Minimum Wage Bill

Last Thursday there was a vote at second reading in the Ontario Legislature on Cheri DiNovo’s reintroduced private member’s bill to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour. The Bill was defeated 33-11. Almost 60% of the House was absent. There were so few Liberals present that had enough opposition members been there, and had it been a matter of confidence, the government could have been defeated. The government whip’s job is to ensure that such an occurrence never happens. For a majority government to have what I call a guaranteed majority, a certain minimum of government members must be present. This minimum is one more than the total number of opposition members in existence combined. Any less than this and the government can be outvoted. I have looked at numerous House votes both federal and provincial and I have seen that on some occasions the total number of voting government members is less than the guaranteed majority number. My assumption is that in these instances, the whip also counts how many opposition members are present. If the opposition number is insufficient, I can assume the vote proceeds and the government maintains a relative majority for that particular vote. The government whip’s job is to count both government and opposition members present to ensure that the government never loses a crucial vote of any kind.

I have gotten off topic. I wanted to say that my position on the minimum wage has not changed. I do not support Cheri DiNovo’s Bill and instead support the government’s plan to continue to incrementally increase the minimum wage. One Liberal MPP, Tony Ruprecht, voted in favour of the Bill. This is consistent with his statement during the election that he supports an immediate 10 dollar minimum wage. Considering the poverty levels that exist in his riding of Davenport, I do not blame him at all for his position. I feel like listing here the recorded division on DiNovo’s Bill:

In Favour:

Bisson
DiNovo
Gélinas
Hampton
Horwath
Kormos
Marchese
Miller (Hamilton East–Stoney Creek)
Prue
Ruprecht
Tabuns

Against:

Aggelonitis
Arthurs
Balkissoon
Broten
Brownell
Chudleigh
Colle
Delaney
Dhillon
Dickson
Flynn
Gerretsen
Hardeman
Hoy
Jones
Klees
Kwinter
Lalonde
Leal
Levac
Mitchell
Moridi
Naqvi
Ramsay
Rinaldi
Savoline
Scott
Sergio
Shurman
Smith
Van Bommel
Wilkinson
Wilson

Put an end to this controversy

I've received a comment from Jeanne Krieber-Dion herself. She sounds unhappy with me. So this message is to Jeanne:

I feel like I've gotten off to a bad start with you. I have a lifelong commitment to politics so we may meet in person someday. That is why I want to correct the problems that have occurred. My opinion about double-barreled last names is my PERSONAL opinion. Anybody is entitled to take double-barreled last names and I have no problem with it. I still believe that the traditional method of assigning last names based on the father is discriminatory, however. I do not want you or anyone else to be upset over the mistake I made on June 2nd so I am soon to go and edit the offending mistake out of that post. If I've offended you, Jeanne, I wholeheartedly apologize. I do not want to be in the bad books of the daughter of a future Prime Minister and I do not want you to misjudge me based on one factual error that I made. So again I am sorry to you and everyone about the mistake.

Sincerely,
Brendan

Van Loan vs. McGuinty

I am against the federal government proposal to change the formula of seat allocation for the House of Commons. Sadly the proposal short-changes Ontario. I feel it is better to stick to the current formula. Dalton McGuinty and federal Tory House Leader Peter Van Loan have had a surprisingly partisan exchange over this issue – along party lines. I think you can guess which one of the two I agree with – Dalton! If the choice is between further shortchanging Ontario with the seat plan or keeping the status quo’s shortcomings, I’d stick with the status quo. I am hoping the federal Liberals join with the provincial Liberals in fighting against this bill so that Ontario does not get shortchanged more than it already is. This particular bill should not be a matter of confidence because it was not mentioned in the Throne Speech.


I also think it has become clear that as long as the McGuinty government is in power and as long as the Harper government is in power, n’er the twain shall get along. This is also true of PST harmonization. Harmonizing Ontario’s PST to the federal GST would be detrimental to Ontario consumers. It is for this reason that McGuinty is only willing to harmonize the PST on his terms. Without numerous exemptions on various items in a harmonization agreement, McGuinty has said he is not interested. And those exemptions would make it so that it is not harmonization at all. It is for this reason that PST harmonization is unlikely to occur under McGuinty. Also, I know this was four years ago, but I recall that the Eves Tories also did not believe in PST harmonization.

I understand

I get the point about Jeanne Krieber-Dion's name. However, taking both parents names musn't be mandatory in Quebec or much of the Quebec population would have double-barrelled name.

Baffling question from Wednesday

I have a quick question. Does anybody know why, on Wednesday, the Liberals abstained in the House of Commons on a Bloc Quebecois opposition motion concerning the forestry industry, thus allowing the motion to fail? The motion couldn’t have been a matter of confidence. If they were in favour of it why didn’t they vote for it and if they were against it why didn’t they vote against it?

Speaker of the Legislature

Something odd is occurring. Liberal MPPs are challenging Mike Brown to be Speaker of the Ontario Legislature. The two challenging are Steve Peters and David Zimmer. I find it odd that these two are challenging because both of them have a Parliamentary Assistant position that they would have to give up should they win. This would force a shuffle. I know cabinet ministers are not eligible to run for Speaker. Does this mean, however, that Parliamentary Assistants are allowed to run for Speaker?

Statements In Brief

I want to make some brief statements:

I liked McGuinty’s new cabinet except I had concerns when he dropped Monte Kwinter and David Ramsay without giving them a PA job to land on.


The Liberals were right to twice abstain on voting to keep the Tories in power. There was an editorial in the Toronto Star on October 31 saying that the Liberals should have defeated the Tories over the mini-budget. I disagree. The Liberals agreed with all the tax cuts except the GST. There was no point in fighting an election over the GST. So twice the Liberals did the right thing.

Source:

http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/272037