This month, the Ontario government introduced Bill 148 — the Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act 2017. It includes a $15 minimum wage to be implemented by 2019, equal pay for part-time and full-time workers doing the same job, and three hours’ pay for workers whose shifts get rescheduled on less than 48 hours’ notice.

Despite all the changes, labour groups across the province argue the government could’ve done more. “It’s a good start,” says Warren ‘Smokey’ Thomas, president of OPSEU. “But labour — my union included — will push for it to be more inclusive.”

The bill has passed its first reading and will now go to committee for hearings and public consultation over the summer.

“Bill 148 is missing some key points that they still have time to make changes to, and as they go through committee hearings we’re going to be going back again to speak about those changes that are desperately needed,” says Naureen Rizvi, Ontario regional director for Unifor.

“This is really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change the next 20-year trajectory of how people live and work in Ontario,” she says.

Here are five things labour groups want to see from the government.

Last year, Josh Domingues read a statistic that changed his life: “If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world, after China and the U.S.”

A few months later, Domingues, an entrepreneur and former investment manager, launched an app called Flashfood, which lets shoppers know what supermarket food is about to expire, buy it at a discount through the app, and pick it up from the store that day.

The average grocery store in Canada throws out $2,500 to $4,000 worth of food every day, Domingues says. Much of that winds up in landfills. When it starts to rot, the food releases methane — a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Cybersecurity is a growing concern for governments, businesses, and internet users around the world. Last week, notably, the WannaCry ransomware attack — which encrypted files on target devices and forced users to pay $300 or more to have them restored— hit an estimated 300,000 computers in 150 countries, infecting major systems such as the U.K.’s National Health Service and Germany’s Deutsche Bahn railway. Some experts believe this will be just the first in a series of similar attacks.

Yet cybersecurity also presents a business opportunity — particularly for Ontario. That’s according to a 2016 Deloitte report commissioned by the Ontario Centres of Excellence and the Toronto Financial Services Alliance.

These two words might not inspire excitement on their own, but together they’ve stirred up considerable controversy: infrastructure bank. As the federal government pushes its omnibus budget bill, C-44, through committee hearings this week, here’s a primer on what the bank is, how it’ll work, and why it matters to Ontario.

The Ontario government announced on Thursday that it will provide publicly funded drug coverage to youth in the province through age 24, so that, the budget reads, “parents are never put in the position of having to choose between paying for their children’s medication or other essentials.”

This will include more than 4,400 drugs — all the ones currently covered under the Ontario Drug Benefit (ODB) program — including prescription medications for birth control and reproductive health, mental health, and asthma, as well as ones for treating much rarer diseases. There will be no deductibles and no co-payments.

The announcement adds Ontario youth to the 2.9 million seniors and 900,000 people on social assistance who already benefit from prescription drug coverage through the ODB. The plan does not include any sort of transitional funding to help people move off of the publicly funded program — those without privately funded workplace benefits will be cut off at their 25th birthdays.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced new duties on Canadian softwood lumber early this week — the latest in a long-simmering dispute between the two countries. But what’s at the core of the conflict? And why does this keep happening?

Another year, another budget — and for many Ontarians, another round of numbers-induced bewilderment. But fear not: we’ve got you covered. With the province’s finance minister set to present the 2017-18 edition at Queen’s Park this Thursday, here’s a quick primer on how the budget actually works.