A new employment right does little if an employee can't obtain an answer when it is breached. Employment and Social Development Canada's 2026 evaluation of the Labour Standards Program asks whether federal enforcement has kept up with changes to employment standards under Part III of the Canada Labour Code. The findings are useful for employers as well as workers, but they describe federal workplaces and evidence gathered largely through the 2023 to 2024 fiscal year. They shouldn't be read as current compliance statistics for every Canadian province. The department's evaluation found a substantial increase in complaints, reaching 5,838 in 2023 to 2024, up 45.4% from 2016 to 2017. It also found that the program had missed its target of recovering 75% of assessed wages and other amounts owed to workers. Administrative responses and voluntary compliance remained the principal enforcement tools. The report concluded that these mechanisms weren't consistently deterring repeat monetary contraventions. The largest imbalance concerned road transportation. During the years examined, the sector accounted for 67.9% of complaints but received 32.4% of proactive inspection hours.
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