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Ontario business owners are hurting. Each day we are contacted by restaurateurs wondering how they will survive with these new increased costs. While the Wynne government promotes its public narrative that pits owners against employees, the real debate should focus on why the Wynne government has so wilfully enacted legislation that will cost tens of thousands of jobs and hurt the same people they so desperately want to help. The increase in minimum wage will be meaningless to an employee if his or her employer ends up having to close its doors after facing a mountain of new costs. This is simply too much pain, inflicted too fast.

Restaurants Canada communicated these challenges countless times to the government over the past seven months. We shared our insights and member research data; that included a survey showing that 95 per cent of our members indicated they would have to make serious choices for their operation by finding ways to control costs, and a further 26 per cent suggested that they will be forced to close their doors altogether.

We also shared key insights from numerous other sources including the TD Bank, Fraser Institute, C.D. Howe Institute and the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis, with each one forecasting that the government’s new raft of labour costs would bring job losses in the tens of thousands. Bank of Canada researchers recently released a study that not only outlined potential job losses, but the overall inflationary impact and reductions in GDP