July 1, 2025

On Canada Day 2025, Doug Ford’s “Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act” will take effect, rolling back labour standards across the Province for a growing segment of workers.  The new legislation effectively ends the hourly minimum wage for gig workers, and predominantly benefits US-based tech platforms, who can continue to exploit workers in Canada using practices that might otherwise be considered wage theft.

To properly protect gig workers, the Provincial Government could have (and still should) acknowledged their coverage as eunder the existing provincial employment standard act, and begin enforcement action against non-compliant platforms.

Thanks to in-depth studies produced by university researchers for the City of Toronto, we can model what Ontario’s new “gig worker minimum wage” would mean for ride-hailing drivers in Canada’s largest marketplace.  The answer is sobering: given the number of drivers competing for rides and the high cost of offering ride-hailing services, a typical driver guaranteed $17.20 for an hour “on assignment” would lose $6.85 an hour (-$6.85) worked.

Read backgrounder:https://ridefair.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/July-1-second-class-labour-rights_Final.pdf