Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's call for municipalities to follow the province's lead in freezing some public sector workers' wages has found some support in the city of Ottawa.

College Ward Coun. Rick Chiarelli says he plans to table a motion in April to freeze city of Ottawa wages for non-unionized staff, including councillors and management, for two years.

The move would follow a motion tabled last Thursday in the provincial budget that will freeze wages for some 350,000 non-unionized workers in the broader public sector for the next two years.

The budget did not freeze unionized workers wages, but left no room in the budget for wage increases, setting up a battle with labour unions once contracts expire. It also did not affect municipal workers like police and fire services.

But on Friday McGuinty told a crowd at Carleton University cities should look at what they can do to tighten their belts in the face of rising costs.

"I would invite all of them to look at what we're doing at the provincial level, and consider whether they should be adopting this approach," he said.

Mayor O'Brien supports wage freeze

Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien has already said he wished McGuinty had mandated municipal workers be included in the budget freeze.

McGuinty said he thought about it but that ultimately the choice was the cities' to make.

"At the end of the day we decided they're a mature responsible level of government. They have their own duly-elected representatives," he said.

Bay Ward councillor and mayoral candidate Alex Cullen says he has concerns a wage freeze would reduce people's spending power and weaken the economic recovery.

The Ottawa-Gatineau region began to recover from the global recession last June, according to Statistics Canada figures, with 1,400 new jobs created in February.

But the job growth has also led to more people joining or reentering the work force, and unemployment rose slightly in February to 6.2 per cent from 6.1 per cent the previous month.