Consider this…..

I keep hearing the cry to raise minimum wage to 15 dollars per hour so I decided to see what that would do for workers.

To do my calculations I took data from the CRA site to determine taxable income, I did not include Provincial tax credits or CPP/OAS deductions or EI premiums as they are minimal to the actual take home earnings. Since taxation varies by Province and Territory with each having a different tax rate whereas the Federal rate is standard across the country.

Using this simplistic formula, after tax weekly earnings varied by some 27 dollars, from a low of 500.63 in Saskatchewan to a high of 527.39 in Nunavut.

The numbers given are based on a 40 hour week however few employers in this salary range seldom hire full time employees.  Benefits such as supplemental health insurance isn’t offered. To earn the 40 hour salary workers are required to work for two or more companies. Weekends are not always their own.

Service industries such as restaurant and retail chains keep telling us that minimum wage is too high and they need to bring in temporary foreign workers pay them less so the corporations can maintain their profitability.

How do these people expect these low income workers to survive? A simple one bedroom rental unit costs between 1000 and 1200 dollars per month in the major centers of Canada. That is 2 weeks or more of a wage earners salary of 15 dollars/hour never mind at the present Provincial minimum rates shown above.

For a single parent with 2 children a 3 bedroom rental would be between 1800 and 2400 per month.

Add to this food costs, transportation, and clothing and there is little to nothing remaining to cover extras in the event of sickness, eyeglasses, fire insurance or any other emergency.

Escalating food and fuel costs are further straining the ability of the low income earner to save for retirement never mind surviving that long.

The new World order of borderless countries and free trade agreements are doing nothing but drive down earning while raising the cost of living.

Every day we are told that Canada is an aging society where seniors are going to suffer due to high medical costs and low pension earnings, it is frightening to those who are rapidly approaching retirement.

Corporations have bought our politicians and convinced the people that it is in our best interest to eliminate tariffs on foreign goods, so we closed our manufacturing and moved it to foreign countries who allowed slave labour to flourish.

Our governments have learned nothing from NFTA and the corporate lawsuits that have forced Provinces and the Federal government to relinquish our sovereignty in favour of corporate greed.

Higher salaries won’t do anything for the working man unless the government reigns in the corporations and takes back our country.