Dwight Duncan's attempt to get Ontario's one million public sector workers to accept a wage freeze appears unlikely to happen without a fierce fight.

The provincial finance minister called managers and union leaders to a downtown Toronto hotel on Tuesday afternoon to open the discussion, which he first broached during this year's budget speech.

The province finds itself with a $20-billion deficit and has undertaken an eight-year plan to bring it into line.

"Managing compensation costs is a key part of that plan," said a news release from the Ministry of Finance.

"Any plan to address the deficit while preserving services and jobs must address compensation, which is the largest expenditure of the Ontario government," said Duncan in a statement.

The province's aim is to freeze compensation for about 700,000 public sector workers in such places as hospitals, schools and universities, when current collective agreements come to an end.

Already 350,000 non-unionized workers have had their salaries frozen.

Duncan says all current collective agreements will be respected, but once they expire the freeze will come into effect.

The negotiators will then be "expected to seek agreements lasting at least two years with no net increase in compensation," the ministry said.

But union leaders say what they're being asked to be part of is not a consultative process.

"This is more like a presentation to us rather than, as the minister has billed it, a consultation," Smokey Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, told The Canadian Press.

"It's not a consultation; he's just trying to tell us what he wants [and] just because he wants something doesn't mean he's going to get it."

As for the wage freeze proposal, Thomas says that is unlikely.

"He can propose it but he has to bargain it. He's trying to fix the deficit on the backs of working people and I don't think that's right."

Other union leaders have said they didn't create the global economic crisis and their workers shouldn't shoulder the blame.

The unions point to a $4.5-billion corporate tax cut in Ontario and say that should be scrapped before denying public service workers a raise.

But Duncan says the corporate tax cuts are part of the province's economic recovery plan.

"We have to have competitive corporate taxes and ours are still among the highest in the country," he said.

Ontario spends more than $50 billion a year on salaries and compensation, about 55 per cent of total program expenditures.

With files from The Canadian Press