the Quebec Gazette, the Commission de la construction du Québec proposed that the levy for employers will remain at 0.75 of one per cent of the total remuneration paid to employees. The minimum amount an employer must pay would remain $10 per month. The amount an employer is required to deduct from employees each week for their levy would also remain 0.75 of one per cent of their earnings. Employers must send their remittances to the commission by the 15 of the following month.
MANITOBA
Minimum wage increasing
Effective Oct.1, 2010, the general minimum wage rate in Manitoba will increase from $9 per hour to $9.50.
Source: Canadian Payroll Manual, a publication of Carswell, a Thomson Reuters business.
