This report maps current enforcement and compliance measures and practices in Ontario's regulation of employment, particularly as they relate to precarious employment. It evaluates the effectiveness of Ontario's enforcement regimes, focusing on Employment Standards (ES) and Occupational Health...

In recent years the term “wage theft” has been widely used to describe the phenomenon of employers not paying their workers the wages they are owed. While the term has great normative weight, it is rarely accompanied by calls for employers literally to be prosecuted under the criminal law....

It is widely agreed that there is a crisis in labour/employment standards enforcement. A key issue is the role of deterrence measures that penalise violations. Employment standards enforcement in Ontario, like in most jurisdictions, is based mainly on a compliance framework promoting voluntary...

This article assesses whether a deterrence gap exists in the enforcement of the Ontario Employment Standards Act (ESA), which sets minimum conditions of employment in areas such as minimum wage, overtime pay and leaves. Drawing on a unique administrative data set, the article measures the use of...

Any attempt at a historical overview inevitably involves contentious choices, including those of focus, the analytic lens to deploy, and the themes that structure the narrative. The first and most controversial choice that we have made is that of focus. Our topic is the legal regulation of...