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Premier Doug Ford's Ontario

Videodrome said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1455321710799040513

Well now!
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The 'big' news in the above, should it come to pass, is the move to raise the tipped minimum wage to the same as the regular minimum wage.

That said.........

The previous government had committed to a minimum wage of $15 per hour on Jan 1st, 2019.

That would be ~ $16.05 per hour on Jan 1st, 2022.

So we're still well back of where we would have been.

And well below comparable jurisdictions elsewhere:

Notably:

Seattle $20.70CAD ($16.69USD)
NYC/SF: $18.61CAD {$15USD

Edit to add, a new report on 'living wages'......was released just the other day......

toronto.ctvnews.ca

Living wages required for basic lifestyle in 23 Ontario regions revealed

A new report has revealed how much money people need to make in 23 Ontario regions in order to afford a basic lifestyle.
toronto.ctvnews.ca toronto.ctvnews.ca

It suggests that a living wage (the minimum hourly rate actually required to sustain one's self) is $22.08 per hour in Toronto.
 
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Northern Light said:
It suggests that a living wage (the minimum hourly rate actually requires to sustain one's self) is $22.08 per hour in Toronto.
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It's actually stirring things up a bit amongst HR professionals. Not because of how much it was, but because it hasn't budged. It was $22.08 prior to the pandemic as well (https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.n...alculating_the_Living_Wage_-_Toronto_2019.pdf), and even after this year's increase in inflation, it seems like someone f-ed up for it to have not changed a single iota.
 
tiffer24 said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1455526319266189323
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Well...... Since the last election stunt miserably failed (buck a beer) He'll try raising the minimum wage trick, raising people from not being able to make ends meet into still not being able to make ends meet. Watching the news this morning and small business is again complaining about the minimum wage raise, things don't change, except the cost of living.
 
Still waiting for Doug Ford's economic rebuttal paper on minimum wage.

In case you missed it...

Canadian economist David Card’s research on minimum wage wins Nobel Prize​

See link.

David Card, a Canadian economist whose groundbreaking research challenged conventional wisdom on a number of labour issues, has won this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Monday (October 11, 2021) that Prof. Card, born in Guelph, Ont., and a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, will receive half of this year’s prize. The other half of the 10-million-kronor ($1.42-million) prize will be awarded jointly to Joshua Angrist, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Guido Imbens, an economics professor at Stanford University.

All three were honoured for pioneering “natural experiments” to show real-world economic effects. The academy said the three have “completely reshaped empirical work in the economic sciences.”

In the case of Prof. Card, the award cited research conducted in the early 1990s, which concluded that increasing a country’s minimum wage does not lead to reduced hiring, and that immigration does not harm the employment prospects of native-born workers.

In an interview with The Globe and Mail on Monday, Prof. Card, who is 65, joked that being praised for research done so long ago made him feel “old.”

“To tell you the honest truth, at the time the work was not so well received by many economists,” he said. “A few people thought it was interesting. It got published. It was not widely accepted.”

Prof. Card said winning the Nobel is unlikely to have a huge effect on his professional life at the University of California at Berkeley, where he is the director of the Center for Labor Economics.

“In the short run, I am going to have to do a lot of interviews and I’ll probably get invited to a lot of things I can’t do because I am teaching,” he said.

“Economics is a very strange profession. People are harsh on the stars,” he said, laughing. “Getting the Nobel Prize? That just means they are going to be harsher when they review your next proposal. That would be my guess.”

After graduating from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., Prof. Card went to Princeton in 1978 to earn his PhD. He taught for one year at the University of Chicago, then returned to Princeton, where he taught until 1996. He arrived at the University of California, Berkeley in 1997.

Prof. Card remains a Canadian citizen. His family still lives on the farm where he grew up.

“I got a Canada Council Fellowship when I was in grad school and have always been very grateful for that, and I believe I got a good education both in high school and college in Canada,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of research with Canadian data and have many Canadian friends and colleagues and former students, so I have great respect and fondness for Canada.”

