Ontario Increasing Minimum Wage to $16.55 an Hour

By Joe Ingino Editor/Publisher ACCOMPLISHED WRITER/AUTHOR OF OVER 800,000 Published Columns in Canada and The United States “I live a dream in a nightmare world” Always Remember That The cosmic blueprint of your life was written in code across the sky at the moment you were born. Decode Your Life By Living It Without Regret or Sorrow. - ONE DAY AT A TIME - Someone please help me. I can’t stop shaking my head. Who is doing the thinking around here. The economy is a horrible state. Just about every corporation is openly ripping off consumers. Not to mention grocery stores. They all blame it on COVID, the war, the supply chain. Small to mid size employers are struggling to keep people on pay rolls due to the poor economic climate. Then the government announces this: Ontario Increasing Minimum Wage to $16.55 an Hour. Hurray for the common worker working on minimum wage. Chaos for the employer that could barely pay the minimum wage as it was. It is no secret that big business does not care about you me or their consumers. Try calling them. They have these pathetic automated answering systems that are rigged to benefit them. You as a consumer have no say and no way to rebut the messages they spew. When you actually get someone to pick up after wasting 20 minutes in their automated system. You get some foreigner with an accent that you can barely make out. These corporation pay these foreign call centers a fraction of what they would have to pay if the call center was in Canada. The question is why do we do business with these companies. Well that is a topic for another column. The real question here is what is our government thinking? They raise the minimum wage as a great thing but fail to alleviate the problem. High cost of living. How is anyone living even with the increased minimum wage to pay for an apartment on the average $1,000 plus $300 food, cell phone $60, a car, insurance, hydro, gas and other daily expenses? When you do the math at 40hr/week they only make $2,648 before taxes... These renters will never be able to buy a home. One they don’t make enough for a down payment. Two, they don’t generate enough income to qualify to pay the monthly mortgage. Ok. Let’s assume they have two jobs and are a two income home. Still they would not have enough to save for the down payment and or afford the monthly mortgage payment. In some magical way. The government believes that by pressuring employers to pay more that it will address the economic problem of average Canadians. Wrong. All the government is doing is assuring less hours to work due to the extra cost of doing business by small to medium businesses. Here is my suggestion: 1. Take control of gasoline prices. (NO MORE GAUGING) 2. Assure that any supply chain issue have priority one. 3. Invest in local small businesses by offering grants based on business productivity and performance. The $20,000. they gave out during COVID was a great model. Every business should receive $20,000. every quarter if they can prove productivity increases of 40% plus the hiring of at least 5 new people per quarter. We waste money fighting foreign wars. Let’s invest in our people first. Do you not agree? REMEMBER ALWAYS Hope for the Best. PREPARE FOR the worst.