Time has come for living wage

I was happy to attend the meeting on June 22 for a brainstorming session on the subject of a universal living wage for all Canadians. What most impressed me was the extent of the need for such a scheme. It’s time has come.

Many questions remain; chief among them, where is the money coming from? Given that most ordinary Canadians and mediumsized companies are already taxed close to the practical limit, it remains to look at the big corporations and their abilities to hide income from the tax man.

It seems reasonable to ask why we can find multi-millions for people who play hockey or football well when we see young people begging on the streets of Charlottetown. We have probably the richest country in the world. I pass the problem of how to find the money to our elected representatives. Surely the money is there for social justice.

My observations of the last 30 years of economic progress show an increasing flow of wealth to the top few, the diminishing of the middle class, and the impoverishment of the working class. Governments in much of the western world have bought in to the “low taxes, reduced spending” mantra of Reagan and Thatcher. It hasn’t worked. What happens is people grasp any philosophy that appears to offer change, and so we get madmen like Trump elected. People seem unable to make the distinction between facts and fantasy.

Let’s hope Canada proves it can be done without a revolution. Peter Noakes, Charlottetown