Wage hike none to soon

The province’s minimum wage is going north this September, up 40 cents to $10.85 an hour with another bump to $11.25 an hour scheduled for 2017. It means ours is no longer the lowest in the country, which is good because our cost of living certainly is closer to the top.

We’d argue the minimum wage needs to go even higher, even faster. In B.C., one in five children lives below the poverty line and 45 per cent of renters are spending more than 30 per cent of their gross household income on rent and utilities alone. About a quarter are spending more than half their income on shelter.

Facing questions from reporters about how this would help our poorest residents, Premier Christy Clark was dismissive, saying most people who make minimum wage are students living at home.

Take a walk through the food court of most any of our malls during the day and you won’t see cashiers and fry cooks who live with their parents.

Mostly, you’ll see grown women, many of whom are immigrants, many of whom are parents themselves.

The opposition is accusing the premier of playing politics with the minimum wage — probably because she just pried up a plank of their 2017 election platform and used it for her own. But they have a strange ally in the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, which stresses mandatory wage increases should be more predictable (and for that matter, smaller).

The reasons for the top-up, our top-up-happy premier said, is so low-income earners can share in the dividends of our growing economy. Whatever the B.C. Liberals’ motivation, the person at the deep fryer is grateful.