What’s to come in Ontario for 2025

As the new year begins, labour struggles and political crisis dominate Canadian news headlines. With Trudeau's cabinet resigning one by one to Canada Post's negotiations set to resume in May 2025 is shaping up to be a year of political instability and escalating labour struggles. 

Ontario Labour Struggles on the Horizon

Over 2,600 collective agreements in Ontario are set to expire in 2025, impacting over 600,000 workers in the province. The majority of these contracts are in the construction, health care, and social service industries.

Nurses in hospitals across the province will see their current contract expire at the end of March. As it is illegal for these nurses to go on strike, their next contract will likely be decided through arbitration. Thousands of other workers in hospitals and social services, as well as nurses working outside of the hospital system, will see their contracts expire throughout the year. 

On September 28, more than 40,000 workers in hospitals and health centres, all organized with the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), will see their contracts expire.

In 2024, Ontario's health care system broke records. Bad ones. ER closures, the number of patients stuck in hallway beds, and the wait list for long-term care all hit record highs. 2.5 million Ontarians do not have a family doctor, 700,000 more than four years ago. 

Ontario has the lowest level of government health care spending per person of any province. Under Doug Ford's government, more and more of that money is being used to prop up private health care at the expense of investment in public hospitals. 

All this to say, nurses and other hospital workers are overworked, under-resourced, stressed and, most of all, they want to be able to provide better health care for all their patients. Ontario's nurses will be looking for a deal that actually addresses these worsening issues, but without the right to strike and take the bargaining into their own hands, they are fighting with their hands tied behind their backs (with a fraying rope).

Over 600 of the 2,600 contracts set to expire are in the construction sector. Over 400 of those will be expiring on the same day, April 30. These contracts involve dozens of unions and hundreds of employers. The fact that so many are expiring at once gives these workers the ability to put more pressure on their employers by grinding the industry to a halt, should they choose to strike. 

In early May of 2022, the last time many of these 400 contracts expired, over 40,000 construction workers went on strike across the province.

Immigration

Immigration was a hot political issue in 2024. The federal Liberals decreased the annual number of international student permits by 28%. In Ontario, this translated to a 41% drop—from 235,000 to 141,000.

For years, Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government (and Kathleen Wynne's Liberals before them) were happily complicit in the universities' and colleges' financial exploitation of international students. 

These new immigration policies signal dark times for cushy university bureaucrats and education profiteers throughout the province. We can expect many private (scam) colleges to wither away in 2025, with 96% of study permits having been allocated to public colleges and universities.

With all this anti-immigration rhetoric from politicians, one might ask why the government has brought in more temporary foreign workers (TFWs) every year since 2020. This program, regarded as “modern slavery” by the UN, has recently seen strict limitations that will change the labour landscape in the coming year.

As The North Star reported in September, over 70,000 TFWs are facing deportation countrywide following the new restrictions introduced by the federal government. Some workers told us that the only jobs available to them paid below the minimum wage, while they pay higher tuition than their non-international classmates and struggle to find secure, affordable housing.

Housing Crisis and Homelessness

In 2024, housing unaffordability remained a major issue for not only Ontarians but all Canadians. Canadian cities such as Vancouver and Toronto ranked as some of the least affordable cities in the world. 

RE/MAX Canada predicts that Canadian housing prices will continue to rise in 2025. The cut in interest rates by the Bank of Canada and the continuing low supply of housing will drive the prices of homes up in Ontario. 

In Mississauga, the average home price was $1,065,923 in the first half of 2024. RE/MAX predicts the price will increase by six per cent to $1,129,878 in 2025, while in, Brampton prices increase from $1,011,915 from the first half of 2024 to $1,072,630 in 2025. Likewise, Durham Region’s average home price could increase from $923,521 to $969,697 in 2025. In Hamilton, average prices could go from $810,093 to $828,320.10. In Burlington, average prices are expected to rise from $1,132,823 to $1,183,800.

The Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act and the More Homes Built Faster Act were two of Doug Ford's housing bills that were advertised as a solution to Ontario's housing crisis. Despite the Progressive Conservative Party's proclamation of a 10-year commitment to build 1.5 million homes, the government did not meet its annual goal. 

2025 will likely be no different. This year's annual target should be 125,000 homes, but the government's Fall Economic Statement shows it expects only 81,300, based on private-sector forecasts.

The lack of affordable housing manifest visibly in the number of unhoused people on the streets of the province. The Government of Ontario estimates nearly a quarter of a million people—roughly three of every 200 residents in Ontario—are homeless. 

Several encampments have been set up in the heart of Toronto. The City of Toronto cleared homeless encampments near the Rogers Centre ahead of Taylor Swift's six sold-out shows back in November 2024. This was an unprecedented move by the City and begs the question, is this the new protocol for future large-scale events in the city? 

Looking ahead

With Trudeau's recent resignation and Doug Ford's announcement that he will call an election this February, Ontario will be at not one, but two important political crossroads in 2025. Ontario's elites will be busy much of the year and at each other's throats during these electoral rat races, both federally and provincially. 

This, coupled with the potential explosion of important labour and housing struggles throughout the province, such as in the construction and health care industries, could provide enough pressure to create important ruptures in the political establishment, allowing for Ontario's labour and social movements to make great strides.