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Minimum wage earners are mainly teenage students with after school jobs. There are not many families trying to survive on two minimum wage jobs. It is also a case of perimeteritis. You go around to small town Manitoba and half the Main Streets are empty former thriving businesses that couldn’t stay competitive against the larger community box stores. The ones that remain are barely able to keep the doors open as it is. The minimum wage increase will drive up all wages and force more small town businesses to close up shop. It will drive more people to The Walmart’s of the world who will keep moving towards more automation and less employees. There has to be a better way to get more money in the hands of the lower income workers without taking it out of the small buisness community which is the backbone of much of the rural communities.

That is patently false.  
 
http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2016/05/25/who-earns-minimum-wage/  
 
60% of minimum wage earners are over 25 years of age,  
 
plus: "women are disproportionately represented in these low wage jobs – fully one-third of women earn less than $15 / hr, compared to only 22% of men.

Take it from the very top, by the billionaires who offshore their assets to avoid paying taxes, and people like these billionaire Tim Horton franchise owners who can’t afford an additional $2 per hour but who have an estimated net worth of $1.4 Billion dollars. Put it another way, that is one thousand-four hundred-Million dollars. The private helicopter at their Florida home (described in the CBC article) and the private yacht explained in another with an original price tag of $40 Million (with alleged sexual assaults taking place on them) explains it all. All of this explains to me that these people have way too much, that they never earned it, and that they do not have the moral compass to keep it. It is interesting to continually hear about all of our local defenders of this and find it ridiculous, where these people somehow get the nerve to call these business owners success stories of "marginal businesses who cannot afford to pay a living wage" and they are out blowing $20 million dollars on the depreciation of their newly purchased yacht. It disgusts me, and I think it should disgust you.  
 
Edited by Kirmit, 2018-01-07 11:53:32

Speak up for #15 and Fairness (their stories):  
 
https://youtu.be/Pbt9nFz8uPQ  
 
http://wwww.15andfairness.org/  
 
http://www.15andfairness.org/demands  
 
http://www.fairnessnow.ca  
 
http://www.commondreams.org  
 
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/15/fight-for-15-minimum-wage-protests-new-york-los-angeles-atlanta-boston

$15 and Fairness Stories:  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Is this the future you really want for your community?  
 
https://inequality.org/  
 
https://inequality.org/facts/  
 
https://inequality.org/facts/income-inequality/  
 
https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/  
 
https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/  
 
https://inequality.org/facts/inequality-and-health/  
 
Edited by Kirmit, 2018-01-07 12:04:07

This is how the the fraudulent Capital Gains tax works in Canada, a scheme where the CEOs and extremely wealthy 1% get away with a tax rate that is only half of the tax rate that the ordinary working stiff pays working a minimum 50 hour per week "real" job that goes towards real production supporting the real economy.  
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax#Canada  
 
Currently, only 50% of realized capital gains are taxable in Canada at an individual's tax rate. Some exceptions apply, such as selling one's primary residence which may be exempt from taxation.[4] Capital gains made by investments in a Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) are not taxed.  
 
For example, if your capital gains (profit) is $100, you are taxed on $50 at your marginal tax rate. That is, if you were in the top tax bracket and your profit was $100, you would be taxed on $50 at approximately 43%, in Ontario. A formula for this example using the top tax bracket would be as follows:  
 
(Capital gain x 50.00%) x marginal tax rate = capital gain tax  
 
($100 x 50.00%) x 43% = $50 x 43% = $21.50  
 
In this example your capital gains tax on $100 is $21.50, leaving you with $78.50.  
 
For corporations as for individuals, 50% of realized capital gains are taxable. The net taxable capital gains (which can be calculated as 50% of total capital gains minus 50% of total capital losses) are subject to income tax at normal corporate tax rates.

I have to say, I don’t much care for the statement / question: “Also, would love if someone could explain to me how minimum wage legislation is not an act of communism?”, but I can see how someone might draw a comparison.  
 
