Rick Downes is the provincial NDP candidate for Kingston and the Islands. On his website, www.rickdownes.ca, there is a video of his nomination speech. It is evident from this speech and his website that he supports his party’s policy of legislating an immediate increase of Ontario’s minimum wage to 10 dollars an hour. In his nomination speech, Downes heaps much praise about the successful policies and outcomes of the recently re-elected Manitoba NDP government. However, I have a very good question to ask. Can Mr. Downes explain why his beloved Manitoba NDP government has not increased Manitoba’s minimum wage to 10 dollars an hour? Why in fact is Manitoba’s minimum wage at 8 dollars an hour, the same as Ontario’s currently is? Does even Downes beloved Manitoba NDP government realize that an immediate increase in the minimum wage would be an economically disastrous thing to do? Is the Manitoba NDP, just like the Ontario Liberals, instead taking more moderate steps to help the working poor rather than facilitating a large and crippling minimum wage jump? If so, I think Mr. Downes may be in need of some lessons from his own NDP colleagues from Manitoba.
Had Ernie Eves been re-elected in 2003, Ontario’s minimum wage would remain frozen from 1995 levels. If John Tory is elected, the minimum wage MAY continue to increase, but I cannot say for certain. Tory has mostly been vague on minimum wage policy. By electing the Liberals, the working poor living on minimum wage have been able to see a steady increase in their living wage to make up for 8 years of neglect. If re-elected, the Liberals will continue on this path, and eventually moving the minimum wage to 10 dollars an hour in a gradual manner that will not create economic shockwaves.
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5 comments:
Minimum wage should be increased to one hundred dollars an hour.
Well it costs a whole lot less to live in Manitoba than in Ontario for one reason.
Brendan,
I appreciate that you have found www.rickdownes.ca and have looked through the content. The site is still growing and developing, and it is my hope that our Policy/Issues page will have more clarity and information as we go deeper into the campaign process.
I also know that Rick is already hard at work visiting the citizens of Kingston and the Islands in order to find out what issues matter the most to citizens in our region; so that he is able to speak forcefully and thoughtfully about their chief concerns.
I would like to point out that in the case of the (in my opinion) much-needed minimum wage increase, we have placed that issue in the section with Ontario’s NDP policies, and the link is to the Ontario NDP website [http://ontariondp.com/raisethewage]. The reason we have done this is because Rick has yet to release his own personal statement on the minimum wage increase – although I hope we are able to release that statement in the near future.
As far as the contents of Rick’s nomination video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z86QJrDolw], I think it is important to acknowledge that Rick does not blatantly call for an immediate increase. Rather, he draws a clear line between a government that would ask minimum wage-earners to wait 3 years for an increase up to cost-of-living levels, while promptly giving themselves a double-digit percentage pay raise in December 2006.
This is the difference between putting citizens first vs. putting the government first, and it is the very same distinction that Mr. Downes aims to draw from the very beginning of his speech in matching up the record of the Provincial NDP Government of Manitoba and the Provincial Liberal Government of Ontario.
It is the difference between a government that has kept promises vs. one that has not. It is the difference between a government that has increased the standard of living in all facets vs. one who has put the interests of government officials before the interests of citizens.
Finally, as mentioned by your Anonymous commentator, it is very easy to see the difference in the necessity of a wage increase in Ontario vs. Manitoba. If you refer to this particular site: [http://www.healthemployment.ca/liv_cost.html], the cost of living in Ontario is $18,757 vs. $10,553 in Manitoba.
This means that a minimum wage-earner in Manitoba ($16,000 - $8/hr, 40hr/week, 50weeks/yr) still has $5447 left for themselves after meeting the cost of living; while a minimum wage-earner in Ontario ($16,000 - $8/hr.) is scratching and clawing from $2757 BENEATH the cost of living.
So what does it mean when a minimum wage-earner that is working full-time and year-round, cannot meet the cost of living? What does it mean when we allow hard-working, contributing citizens to sink into poverty?
Do these people not deserve the intervention of the Provincial Government - or is it more important to spend money on a 25+% pay increase for sitting politicians (voted against by the Ontario NDP)…or spend $32 Million via a Citizenship and Immigration Grants system that was, according to the Auditor General of Ontario ‘without an "open, transparent or accountable" process’ [http://www.thestar.com/DesiLife/News/article/240234].
