Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks during Question Period at the Ontario Legislature on December 5th, 2024.(Screen shot)
Ontario is implementing a hiring freeze throughout all 143 agencies, boards, and commissions within the province as it seeks to reduce expenses and bring the bodies in line with the public service.
The province says the new hiring freeze put in place as of Sept. 27 will impact personnel in public agencies who carry out regulatory, advisory, adjudicative, or service-delivery roles and will be identical to the 2018 hiring freeze implemented by Premier Doug Ford for all provincial ministries such as education, health care, social services, transportation, and public safety.
The freeze, which was put in place after Ford’s Progressive Conservatives won the 2018 election, is still in effect today.
Ontario Treasury Board President Caroline Mulroney said the hiring moratorium will prevent independent hiring by all provincial agencies.
“Today’s announcement comes in response to significant growth in the size of provincial agencies, which have grown at a rate of more than five times that of the Ontario Public Service (OPS) since 2023,” Mulroney said in a Sept. 26 statement.
“This freeze will support the government’s ongoing efforts to be disciplined and responsible with taxpayer money.”
Ontario Health, the Ontario Energy Board, Legal Aid Ontario, the Human Rights Commission, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario, the province’s Lottery and Gaming commission, Metrolix, which oversees the province’s transit expansion, and Infrastructure Ontario, which is leading the development of the new science centre and Ontario Place, are just a few of the organizations that will be impacted. The new mandate will not affect hospitals or schools.
Mulroney said the hiring freeze is not so absolute that it will prevent “business-critical” hiring, but added that all groups will need government approval to post and recruit for the positions.
Mulroney told reporters during a Sept. 26 press conference that business-critical positions will be “different based on the sector that they’re in.”
“Agencies that need to grow based on the mandates that they’ve been given, can grow provided they provide HR plans to their ministries and that they work with governments to get that approval,” Mulroney said. “So it’s a cap on independent hiring.”
Mulroney said the hiring freeze will not impact the delivery of public services, noting that approximately 100,000 people are employed by the Ontario government within these agencies.
“Agencies have grown more than the Ontario Public Service over the last few years, so they have sufficient resources to deliver that mandate,” she said.
The hiring freeze announcement came the same day the province said it concluded the 2024-25 fiscal year with a deficit that was considerably lower than originally projected in the budget. The province recorded a $1.1 billion deficit for the fiscal year ending March 31, compared to a forecasted deficit of $9.8 billion.
Ontario Liberal MPP Stephanie Bowman said the hiring freeze means little as the government’s “march to a $0.5 trillion debt continues.”
“Their solution? A vague promise to “freeze” hiring – with no details on savings,” Bowman said in a Sept. 27 X post.
The hiring freeze was announced several weeks after the government ordered all public servants to return to the office full-time at the beginning of next year.
Mulroney announced the change on Aug. 14, saying all employees of the Ontario Public Service and its provincial agencies, boards and commission must “increase their attendance to four days per week” as of Oct. 20 and will then transition to full-time in-office work on Jan. 5, 2026.
Jennifer Cowan is a writer and editor with the Canadian edition of The Epoch Times.