On September 14th, 2026, CCPA-NS Director Dr. Christine Saulnier spoke at the Nova Scotia Legislature’s Public Bills Committee on Bill 256, An Act to Amend the Labour Standards Code. Below is the full presentation.
Watch the full presentation here.I am the director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Nova Scotia and a co-author with Dr. Rebecca Casey of Acadia University of a comparative jurisdictional review of Labour Standards in Canada, published in October 2025. Our report identified dozens of critical changes needed to better protect workers. We are pleased that several of the amendments under consideration today address concerns we identified. These are meaningful improvements, and we welcome them. However, many important gaps remain.
One of our central recommendations was for the government to establish a comprehensive process, such as a Fair Wages and Decent Work Commission, to review the entire legislative and regulatory framework underpinning these protections. The mandate would be to develop a comprehensive, evidence-based plan to align Nova Scotia’s labour standards with workers’ needs and the realities of the contemporary labour market.
Without that comprehensive review, you are leaving significant gaps and risk creating unintended consequences. These changes are indeed welcome, but they cannot substitute for a comprehensive decent work agenda.
I will highlight several areas where we believe further action is needed.
- Hours of work, overtime, and scheduling
In regards to the regular standard workweek before overtime is paid: While we are pleased to see the change from 48 hours to 44 hours, we recommend that overtime begin at 40 hours. A 40-hour threshold is a more appropriate standard for a modern labour market. It recognizes that time is a fundamental part of compensation and that workers should receive a premium when they work beyond a standard full-time workweek. We also recommend that overtime protections apply to all workers, without exceptions or exclusions for any class of non-unionized worker. We also recommend calculating overtime premiums for all workers based on their rate of pay, rather than the minimum wage.
But the question of hours is not only about working too much. It is also about workers not getting enough hours.
This change to the standard workweek may result in more hours being shared among workers; it could also lead to hiring more part-time workers. When it comes to hours worked, many workers are not getting enough hours because the standards do not guarantee a minimum number of paid hours per week for part-time employees before hiring more.
Workers work multiple jobs, often multiple part-time jobs, or offer to work long hours because they aren’t earning enough per hour. Nova Scotia’s Labour Standards should address both excessive hours and insufficient hours. As such, our report recommended:
- Maximum working hours, with appropriate protections for workers.
- A minimum number of guaranteed paid hours for part-time employees.
- Predictable work schedules.
- At least two weeks’ notice of scheduled hours and changes to those schedules.
These measures would provide workers with greater stability and allow them to plan their lives, manage family responsibilities, and earn a reliable income.
We also support the proposed change that ensures all workers are paid for all the time they work. This should be a basic principle of employment standards: if an employer requires a worker to perform work, that time must be compensated.
- Tips and gratuities
Second, we applaud the changes that will ensure tips and gratuities go to the people who earn them. We know that tipped workers are often low-paid and rely on this additional compensation. We caution that, when it comes to tip pooling, legislative language ensures that a majority of employees agree to the policy and that the policy is established freely and voluntarily.
At the same time, we should consider the broader issues. Our goal should be to raise minimum wages and improve working conditions so fewer workers depend on tips to make ends meet. A tipping culture is a workplace culture in which workers rely heavily on customer discretion for their income, creating a power imbalance. A tipping culture encourages customer entitlement and increases workers’ vulnerability to harassment.
- Recovery of unpaid wages
Third, we also applaud the efforts to recover unpaid wages; workers should never not be paid for their work. Unpaid wages can be particularly harmful to low-wage workers.
- Paid sick leave, holidays and vacation
While Bill 256 might better align Nova Scotia with other Canadian jurisdictions in some respects, it remains out of step when it comes to supporting workers to take paid time off work. Paid sick leave is fundamental to decent work. We published a separate report urging the government to institute a change that gives workers a minimum of 10 paid sick days; one lesson we should have learned from the COVID pandemic is that workers should not have to choose between protecting their health and earning an income. Data shows that 40 per cent of Nova Scotian workers still lack access to paid sick leave, which should be addressed.
Nova Scotia also falls behind on statutory holidays, with only six, and convoluted rules governing holiday pay. Annual vacation time is equally important. Current provisions, which have not been amended in Nova Scotia since 2007, mean workers must wait more than a year and have access to only two weeks of vacation, or four per cent of their wages in lieu of time off. We should recognize the importance of supporting workers to take paid leave. We should be strengthening provisions for sick leave, vacation, statutory holidays, and leave for family and personal responsibilities.
A productive workforce is one in which workers can maintain their health, spend time with their families, participate in their communities, and return to work rested and able to contribute. This also helps employers recruit and retain workers.
- Workers excluded from labour standard protections
Our overarching concern is that too many workers remain unprotected, even as some of these minimal protections are strengthened. This includes gig workers, often misclassified as independent contractors when they work for big multinationals. Labour standards should reflect the reality of how work is organized,
- Proactive enforcement
Finally, we underline that strong labour standards protections are only meaningful if they are effectively enforced. We should not rely primarily on individual workers, who are often precariously employed, to know their rights, identify violations, and make complaints about their employer. The government should provide more staff and resources for proactive enforcement.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we welcome the positive changes proposed in Bill 256. But we urge elected representatives to recognize that much more work remains to ensure all Nova Scotia workers benefit from meaningful labour protections.
Nova Scotia has an opportunity to do more than make incremental improvements.
We recommend establishing a Fair Wages and Decent Work Commission, a comprehensive review process that meaningfully involves workers, unions, employers and experts, to examine the full labour standards framework and develop a coherent plan for decent work in this province.
That review should address hours of work, scheduling, overtime, just cause protection, worker classification, paid sick leave, vacation, statutory holidays, and proactive enforcement, among other issues.
Labour standards establish the floor beneath which working conditions should not fall. That floor must be high enough to support workers and their families. A floor that should protect their health and dignity. Raising the floor also contributes to a fair and productive economy.
About the author
Christine Saulnier
Christine Saulnier (she/her) is Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Nova Scotia. She has a doctorate in Political Science from York University. She leads the living wage calculations for communities across Atlantic Canada and serves as a co-author of the annual child and family poverty report cards for Nova Scotia. She has written extensively, and given commentary on a range of other public policy issues including fiscal policy, labour markets, and child care policy. She serves on the Steering Committee of Child Care Now Nova Scotia, and Campaign 2000 (national coalition to end child and family poverty). She served on the Board of the NS Health Coalition and Adsum for 10 years.
