Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan will meet with union leaders on Tuesday to discuss a wage freeze. (Canadian Press)

Ontario union leaders and other officials will sit down with Finance Minister Dwight Duncan on Tuesday to discuss a possible wage freeze for more than one million workers.

Duncan is faced with a $21 billion deficit and has already said some public-sector workers — bureaucrats, teachers and nurses — will face wages freezes when their collective agreements expire.

Now it appears Duncan wants to extend the freeze throughout the Ontario civil service.

Not only would 700,000 unionized workers face a wage freeze, but 350,000 managers would as well.

Union representatives don't appear ready to accept a freeze, saying the employees aren't responsible for the budget problem.

"The shortfall was never caused by people's wages," said Fred Hahn, president of CUPE Ontario, which represents 230,000 workers.

"The shortfall was caused by a global economic meltdown that workers in the province had nothing to do with,"

Hahn said his members have been anxious ever since Duncan hinted in his March budget that wage freezes might be coming.

"Why don't we have a bigger discussion about how do we invest to create jobs, get people back to work in various parts of the province?" Hahn asked.

Smokey Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, has cut his vacation short to attend the meeting with Duncan. He said his 130,000 members would not accept a freeze.

Duncan has put the employees in a position where "our answer has got to be, 'No,'" he said.

Thomas said many of his members are part-time workers who would be disproportionately hurt by any wage freeze.

"I mean if you are only making $20,000 a year, a two per cent raise isn't much, but it certainly helps."

As many as 750 contracts would be affected.

Union leaders say they will listen to what Duncan has to say but they don't expect any decisions to come out of the two-hour meeting.

The government estimates it could save $750 million by next year if the wage freeze comes into effect.