As per the news feed about February 18th, a lot of employers are complaining about the new holiday.  40% will not get the day off, however, a lot of employers will offer a make up date or money to compensate.  

As far as I'm concerned another statutory holiday is good.  And like any other short week, I'll be working harder during those 4 days to get caught up from the missed day... so in the end.. the same amount of work will get done.

Our company has basically decided that we just won't be getting the holiday.  They give us enough already.

Dad works for the federal government and because Family day was not in his union's negotiated contract he will not get the day off either. So much for a new Stat holiday..

Realistically, there will always be issues with new incentives/programs/holidays from the government.  After a couple of years people will forget about the squabbles of the first couple of Family Days and it will be treated like any other holiday.

They don't give us Canada Day anymore either, or the August Civic Holiday.  At least they give us a day we can use at another time for those ones.  I doubt they'll recognize this one at all unless we negotite it.  Our plant chairman said that he got a list of all the employers that sre going to recognize it (I assume he means the type of businesses, not a comprehensive list of employers), and there are basically more people who won't get it than there are those who will.  Apparently it's more of a civic holiday, which means it's at the employer's discretion.  Most of those who will get it have low-paying jobs, and they don't get many days off beyond the stat holidays.  I would imagine banks and government employees willget it too, and as I understand it, Toyota will get it, but they have to give up one of their other long weekends in exchange (this is unconfirmed, but I know they get a couple of days a year that kind of seem to me like PD days; it's not a recognized holiday, but Toyota employees get the day off).

If they had just made it a statutory holiday I'm sure that would have made things clearer.