Conservatives drove larger wage increases

RE: Minimum wage debate

The increase in minimum wage has become less a debate around fact and more an ideological battleground. Defenders of small businesses cry foul on a heavy-handed government forcing them to rearrange their business models. On the other side are passionate reminders of the growing inequity in our society and calls to pay fairer wages to those left behind.

Increasingly the anger against a needed increase in the wages is being drowned out in a wave of anti-liberal, anti-Wynne vitriol.

When you next sit down to write the latest angry rant about minimum wage, consider that the Conservative government of John Robarts oversaw a larger minimum wage increase. In 1969, his government increased the wage from $1 per hour to $1.30 hourly, a 30 per cent increase. Again in 1970, the wage increased to $1.50 hourly, an increase of 50 per cent increase over 1968’s wage.

The world did not end. The economy continued to march forward. At the end of the day this should not be a partisan issue. It should be an issue of fairness and fact. So the next time you go to wag a finger at the Liberals, take a wag at the Conservatives, too, because they did the same thing. At the end of the day “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” The conservatives of the 1960s understood that. Perhaps the conservatives of the 2010s will remember the “progressive” part of their party name. Karl Andrus, Hamilton