Henhouse Alert

Welcome to Ontario, A Place To Grow and Open For Business. Depending upon whether you are a private driver or a commercial operator, you will soon be sporting one of the two new mottoes on your licence plates. A small thing, you might conclude, if you are willing to overlook that the new plates will be sporting a Tory-blue colour, all part of the Ford government's branding and messaging.

However, peering beyond the obvious, these changes convey something that is not altogether benign: Come to Ontario, almighty business, and (cue the wink and the nudge) we will take good care of you.

How? Perhaps a clue is to be found in a detail released in yesterday's provincial budget:

Ontario’s Ministry of Labour will “modernize and streamline” its enforcement efforts by helping employers to “educate themselves” on their workplace obligations, according to Thursday’s provincial budget.

The move to encourage employers to be more “self-reliant” coincides with an $11 million cut to the ministry’s budget from $317 million in 2017/18 to $306.1 million this year.

Apparently, such a move is a good thing:

The ministry will develop “automated digital tools” to help employers educate themselves on employment standards so the ministry can “focus on high-risk, high-impact investigations,” the budget says.

However, Finance Minister Vic Fedelli is so proud of this change that he couldn't help but crow about what this really means:

“Ontario is once again open for business and open for jobs,” Finance Minister Vic Fedeli said Thursday.

In March, the Ministry of Labour announced a new online self-audit tool for employers to replace “cumbersome paper audits” and give “job creators a simple, easy and convenient way to demonstrate they follow the rules.”

Others are not so cheery about the change:

Labour advocates have consistently argued that self-regulation does not work and that proactive workplace inspections are the best way to ensure compliance with the law.

Deena Ladd of the Toronto-based Workers’ Action Centre said that without robust enforcement, workers’ rights are “just words on paper.”

“This is basically saying to employers, we’re not going to monitor you. Employers who routinely violate the law will see this as open season.”

Anyone who thinks industry self-regulation is a good thing is clearly forgetting disasters such as happened at Lac-Mégantic, which occurred under a regulatory approach that leaves responsibility for ensuring safe operations to railroads themselves.

The U.S. has led the way in self-regulation, with catastrophic results. One need look no further than the recent crashes of two Boeing 737 Max aircraft for proof:

The tragic crashes of Boeing 737 MAX airplanes have, once again, reminded the public of the dangers of regulatory capture and industry “self-regulation.” While many were shocked to learn that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), our government’s primary airline safety regulator, essentially handed over its responsibility to certify that airplanes are safe to the manufacturers of those planes, the reality is that this model of industry self-regulation is the norm, not the exception.

The Boeing crashes are a symptom of a much broader problem plaguing our country’s regulatory agencies, which have been entrusted to protect our health and safety. These agencies have been under systemic assault by conservatives and industries that have opposed almost any new regulations for decades. They have pushed an ideology of deregulation and self-regulation that undermines our government’s ability to protect the public – all to boost private profits.

In Canada, we would be foolish indeed to think of this as a problem confined to other countries. Ineed, the new Ford budget shows that the era of the fox in the henhouse has clearly arrived in Ontario.