The Ontario government launched a consultation and advisory panel in March 2022 to explore implementing a portable health benefits program for part-time, temporary, and self-employed workers. Though it sounds good on the surface, it is problematic because it would further entrench the creation of a substandard classification of workers without access to basic employment standards as well as incentivize companies that do provide benefits to stop giving them to their most precarious workers.
In this brief, Parkdale Community Legal Services and the Workers’ Action Centre recommend equal pay and benefits for all workers regardless of how they are classified by their employers. We also put forward that the most efficient and effective approach to extending health benefits to part-time, temporary and self-employed workers is fully universal social programs, such as pharmacare and dental care.