In a study published in 1993, Prof. Card looked at what happened to jobs at Burger King, KFC, Wendy’s and Roy Rogers when New Jersey raised its minimum wage from US$4.25 to US$5.05, using restaurants in bordering eastern Pennsylvania as the control – or comparison – group. Contrary to previous studies, he and his late research partner Alan Krueger found that an increase in the minimum wage had no effect on the number of employees.

Prof. Card and Prof. Krueger’s research fundamentally altered economists’ views of such policies. As noted by The Economist magazine, in 1992 a survey of the American Economic Association’s members found that 79 per cent agreed that a minimum-wage law increased unemployment among younger and lower-skilled workers. Those views were largely based on traditional economic notions of supply and demand: If you raise the price of something, you get less of it.

By 2000, however, just 46 per cent of the AEA’s members said minimum-wage laws increase unemployment, largely because of Prof. Card and Prof. Krueger’s research.

Prof. Card’s research also found that an influx of immigrants into a city doesn’t cost native workers jobs or lower their earnings, though earlier immigrants can be negatively affected.

Prof. Card studied the labour market in Miami in the wake of Cuba’s sudden decision to let people emigrate in 1980, leading 125,000 people to leave in what became known as the Mariel Boatlift. It resulted in a 7-per-cent increase in the city’s work force. By comparing the evolution of wages and employment in four other cities, Prof. Card discovered no negative effects for Miami residents with low levels of education. Follow-up work showed that increased immigration can have a positive impact on income for people born in the country.

Prof. Angrist and Prof. Imbens won their half of the award for working out the methodological issues that allow economists to draw solid conclusions about cause and effect even where they cannot carry out studies according to strict scientific methods.

Asked about the message his win sends other academics, especially those just starting out, Prof. Card gave the question a few moments of thought before answering.

“There’s one positive message, I guess,” he said. “I’ve had good luck in my career and support and stuff, but I don’t think, when I was a young person, I was ever considered a superstar. So there’s hope.”
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Official Press Release on the minimum wage hike here:

Ontario Newsroom

news.ontario.ca news.ontario.ca

They are indeed raising the Tipped wage to the general rate which is a genuinely good thing.

Student {under 18) minimum wage continues to be lower, though at least its rising from $13.50 to $14.10.

But raising that to the general rate, along with raising the general rate to a more reasonable number (at least $17 per hour province-wide and $19 per hour in Toronto, if not a bit more) are very necessary changes.
 
DirectionNorth said:
If only he hadn't cancelled it like, two years ago ... maybe we'll get a competent leader in 2022? Just kidding.
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Take the good when you can. The OLP was in power from 2003 to 2018 with only tiny increases until their hail mary run in 2018.
Towered said:
What a cynical, phoney, re-election ploy.
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How is it phoney? The only reason any politician does anything is to seek re-election. If we had a dictatorship minimum wage would still be in the single digits. The ballot box forces our leaders to at least try to GAF.
 
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Admiral Beez said:
Take the good when you can. The OLP was in power from 2003 to 2018 with only tiny increases until their hail mary run in 2018.
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This isn't wrong. That the Liberals would be incompetent enough to let a political party like the Cons (and led by the likes of Thug Ford, no less) steal this issue right out from under their very noses really says a lot about their own bungling. Perhaps they just assumed the Cons would never go against their own nature to this extent...but Ford isn't a typical Con, is he?
 
John_Dee said:
This isn't wrong. That the Liberals would be incompetent enough to let a political party like the Cons (and led by the likes of Thug Ford, no less) steal this issue right out from under their very noses really says a lot about their own bungling. Perhaps they just assumed the Cons would never go against their own nature to this extent...but Ford isn't a typical Con, is he?
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How exactly did the Libs let Doug 'steal this issue'. They set up a $15 minimum wage, Ford cancelled it, now he reinstates it. You could as well say Ford finally saw that the Libs were right so is implementing their policy.
 
John_Dee said:
This isn't wrong. That the Liberals would be incompetent enough to let a political party like the Cons steal this issue right out from under their very noses
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The Liberals had from 2003 to 2018 to take the lead on minimum wages, but they did little until their final year. It’s disingenuous to suggest that minimum wage increases is a Liberal issue when they ignored it for the fifteen years they held power at Queen‘s Park.
 
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