{"id":104473,"date":"2017-08-15T07:35:46","date_gmt":"2017-08-15T11:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/?p=104473\/"},"modified":"2017-08-15T07:49:47","modified_gmt":"2017-08-15T11:49:47","slug":"15-minimum-wage-its-panic-time-in-ontario","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/15-minimum-wage-its-panic-time-in-ontario\/","title":{"rendered":"$15 Min. Wage: It&#8217;s Panic Time In Ontario"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>&#8220;Drastic and unintended consequences&#8221;<\/em>&#8230; <em>&#8220;alarming adverse effects&#8221;&#8230;\u00a0&#8220;significant, sudden and sizable uncertainty for Ontario jobs, economy and communities&#8221;<\/em>&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>No, this is not about the global terrorist threat, climate change or even renegotiating NAFTA under Donald Trump. These apocalyptic terms are those carefully chosen to describe the highly foreseeable effects of the drastic rise in Ontario&#8217;s minimum wage according to the very serious Ontario Chamber of Commerce that has just unveiled an alarmist study on the subject.<\/p>\n<p>Key Data from the analysis:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>$23 billion<\/strong>\u00a0hit to business over the next two years alone;<\/li>\n<li><strong>185,000<\/strong>\u00a0Ontario jobs will be at immediate risk over the next two years;<\/li>\n<li><strong>30,000<\/strong>\u00a0of the jobs at risk are youth under 25;<\/li>\n<li><strong>96,000<\/strong>\u00a0employees at risk are expected to be women;<\/li>\n<li><strong>50% increase<\/strong>\u00a0to inflation for this year and the foreseeable future. The cost of everyday consumer goods and services will go up by $1,300 per household on average each and every year;<\/li>\n<li>The\u00a0<strong>Ontario government would need to borrow $440 million<\/strong>\u00a0more to cover the increases in new costs from this legislation;<\/li>\n<li>Le gouvernement ontarien devra vraisemblablement\u00a0<strong>emprunter un autre 440 million<\/strong>\u00a0$ pour couvrir les augmentations de co\u00fbts d\u00e9coulant de cette r\u00e9glementation;<\/li>\n<li>Municipalities will be forced to increase employee wages by\u00a0<strong>$500 million<\/strong>\u00a0without additional offsetting revenues.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In reply, the government said that &#8220;we need to address the fact that those who work 40 hours a week must remain above the level of poverty&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>But what if these people lose their jobs? What is the use of such measure then? Would it be better that they stay at home doing nothing?<\/p>\n<p>And what about those who are currently earning $ 15 an hour after many years of labour and who will see the newcomers earn as much as they do? They will of course have to be compensated by earning more, say $ 18 to $ 20 an hour! So it&#8217;s the entire salary scale, not just the minimum wage, that gets jostled up!<\/p>\n<p>Ontario&#8217;s economy is likely to go through such ordeal because it is very strong and diversified, but one thing is certain: such measure in Quebec, the undisputed collector of equalization payments in Canada, would be a complete economic catastrophe and this remains an understatement.<\/p>\n<p>The most ironic thing is that on the same day, yesterday, the new president of the Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois, Gabrielle Lemieux, 31, said in an interview that a good solution to her party&#8217;s lack of support is to promote their promises such as&#8230; increasing the minimum wage to $ 15 !<\/p>\n<p>Decidedly, there seems to be a shortage of good common sense on both sides of the Ottawa River, but fortunately neither the PQ nor Qu\u00e9bec Solidaire, which is proposing the same great plan, has heaven forbid any great hopes of forming the next government.<\/p>\n<p>And today, in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.journaldemontreal.com\/2017\/08\/15\/un-salaire-minimum-a-15-de-lheure-est-possible\">Journal de Montr\u00e9al<\/a>, none other than McDonald&#8217;s Canada CEO, John Betts, who said, when asked about it: &#8220;Yeah, we could do it, you know, $15 an hour, but small businesses will be hurt more than us&#8221;. Well, what is he expected to say other than that?<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_104466\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-104466\" style=\"width: 1000px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/cropped-photo-3-1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-104466 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/cropped-photo-3-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"426\" srcset=\"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/cropped-photo-3-1.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/depquebec.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/cropped-photo-3-1-600x256.jpg 600w, https:\/\/depquebec.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/cropped-photo-3-1-400x170.jpg 400w, https:\/\/depquebec.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/cropped-photo-3-1-768x327.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-104466\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Quebec is in no shortage of politicians hungry for populist measures. The leader of the Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois, Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Lis\u00e9e, is drooling at the idea of increasing the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour and the party&#8217;s president even believes that promoting this harmful idea is a perfect solution to increase their support among voters.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Drastic and unintended consequences&#8221;&#8230; &#8220;alarming adverse effects&#8221;&#8230;\u00a0&#8220;significant, sudden and sizable uncertainty for Ontario jobs, economy and communities&#8221;&#8230;. No, this is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":104481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1747,1752,223],"tags":[313,1257,750,918],"class_list":["post-104473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-1","category-manpower","category-newsdep","tag-minimum-wage-1","tag-ontario-en","tag-ontario","tag-parti-quebecois"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/ontariosfuture2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}