Ontario outlaws mandatory retirement for workers

TORONTO — The Ontario Liberal government has just passed a new law that restricts companies from pushing workers to retire at the age of 65.

The law, which passed final reading in the legislature yesterday, effectively ends mandatory retirement in the province and allows employees the choice of when to call it a career. The legislation will take effect at the end of 2006.

However, employers will still have the choice of whether to continue offering benefits like dental and health-care.

Although no law in Canada requires retirement, many workplaces are allowed to mandate it through collective agreements or company policies even if an employee wants to keep working.

Many drivers approaching retirement age, can’t afford
to walk away even if they wanted to

The number of Ontarians over the age of 65 is expected to climb to 3.5 million from 1.5 million over the next 15 years. The government says it expects that less than two percent the 1.5 million people 65 and over would continue to work under the new law.

These days, there aren’t many trucking firms pushing drivers out of trucks when they reach a certain age, however. With the so-called driver shortage growing, qualified, experienced drivers are encouraged to stay behind the wheel well into their seventies. Plus, the fact that truck driving generally isn’t a very high-paying career, many older drivers don’t have a choice but to keep trucking past retirement age.

Ironically, the decision to scrap mandatory retirement may put a wrinkle in the province’s own policy to continually retest truck drivers after they turn 65. That rule — one of the only requirements of its kind in North America — is highly contested by veteran truckers, many of whom have told Today’s Trucking that they resent being retested by MTO evaluators that know less about handling truck equipment than they do.

Labour attorneys in the past have told Today’s Trucking that the government’s new anti-mandatory retirement rule, which amends the Human Rights Code to eliminate age discrimination, runs contrary to its own policy of singling out commercial drivers to comply with separate requirements when they reach a certain age.

Union leaders and other critics oppose the new rule. They’re cynical the government passed the law in the best interest of workers, and instead claim that the government will eventually force workers to keep toiling in order to get access to pensions.

Mandatory retirement has already been lifted in Manitoba, Quebec, Alberta, Prince Edward Island, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories.

— with files from the Globe & Mail