Ford’s repeal of Bill 148 a callous attack on our poorest
Tories stand and applaud moves to hurt immigrants, the poor, mothers and the sick
“The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the call for justice and fairness is dismissed as extreme and unreasonable.”
MICHAEL COREN
To quote the late, great Oscar Wilde, himself the victim of callousness, there are people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. I wonder if Ontario Premier
Doug Ford has read any Oscar Wilde? No, on second thought, I don’t.
Earlier this week, most of the MPPs in the Tory caucus at Queen’s Park stood up to applaud the announced repeal of Bill 148, which will stop the increase of the minimum wage from $14 to $15 an hour, reduce already minimal sick days, and further limit family rights. It directly hurts the poor, immigrants, mothers, the sick, and the most vulnerable in society. To support the move is bad enough; to roar its approval is positively repugnant. Yet still they clapped and cheered.
For the past five years, my wife has worked for minimum wage, often leaving the house before 5 a.m. to open the store where she works. We’re hardly typical, in that I’m a working journalist, and we own our home. But neither of us comes from wealthy families, we have four children who still need financial help, and, while my wife is highly educated, well-paying jobs are very few when someone returns to the workforce. Frankly, we need the money.
So, we’re luckier than many but far from unique. Contrary to myth and propaganda, 82 per cent of minimum wage workers are not teenagers and almost 40 per cent are older than 35. More than 60 per cent are women, and 58 per cent of minimum wage earners work full time. The majority work in stores run by corporations, some employing hundreds, often thousands, of people.
Many are immigrants to Canada, trying desperately to make lives in this country, often working more than one job simply to provide housing and food. A number of them are married to others in the same situation. These are the people who are being punished by the repeal.
As for the argument that the increase hurt employers, the profits of the corporations hiring most minimum wage workers increased rather than decreased since the raise last year, and there is no indication at all that small or family firms have been damaged. Indeed, every credible study from similar minimum wage increases abroad has shown a stronger, not weaker, economy.
Beyond economics, however, there is something deeper, darker, and more sinister going on. It’s an attack upon human dignity, a scapegoating of the “other,” which is a classic hardright tactic. The ghost of capitalism past and the ghost of capitalism present, where decency and compassion are dismissed as mere humbug.
It’s surely no coincidence that the same week as the most powerless of workers were humiliated, the same government announced that plans to build three university campuses in the suburbs or outer towns of Toronto were cancelled. These are frontline colleges, providing young people with vocational training as much as academic excellence.
Because of the location of the central campuses, it’s expensive, extremely time-consuming, even impossible, for many to become students. These are often the less privileged and less wealthy kids, and as such it was a direct assault on equality of opportunity.
Earlier in the month, the Ford administration removed funding to the Roundtable on Violence Against Women, designed to help government support those escaping domestic violence. It also scrapped funding to a Toronto after-school program for at-risk youth. And the list goes on.
Divide and conquer, divide and oppress, divide and exploit. Populism has long been an illusion, because it falsely encourages one segment of society to feel disenfranchised and unheard, and then euphoric when a leader seems to be listening.
Doug Ford listens to nobody other than a few intimates, and to his own misplaced sense of grievance. This man is a product of wealth, power and privilege, yet paints and thinks himself a rebel against the elites. Lord, truth cries out to be heard!
They stood up and cheered. They always stand up and cheer. And the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the call for justice and fairness is dismissed as extreme and unreasonable. Remember that cruelty, and remember that we will be judged by how we treat those less fortunate than ourselves.