The Ford government in Ontario is desperately seeking voter approval for next June. The election is seven months away, but to win, the conservatives figured they better start early. The other day, they announced that their recent ten-cent per hour increase in the minimum wage was not enough. They announced that as of January 1, the minimum wage in Ontario would be $15 per hour. That was the minimum wage increase that the liberals planned to implement if they won the 2018 provincial election.
And that was before the pandemic and before the rapidly rising prices for groceries. At a time when the estimated living wage in Toronto has reached $22 per hour, the Ford conservatives are coming from behind. The only good news in the announcement was that servers in bars and restaurants were to be included in the new minimum.
There were, of course, the complaints by restaurant owners that they could not afford that kind of a hit so soon after the lockdowns of the pandemic. And there were no kudos from the union leaders Ford invited to join him in making the announcement. It was interesting seeing the Unifor president and the Ontario Pubic Services Employees at a Ford function.. You don’t have to think about it for long to realize that none of those union people represent anybody who only works for minimum wage.
(Mind you, the Toronto Star ran the picture under the headline: Union leaders back Premier’s wage increase. If the headline writer had read the reporter’s story, he or she would have known that the union leaders were there out of curiosity, not approval.)
What is most curious about the announcement is that there is no increase in the works for the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) this is the program that supposedly works alongside Ontario Works for the close to a million Ontario adults who require support for disability or reason to be unable to work. In all the variable rates explained in the government web site, there is no mention of any increase because of the escalating cost of living. And there is no way under today’s cost of living in Ontario that those people are anywhere near what they need to have adequate, safe housing or food to eat. Mr. Ford’s government would make Ebenezer Scrooge (before meeting some ghosts) look like a spendthrift.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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