I’m one of those members of society between 50 and 70 that realized early on that a person that works for minimum wage has a hard time in front of them. The answer to that is to put yourself into a better position: do what it takes to put yourself in a position to earn what it takes to live the lifestyle you want. Better your education, learn a trade, acquire the skills that puts yourself above the earning level of those that are destined to remain minimum wage earners. By the way, I don’t imagine any of these ideas are commonly acted on in a communist environment.  
 
Raising minimum wage is never going to be an answer to poverty or the hardships that low income people face. Getting out in front of the problem and doing for yourself is a far more likely path toward being successful than waiting for the government to come along and do it for you. All that does is bring short term false hope for those earning minimum wage. If you need help and if you want to be in a better place financially, you need to be the one that gets the ball rolling. If you are going to wait for someone else to fix the problem for you (eg. Raising minimum wage) you’re in for a very long wait. If you don’t believe me, ask someone that has spent the last 20 years working for minimum wage if things are any better now than 20 years ago.  
 
Blaming the rich, simply for being successful and tearing them down with accusations of wrongdoing doesn’t belong in this discussion if one is truly looking for solutions. There are solutions out there, mostly they will have to be one of, self made solutions, and of course not everyone will succeed. Those that never try …

I would not have said it that way. It certainly is a act of social engineering. It is a guidelin hours . L:ike they said re Hortons. At the shop for 9 hours get paid 8:20.  
 
 
As far as going after the big players. Yep. Lets ignore the fact in a single purchase of some of their mucky Muck items like yaughts or milion dollars cars they spend more on taxes than I do in years. So we get some back.  
 
Second most employeers who are rich created alot of jobs/incomes that pay taxes. They may get off lite at times re taxes but their bussinees did/does not when you add the total dollars created for the economy with out him/her part of that tax revenue. As I said upfront we do need to get the uppercrust to help out but identifying them is not just by income or a single years tax bill.  
 
Our Feds use the tax system to get the wealty to do their jobs. Remember MURBS where instead of paying tax the rich could build social housing? We can not begrudge tax breaks when there is a reason. RRSP"S are a tax break for a reason.

So then the real question:  
 
Why does society tolerate a two tier system of taxation, where a certain segment of society (the rich) get one set of relaxed rules, and the other segment of society (the working class) get shafted with a different set of tax rules?  
 
If you want to talk about any benefit you think the rich might be doing having businesses that employ people, you need to also recognise that if these businesses didn't have workers, then they wouldn't have businesses. Everybody has a contribution to be made to build a successful business, and I think often the business community forgets that and thinks it is all them.  
 
Growing up, I was always told that I lived in a country where people had equal chance at success. After I became an adult, I learned that certain people have gained the system by buying out politicians who give them a different set of rules to play by. All I am asking is for everybody to play by the same rules, and legislating minimum wage legislation is what I would consider to be a little bit of an "equaliser" (not a solution) that helps to put some perspective and balance back into the power disparity when the rigged "free market" rules don't work in the rigged economy. We have never before lived in times where the wealth gap has gotten so large, and if you don''t want 95% of society to become peasants, then you had better be prepared to defend your position when you become a participant in this game. History demonstrates to us time and time again, that when workers stand up for their rights, when they feel that the rules are so skewed against them that they need to organise and form unions, that their lives eventually improve. We are entering another one of those times, and the political establishment are starting to feel the burning of that fire that brings it all down.  
 
If you are one of these people, learn about it, stay informed, organise, and defend your right to fair pay in this rigged economy.  
 
Edited by JoeSixpack, 2018-01-07 14:20:33

Kirmit said "Take it from the very top, by the billionaires who offshore their assets to avoid paying taxes, and people like these billionaire Tim Horton franchise owners who can’t afford an additional $2 per hour but who have an estimated net worth of $1.4 Billion dollars. Put it another way, that is one thousand-four hundred-Million dollars. The private helicopter at their Florida home (described in the CBC article) and the private yacht explained in another with an original price tag of $40 Million (with alleged sexual assaults taking place on them) explains it all. All of this explains to me that these people have way too much, that they never earned it, and that they do not have the moral compass to keep it. It is interesting to continually hear about all of our local defenders of this and find it ridiculous, where these people somehow get the nerve to call these business owners success stories of "marginal businesses who cannot afford to pay a living wage" and they are out blowing $20 million dollars on the depreciation of their newly purchased yacht. It disgusts me, and I think it should disgust you.     Edited by Kirmit, 2018-01-07 11:53:32"

I think you make a good point about someone who has a large net worth not being able to absorb, at least to come degree, the changes that have been enacted. But those people are actually fairly few and far between. I mean, the average business owner isn't like that, it's like farming in that on paper it might have a lot, but in actual cash flow they don't really have a lot of cash.  
 
