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This article examines the impact of recent reforms on the enforcement of the Ontario Employment Standards Act (2000). It analyzes changes to complaints processing before and after the implementation of the Open for Business Act (2010), part of which aimed to streamline workplace regulation. Drawing on a previously untapped source of information on employment standards enforcement, the Ministry of Labour's Employment Standards Information System, we argue that reforms to enforcement under the Open for Business Act appear to have eroded both the accessibility of the complaints system and the remedies available to complainants. By way of conclusion, the article outlines measures that hold the potential to strengthen the complaints system in Ontario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines connections between protest camps and artist interventions in the Canadian context, focussing on two cases. In October 20m, Occupy Toronto organizers set up a protest camp in St. James Park as part of a global movement in 950 cities to decry the effects of global capitalism. Six months later, another collective set up an artistic occupation consisting of 200 A-frame tents called The Encampment at Fort York National Historic Site. This intervention recast the military fort, which conventionally operates as an open-air living history museum depicting the social and military history of the War of 1812, as a space that showcased the war's civilian history. The author approaches each as a space of convergence dependent upon the calculated co-ordination of people and tents to signal calls for change. The author also takes into account significant differences between the two camps in that Occupy Toronto was a hard intervention that was ultimately evicted by order of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, while The Encampment was a soft one, co-commissioned by the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Fewer Politicians Act (FPA), 1999 (Ontario) led to the creation of identical national and provincial electoral constituencies in the province. While the bill was intended by the provincial Conservative government to reduce costs and increase efficiency, the FPA has also had substantial unanticipated consequences for political party organizations in Ontario. I first review the introduction of the FPA and, second, draw on 60 interviews with party constituency association officials, including seven long-term participants with experience prior to the introduction of the FPA, and make a comparison of associations in Ontario and New Brunswick (where boundaries are not identical) to demonstrate that congruent boundaries facilitate integration and cooperation between national and provincial political parties in the constituencies. Congruent riding boundaries do so by merging the geographic and ecological contexts that both national and provincial party organizations structure themselves in response to, and by reducing the number of actors participating in national-provincial cooperation. The FPA can therefore be understood as a case study of legislation containing important unanticipated consequences, and I conclude the article by evaluating the FPA from this perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]