$15 Minimum Wage in Ontario: Sheer Lunacy On Our Doorstep
Yesterday, the Ontario Liberal government followed Alberta’s lead and announced that the minimum wage would increase from $11.40 to $14 next year and thereafter, to $15 per hour in 2019.
This means a 23% increase in the minimum wage by next year and 31% by 2019.
According to Kathleen Wynne, Premier of Ontario, this measure will “make certain that our workers are treated fairly” in a transforming workplace environment.
It is rather easy to anticipate that this emotional decision, not evidence-based at all, will have an extremely negative impact on Ontario’s economy and, first of all, on the very people it wants to help, i.e. those with little or no skills and work experience.
For this is what Ms. Wynne has just announced: it will soon be prohibited to employ anyone in Ontario at less than $17 an hour (when the benefits are taken into account).
This suggests that anyone in Ontario is worth at least $17 an hour! Really? Even someone who has never worked in his entire life?
In reality, thousands of young people without experience as well as welfare recipients and the unemployed must work to gain experience and become more employable.
Many in this cohort would be willing to work for less in order to gain experience, but that won’t be possible anymore: this window is closing fast.
Retailers who use minimum wage workers will not be able to absorb these exorbitant costs. They will have no choice but to cut jobs or automate.
And how will more unemployment and fewer services benefit Ontarians?
This is basically the fourth absolutely atrocious measure that Ms. Wynne adopts to the detriment of Ontario’s convenience stores:
- One of the harshest tobacco regulations in the world with sky high taxes;
- The worst record when it comes to fighting contraband tobacco, which remains extremely high in Ontario;
- A liberalization of the sale of beer and wines grocery that specifically excludes convenience stores;
- And now that big increase in the minimum wage in the country.
In short, Mrs. Wynne harms the revenues of the convenience stores, leaves those who steal their market pretty much alone, prevents c-stores from taking advantage of alternative revenue sources (by giving them to their competitors) and exorbitantly increases their costs. No, but what does she expect?
Is she taking the c-store industry personal at some point? That seems to be the case. Then what have we done to her?
With these four strikes, Wynne certainly deserves the honorary title of the worst provincial Premier in Canada for the convenience store industry.
All that remains is to hope that her ill-inspired ideas, devoid of any good common sense, will remain on her side of the Outaouais River.
Quebec convenience stores owners must suddenly feel very lucky to have Mr. Carlos Leitao as their Finance Minister, who has just announced more modest increases (16% instead of 31% and more) by 2020!
Photo credit: Vancouver Observer & La Presse
