“Everyone deserves to be able to live their lives free from hunger or homelessness, and a living wage can truly make a difference for everyone. The benefits are both personal and public, as the living wage has economic benefits throughout the community. This includes higher worker retention and more money to be spent in local communities.” – from Living Wage Niagara, part of an Ontario-wide Living Wage Program now administered in our Niagara region by United Way Niagara and funded through the Niagara Prosperity Initiative.
News Commentary by Doug Draper
Posted October 1st, 2023 on Niagara At Large
Ontario Premier Doug Ford gives the shaft to low-income workers again
As of this October 1st, the minimum wage in Ontario increases from $15.50 an hour to $16.55 – an increase of one dollar and five cents.
And to that news I say, in words you should know are dripping with sarcasm – ‘What a magnanimous gesture on the Ford government’s party.’
At a time when many people, including people with jobs across Niagara and the rest of the province are struggling to keep a roof over their heads and find themselves resorting to food banks to give themselves and their children enough to eat, this minimum wage increase is a sick and cruel joke.
It does not come close to what many experts on our economy say is a minimum “living wage” of $19.80 an hour in Niagara, and higher still in places like Hamilton, Ottawa and Toronto that people need, just to cover the basic necessities of life.
An image from the great public interest group Living Wage Niagara. Please check out the group’s website for more information.
Thanks to Doug Ford and other provincial leaders in his government and in the federal government of Canada, this is where we are at during a time of sky-high inflation, while a cabal of our countries version of Russian oligarchs in the grocery and housing industries are making record profits.
It boggles the mind why so many people in Ontario – quite a number of them barely able to keep their noses above the water themselves – continue to believe Doug Ford and his caucus of sycophants are “there for the regular guy.”
Then there is all of Ford and company’s crap that rained down on us over and over again in their slogans about “working for working people” and “government for the people”
Wake up Ontario! Just spend a little bit of time following what’s actually going on at Queen’s Park and you should know that it is a bunch of bunk.
Ford is a guy who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and who could afford to quite college half way through his first year because he always had his daddy’s million dollar business to go to.
He’s a guy who wasted no time after he became Ontario’s premier in 2018, capping the minimum wage at around $14 an hour and gutting a “basic income pilot project” that the recently deceased Conservative Party icon Hugh Segal had championed as a way of bringing people out of poverty.
Ford and company also weakened rent controls across the province and made a number of other moves that made life even harder for those struggling to live with a little bit of dignity.
So where does all of this ‘Ford-is-on-the-side-of-the-little-guy’ baloney come from, and how can so many people across this province be stupid enough to go to their voting stations again in 2022 and deliver him another four-year term of government?
It can’t be said enough. This October 1st minimum wage increase is a slap in the face to working people across Ontario and makes a mockery of Ford’s repeated claim that he and his government are “for the people” and are “working for workers.”
For more on this click on the following links –
Get Certified | Living Wage Niagara
Scrapping basic income pilot ‘horrific,’ former Tory senator says | CBC News
Ontario’s basic income pilot to end March 2019 | CBC News
Scrapping basic income pilot ‘horrific,’ former Tory senator says | CBC News
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Niagara At Large 
But Doug, he gave the folks of Ontario ‘buck a beer’.
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