Intentionally or not, Churchill MP Niki Ashton’s attempt to piggyback on the populist minimum-wage movement south of the border is disingenuous.
Ashton has been touting the need for a “federal minimum wage” of $15 an hour, the same amount sought by progressive activists in the US.
But there’s an enormous difference between what the American campaigners want and what Ashton and her fellow New Democrats are
proposing.
In the US, the federal minimum wage (currently $7.25 an hour) is the minimum for all American workers. While each state sets its own minimum wage, none can go below the federal rate.
But here in Canada, Ottawa controls only the minimum wage paid to workers under federal jurisdiction. Only about five per cent of Canadian workers – fewer than one million people – fall into that category.
This narrow wedge of the workforce is employed in fields such as mining, rail transport, banking and longshoring – fields that are generally paying more than $15 an hour.
Data shows that for 2008 (the last year for which stats are available), only 416 federal-jurisdiction workers in all of Canada earned the federal minimum wage (currently equal to the minimum wage of whichever province or territory the work is performed in).
That translated into 0.00197 per cent of Canadian workers, give or take.
As the Globe and Mail tactfully put it, such stats are “leading some to say the NDP is exaggerating the [minimum wage] measure’s potential impact.”
To be fair, Ashton has not concealed the extreme limitations of a federal minimum wage. In a report to constituents last fall, she clarified that the $15 proposal would only apply to “workers under federal jurisdiction.”
But why focus so much energy on a policy that would assist a very tiny slice of Canadians when there are so many other ways to help the millions struggling to get by?
Particulars lost
Because politicians know that in our soundbite culture, important particulars get lost in translation. They know that when people hear the term “federal minimum wage,” they will naturally assume it applies to all Canadian workers.
As Colby Cosh of Maclean’s wrote, the NDP was counting on the press to “foul up” the story to create this false impression – “and it obliged.”
Indeed, from reading multiple stories on the subject, it is clear that some reporters either don’t know what a federal minimum wage is or don’t bother to offer readers an explanation.
A notable exception is Jeremy J. Nuttall of The Tyee website. When writing about the NDP’s failed bill for the $15 minimum last fall, his headline cited the “small group of workers” who would benefit.
To their credit, some NDP supporters see through what their party is doing.
On NDP MP Megan Leslie’s Facebook page, Kelly Dawn E used the term “very misleading” to describe how the minimum wage proposal is being presented.
“I really appreciate what the NDP is doing, however it isn’t a ‘minimum wage’ hike that [the NDP] is proposing, it is a ‘federal minimum wage’ hike, meaning that this raise would only apply to the federally regulated jobs,” Ms. E wrote. “The minimum wage jobs that creates [sic] the largest negatively impacting economic problems are not these jobs, as very few of them are minimum wage as is.”
Even back in 2007, when the NDP suggested a $10 federal minimum wage, left-wing blog La Revue Gauche termed the idea “a red herring.”
So what now? I’ll let Colby Cosh tell you.
“Economists, who mostly dislike minimum wages anyway, will probably tear into the NDP for a misleading measure that, to a close approximation, helps nobody. And it probably won’t matter much, as New Democrats go on repeating the words ‘federal minimum wage’” until the election.
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