OP/ED: Increased minimum wage won't solve poverty
By Mona Mattei
It’s a good thing Premier Christy Clark announced increases to the minimum wage this week otherwise many people will not be able to put gas in their car or pay their electrical bills. It took over 10 years for the government to increase this rate, but the timing is good and bad. Already small business owners are raising their concerns. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) released a research report in February challenging the overall effectiveness of minimum wage policy in Canada. Minimum Wage: Reframing the debate reveals that minimum wage increases tend to hurt the very people they are supposed to help. Contrary to groups that assert minimum wage increases do not adversely affect the whole economy, CFIB’s research report paints a very different picture on the potential job impact. To illustrate, the report estimates that a 10 per cent increase in the minimum wage across all provinces costs up to 321,300 jobs. In British Columbia, this could mean a loss of between 11,700 and 42,700 jobs. These jobs losses would take the form of hiring freezes, slower employment growth, or direct job cuts during economic downturns. And we are in the midst of a recovery from an economic hit, with our rural areas lagging behind the urban centers. At the same time as job opportunities are slow to increase, or potentially not increase as business owners decide where to spend their money, we are facing increasing costs linked to civil unrest in Middle Eastern countries and the crisis in Japan. Gas prices are estimated to rise incrementally over the next few months, some say as high as $1.50 per litre, and as we have even seen at the local government table, electrical costs are on the rise. With the highest level of child poverty in the country, there are lots of good reasons to raise the minimum wage, but with the impact of other costs, it’s unlikely to solve the problem. Our local food bank has seen a 14 percent rise in users over the last year and every month new names are added to the list. As President Deb Billwiller said, for the working poor it’s often the decision of whether to pay the electrical bills or eat. With the increasing costs of living, it’s hard to see that this decision is going to be in favour of food despite the rising wage.
There needs to be better solutions to the poverty in our communities. As more and more children report that they do not have enough to eat at home, and the line ups at the food bank grow, it is clear that Clark has a lot of work ahead of her if she truly wants to put families first.
