Minimum Wage: Living Wage

What a contrast the world presents us with between those that have the wherewithal to live their lives in comfort and those who struggle to provide the necessities of life to their families. The well-off as opposed to the impoverished. Observed on a large scale we can look at North America and European countries as having gained an incredible momentum in economic progress since the industrial revolution. They represent the populations on this sphere whose day-to-day lives are devoid of the intolerable stress that indigent populations in the third world face.

By and large Western societies observe an obligation to those societies outside their social and cultural and political fabric, struggling to overcome mass poverty - by supporting their economic needs at a very basic level while also delivering support through agencies from the United Nations and NGOs to provide services, the wherewithal for technological advancement, and medical aid to suppress the effects of endemic disease, and the fallout of local wars.

We're the better off for it. We assuage our consciences with the thought that our little efforts, our minor interventions, our insufficient international aid funding does offer hope and help to those great suffering masses. We know they're out there, we know how impossibly miserable their lives can be, the odds against survival in many of the communities in emerging economies - the have-not countries of the world.

But how about the people living in our very midst, those countless unseen faces in our own communities to whom opportunity and good fortune has somehow been denied? We see around us what we're comfortable in observing, looking handily beyond the needs of others. Yet knowing, because we're reminded time and again, that among us live children, and single-parent families, the elderly and the working poor whose status in life is one of continual want.

Not the kind of want that we experience out of sheer boredom, looking for the next popular event or product to entertain us, but the kind of want that sees young children going to bed hungry, going to school with inadequate nutrition, improperly clad for the weather, and their parents desperate with worry for the future of their young. Food banks do a brisk business in our very wealthy society; we routinely write cheques to salve our sense of the unfairness of it all.

Fully 4.1% of workers earn the minimum wage in Canada, which can range from a low of $7 an hour in our wealthiest province - Alberta, to a high of $8.95 in our wildest territory - Yukon. Provinces are grappling with the need to meet the most basic of living requirements for the working poor; wage-earners whose distinct and direct needs glue them to jobs with incomes that come in between $4,000 to $6,000 below the official poverty line.

There is a recognition that low-wage workers are overdue for a rise in the minimum wage, but business and politics are both shy of accepting the inevitable, a rise to $10 an hour linked to the rate of inflation. Business argues that a higher minimum wage will translate in substantial job losses. The historical record tells us otherwise; raising the minimum wage has had little impact on employment levels.

Canadians in general are of the opinion and fully supportive of the need to raise the minimum wage as a necessary step to reducing the level of need among low-income Canadians. Statistics Canada warns of the growing gap between rich and poor, as the rich become wealthier and the poor more mired down in the affliction of dire need. A rise in the minimum wage won't solve that problem, but it will have the effect of somewhat easing the intolerable burden of insufficiency that poor families face.

Then there's the unassailable issue of morality. Quite simply, no Canadian should have to work for wages that don't offer them the capability to lead a decent life.