Page 12 - Fall 2017 english

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Golf Business Canada
Minimum hourly wages across Canada as of July 1, 2017 according to the Retail Council of Canada
The minimum wage increase is too much, too fast, says Dan Kelly, president and CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), adding that this sudden and rapid rise to $15 will do more to harm workers than help them.
“There’s an increasing amount of evidence to suggest that raising the minimum wage is going to negatively affect the very people it’s intended to help,” said Kelly.
“The increase will have a negative impact on the minimum wage earners if the price of groceries, the price of a restaurant meal, the price of daycare fees, goes up as a result of increased pressure from a minimum wage hike. There are some that are winners from a minimum wage hike and other employees that end up being losers,” said Kelly, pointing to a study he read out of Seattle that a $15 an hour minimum wage has led to lost jobs and hours.
“This money comes from somewhere and it comes from the payroll budgets of businesses across Canada. As our chief economist at CFIB has shared, this is less of an issue about the employer vs. the employee as it is about employee vs. employee,” said Kelly.
DROP IN BUSINESS OPTIMISM
The CFIB is reporting a dramatic drop in business optimism in June, particularly in Ontario. The CFIB’s “Business Barometer” is based on a survey of its members and is based on the level of optimism for business growth.
The overall index fell more than five points in June, but Ted Mallett, vice president and chief economist, writes on the CFIB website that the drop is very localized with Ontario experiencing a 10-point drop following the announcement in late May of sweeping labour reforms, including
the elevation of the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2019.
“It had a huge drop with no particular big economic dislocation that we can see, leading me to believe that the news of the $15 minimum wage and the labour law review are perhaps the largest reason why the level of business operation has dropped and that’s bad news for the economy,” said Kelly.
“When the government gives a huge loan to a large multinational, maybe about 100 or 200 or 500 jobs are created, but the real way to improve the province is to get every one of the couple of hundred thousand smaller firms to create one job in Ontario, but I suspect that’s going to be a long time coming, given what they’re talking about,” he said.
“What I do know is that the level of optimism has fallen off a cliff in Ontario and that’s certainly not going to be a good thing for anyone,” said Kelly.
Concern that the $15 an hour minimum wage will lead to lost jobs was fortified by a controversial study released in late June.
Researchers at the University of Washington commissioned by the city discovered that when wages in Seattle went up to $13 an hour in 2016, low wage workers saw their hours drop by nine percent and they made $125 less per month on average.
The minimum wage in Seattle is between $11 and $15 depending on the size of the business, but all companies will be paying $15 by 2021.
Alberta $12.20
British Columbia $10.85
Manitoba $11.00
New Brunswick $11.00
Newfoundland $10.75 Labrador
Northwest Territories $12.50
Nova Scotia $10.85
Nunavut $13.00
Ontario $11.40
Prince Edward Island $11.25
Quebec $11.25
Saskatchewan $10.72
Yukon $11.32