Finally, I would like to note that even at a new Ontario minimum wage level of $10/hr, full-time working citizens of Ontario will still only be $1243 above the cost of living – which, while stopping the bleeding, still makes a poor comparison to the standard of living that has been promised…and achieved by the Provincial NDP Government in Manitoba.
Daniel J. Beals | media@ndpkingston.org
Media Coordinator / Public Relations
Kingston & the Islands NDP
www.ndpkingston.org
An anonymous poster said this:
"Minimum wage should be increased to one hundred dollars an hour. "
To this poster I say this:
You have got to be kidding.
This is a response to the comment by Daniel J. Beals from the Kingston & the Islands NDP. I want to give as nice and respectful a response as I can. I really appreciate my blog being responded to by someone associated with the person I wrote about. Here is what my response is.
I’ve discovered a New Democrat from Nova Scotia who actually supported a bigger salary increase than was being given in 2000 for Nova Scotia MLAs. His name was Bill Estabrooks (http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2000/12/07/ns_mlasalaryraise001207.html). He called for an increase several times steeper than was being offered. It was ironically Tory MLAs who said they would donate the increase to charity. So not all New Democrats oppose salary increases. And as far as I know minimum wage was not being increased in Nova Scotia, and yet this New Democrat still wanted an even steeper salary increase. Also of note is that the Manitoba NDP government has seen increases in MLA salaries as well. There was a 6-13% salary increase for MLAs in 2005, as referenced here (http://www.winnipegsun.com/News/Columnists/Brodbeck_Tom/2006/09/06/1806211.html)
What’s more, Jack Layton and the federal New Democrats voted for the 2005 Bill that increased MPs’ salaries. Did the NDP ever at that time attempt to secure a federal minimum wage as a condition of their support of a salary increase? I didn’t think so.
I also recall a New Democrat MLA from BC recently breaking ranks and endorsing a large salary increase, getting him into trouble with leader Carole James. My point is that not all New Democrats, and not even the federal New Democrats, oppose politician salary increases. Opposing such salary increases seems to mainly be an Ontario/BC NDP thing. Interestingly, Stephane Dion supports the introduction of a 10 dollar federal minimum wage. So if New Democrats want to ever see such legislation passed, they should quit the game of cozying up to Harper and work to remove his government from power.
As far as the issue of the salary increase for MPPs in Ontario that the NDP hates so much, I have this to say. You cannot beat human nature. Human nature will always strive to get a higher salary. MPP salaries were quite low compared to federal MP salaries and even municipal politician salaries in some parts of the province. The result of this was that it was discouraging politicians and prospective politicians from being in Ontario politics. Instead, the low MPP salary was enticing Ontario politicians to jump ship and enter either federal politics, municipal politics, or the private sector. But we don’t want a brain drain of Ontario politicians to other levels of government or the private sector, do we? That’s why we had to rectify the situation and make MPP salaries more competitive with other levels of government. The increase was perfectly justified and even supported by the Official Opposition Tories. This is not to say the government is not concerned with poverty in Ontario. That is why the welfare rates in Ontario have been increased several times by the Liberals. That is why the Liberals have continually been increasing the minimum wage and hope to get to 10 dollars an hour in a non-disruptive way. Rick Downes on his webpage gives a table to show how much in the past 15 years or so politician salaries have increased. But I do not personally see anything wrong with this. There is after all a little thing called inflation that would make incremental increases necessary. I don’t see why we should deprive politicians of a decent living by not increasing their salaries from time to time. And I hope Rick Downes does not disagree with me on that last sentence. In any event, another thing is that MPPs for the most part have being a politician as their only job. In many cases the MPP salary is the only one that they make while they are a politician. So we shouldn’t be too hard on them. Politicians often make a lot of sacrifices to be in politics. Many sacrifice higher salaries in the private sector to be in politics. Being a politician can also be a stressful job. So let’s cut MPPs some slack when it comes to their salaries. After all, they do good work. They do their best to run our province. We need to cut them some slack and not jump up and scream every time a salary increase occurs.
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