What are the Canadian labor laws you're referencing?

To my knowledge, the only province which still has the "liquor server" minimum wage is Quebec - everywhere else gets the same minimum wage as other workers.

To be clear, a server in Ontario is not legally allowed to be paid any less than $17.60/h _plus_ their tips.

One example would be that BC minimum wage does not pay anywhere near enough to live in Vancouver, it's culturally expected that servers in sit-down dining restaurants, bartenders and similar are still tipped. It's true that the servers don't make some ridiculously low "hourly wage" like tipped jobs in some US states but it's still not a lot.