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NE W S
Labour Minister gives special lecture at Osgoode
CITLALLY MACIEL
News Editor
L ast February 11, Ontario’s Minister of
Labour, the Honourable Yasir Naqvi attended
Osgoode to give a special lecture on “Employment
Law, Politics, and the Stronger Workplaces for a
Stronger Economy Act”. As it turns out, the day
before, the Obiter received an unexpected email
with an invitation from the Minister’s Director of
Communications to interview the Minister after
the lecture. I accepted, of course. The perks of
being Obiter Dicta’s News Editor!
Minister Naqvi completed an LLB at the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa. Although
a proud alumnus of the said university, he began
his lecture by confessing that Osgoode rejected
his application three times. “I can tell you that
you are far smarter than I am,” the Minister
said without a hint of jealousy or regret. Indeed,
after he finished law school, Ottawa became the
Minister’s permanent home. He has now been
representing the riding of Ottawa Centre for the
past six years, and the lecture marked a one-year
tenure as Minister.
Within the past year, the Ministry of Labour
has implemented a number of policy changes,
including the recent increase to the minimum
wage. Someone once said that the first step
toward change is awareness, and this is advice
that the Minister seems to have taken seriously.
Indeed, many of the new policies and initiatives
have resulted from consultation with different
stakeholders.
In regards to health and safety, the aim is to
transform the approach from reactive to a more
proactive and preventive one. Most of the accidents and fatalities that take place in the workplace are preventable. In order to change the
approach then, different concerned groups are
being included in the conversation about prevention. Accordingly, Ontario is the first Canadian
province to have, as of July 2014, mandatory
training for all workers and supervisors that aims
at giving them a basic understanding of their
rights (i.e. the right to refuse unsafe work, ask
questions, etc.).
The next step is to take this program beyond
the workplace and into classrooms (and other
related places) so that when students get their
first summer job, they are aware of their rights
and are no