Employer's Responsibilities

What Are My Responsibilities As An Employer?

As employers in the province of Ontario, participants on the Direct Funding (DF) Program are obliged to follow all provincial employment laws and regulations, including the Employment Standards Act, the Occupational Health and Safety Act and the Human Rights Code. DF participants are called “Self-Managers” and are employers in every sense of the word. They are capable of understanding and carrying out the responsibilities as an employer of one or more attendant workers.

The DF Agreement requires you to provide a safe workplace and to register with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, ensuring that employees have loss of earnings benefits and health care coverage if they are injured on the job.

Additionally, you are obliged to add all attendant employees to your payroll; you must ask attendants to complete a TD1 and TD1ON form so you and your bookkeeper will be able to take the appropriate deductions (income tax, Canadian Pension Plan and Employment Insurance) from the paycheques and remit them to the Canada Revenue Agency. All withdrawals from the account, other than electronic withdrawals by Program approved payroll services, or for CRA or WSIB, must be made by cheque (no cash payments). Payroll is every two weeks. Please see the attached schedule for Attendant Payroll Dates.

You must keep a record of all hours worked and provide a T4 to employees at the end of the year.

You should ask your employees to sign an employment contract which sets out the responsibilities of both parties. Feel free to use the employment agreement that was attached to your DF agreement.

Schedule E (pdf) 36KB

You must also pay your employees for public holidays

You should pay your staff vacation pay with every paycheque. This way vacation pay is always up to date.

You are obligated to provide employees with a Record of Employment within five days if their earnings are interrupted because they are laid off, terminated, or have resigned.

All training is provided directly by you or you may ask a trained attendant to demonstrate certain routines.

Direct Funding staff at any of the Independent Living Centres across the province generally do not interfere in the employer/employee relationship. If DF staff are contacted, they encourage all attendants to speak to their employers with any questions or concerns.

If you have questions about Direct Funding, you may contact program staff.

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