Recommendations for Advances to Nova Scotia’s Labour Standards Code
This report examines how Nova Scotia’s protections for workers compared to other provinces and territories in Canada.
The report finds that, on the whole, Nova Scotia falls well short on the most important and far-reaching of the Labour Standards Code’s provisions: standard hours of work, overtime provisions, vacation, minimum wage and statutory holidays. When one factors in the fact that Nova Scotia exempts workers in a long list of occupations and industries from enjoying even these watered-down protections, this report concludes that workers in Nova Scotia are denied many of the protections other Canadian workers enjoy.
The report makes several recommendations for how Nova Scotia’s Labour Standards Code could be strengthened.
About the author
Dr. Rebecca (Becky) Casey is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology Acadia and a Research Associate at the CCPA Nova Scotia. She teaches research methods and courses in aging, disability, and employment. She is the co-author of the 2025 CCPA NS report with Dr. Christine Saulnier “The Foundations of Decent Work. An Evaluation of Nova Scotia Labour Standards” and the 2019 CCPA NS report “A Rising Tide to Lift All Boats”. Dr. Casey was involved with the SSHRC partnership grant (co-leads Leah F. Vosko and Mary Gellatly) project “Closing the Enforcement Standards Enforcement Gap” and is a co-author of “Closing the Enforcement Gap: Improving Employment Standards Protections for People in Precarious Jobs” (University Press 2020). Dr. Casey has published in the areas of aging with a disability, injured workers with permanent impairments, employment standards, child maltreatment, and student and worker well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.
