Phillips calls out Kenney over wages
Minister irked by ‘modest human capital’ remark
Environment and Parks Minister Shannon Phillips is demanding United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney explain comments he made to the advocacy group Restaurants Canada on Tuesday with respect to the minimum wage, and she is calling on local UCP candidates to clarify their own positions on the matter.
In an audio recording of his speech to Restaurants Canada, Kenney can be heard to state during a wide-ranging speech where he mused about the possibility of cutting Alberta’s minimum wage for restaurant workers, alcohol servers and young people: “The greatest creator of employment for young people, for people with modest levels of human capital, for first time hires, is the restaurant and food services industry.”
It is the comment about “modest human capital” which Phillips, who once served as a senior policy analyst with the Alberta Federation of Labour, took greatest exception to in her comments to reporters at her campaign headquarters Thursday morning.
“On Tuesday morning Jason Kenney said people of ‘a modest level of human capital’ should be paid less than minimum wage,” she said. “I don’t know who he was talking about, but I was shocked when I read those comments. It sounds to me like he is talking about people with disabilities. Let me be very clear; Albertans with disabilities are not second-class citizens. We are long past those days.”
“Jason Kenney should apologize for his choice of words,” she went on to state, “and his candidates here in Lethbridge need to clarify whether they support treating Albertans with disabilities as second-class citizens.”
Phillips then took wider aim the notion of two different minimumwage standards in the province — one for restaurant workers and young people and another for everyone else.
“Seventy-five per cent of the people who benefitted from a minimum-wage increase were over the age of 20, and over 60 per cent of people who benefitted from that policy were women,” she said. “When Jason Kenney talks about lowering minimum wages for workers who serve alcohol, he is talking about a policy that disproportionately hurts women here in Lethbridge. It is an antiwoman economic policy that will cut wages for people here in Lethbridge.”
Phillips then reiterated her call to local Lethbridge UCP candidates to make clear their own positions on a double standard for the minimum wage, as proposed by Kenney.
“At the end of the day, each Albertan is equal,” she said. “It makes my stomach turn. The idea that certain Albertans are worth less in the Conservative leader’s eyes — that’s certainly not acceptable. And certainly Jason Kenney’s local Lethbridge candidates need to clarify they believe each Albertan is equal.”
The Lethbridge Herald reached out to Lethbridge-West UCP candidate Karri Flatla to ask her perspective on Kenney’s comments and Phillip’s charges, but did not hear back from her prior to press time on Thursday.
Follow @TimKalHerald on Twitter