Five employment-law changes and reminders are shaping 2026 compliance for Ontario restaurant operators, with the update highlighting wages, tips, scheduling, uniforms and more formal hiring rules.
Ontario’s general minimum wage rose to $17.60 an hour on Oct. 1, 2025, and the long-scrapped separate server wage remains a source of outdated pay assumptions in hospitality.
Three-hour reporting-pay rules and gratuity protections remain major risk areas: employers generally cannot use tips to cover dine-and-dash losses, shortages or breakage, and early shift cuts may still trigger minimum pay obligations.
Bill 105 would bar employers from charging workers for mandatory employer-specific uniforms, while Bill 190’s hiring rules already require compensation disclosure, candidate notifications and AI-use disclosure in public job postings from Jan. 1, 2026.
Employers with 25 or more staff have also had to give new hires prescribed written job information since July 1, 2025, reinforcing a broader shift from informal restaurant hiring toward documented onboarding and written workplace policies.