There was a real interesting guest on Cross Country Checkup on CBC Radio One this afternoon. It was a business owner in Thunder Bay (I think he did some sort of reno work/contractor) who pays over minimum wage, and employs 25 people. To remain competitive, even though he pays above minimum for a trained employee, he's basically given all his employees a raise to keep pace with what he pays over minimum. It basically works out that he gave everyone a 22% raise, not including the additional deductions and benefits he'll have to remit to the various levels of government, just to keep his same employment standard.  
 
Based on this change, he either has to generate $500K-$1M in new contracts this year, or he'll be laying people off come next increase (or at the very least, letting jobs go to attrition). It's going to impact him because with less staff, he's not going to be able to do as much work (less contracts), and will have to do more of the work himself, which will impact his own work/life balance.  
 
He's all for incremental wage increases - he makes a point of paying his employees reasonably well and recognizes wages must increase. But how is he, as a business owner, supposed to project back in 2014-2015-2016 that he would need to pay his employees 22% more in 2018 just to remain competitive?  
 
Those are the sorts of people I think have a valid argument for opposing such a drastic increase in such a short amount of time.

Abbysmom,  
 
You make some very good points.  
 
But no matter how much I say it, nobody seems to ever get it... Go after the billionaire class, the top 1% of society that are not playing by the same rules as everybody else, and make them pay their FAIR share of taxes. With these people paying their FAIR share of taxes, then maybe the rest of us - the 99% - which includes small business, wouldn't have to be paying over HALF of our salary in both government taxes and government hidden taxes, and we would have more money left over to afford paying REAL wages. I never said I was ever against people making money, but the money making machine of large corporations that make massive profits, the people like these Tim Hortons franchisees who are worth an estimated $1.4 BILLION dollars and complain over self-ruin over paying maybe 20 employees an extra $2 per hour while flying around in private helicopters and massive yachts from international second homes, has got to stop. These parasites are out of control, and it's no doubt they are currently facing charges for alleged sexual assaults aboard these toys. These people have demonstrated a lack of character, in an period where the economy is not working out for average workers.  
 
It is not right that a very small segment of society control such massive amounts of wealth, and whose wealth is hidden in offshore tax schemes to avoid taxation in the jurisdictions where they operate. It is not right that the banking community gets away with such high handed thievery from hard working citizens and small businesses, who pay through the nose in their deceptive schemes. It is not right that politicians seem to almost always look after the interests of their donors, when a system of democracy relies on governments to administer FAIR policies that help all citizens - business owners and workers alike.  
 
Nobody has ever said they don't feel for small business, but we need to understand the real problem here, and the real problem is that there is a massive gaping hole in tax revenue that should be generated from the business community, and it is not getting filled. And when it does not get filled, governments are looking for easy sources of revenue to replace those taxes, and it seems to always fall to the working stiff. And we have gone through a very long period where the working stiff has simply had enough. Minimum wage needs to keep pace with the cost of living, and while the cost of everything - and especially the benefits of massive increases in the cost of housing - has filtered to the very top, who drive up prices to artificial and affordable bubble levels, then the political class risks the entire system crashing down.  
 
Minimum wage legislation is not, as several people have suggested, a form of communism. The unbelievable comments that are generated through these forums, and especially from those that "appear" to be coming from the business community, truly astound me. Communism? Really? Like the capitalist model is demonstrating itself to be so much better!!!  
 
Finally, while I can appreciate what it might mean to be operating a business and be hit with these types of expenses, I think you should also recognise that "Cross Country Checkup" is actually a conservative based radio program, and that while many of the callers that listen in are from the business community, it is a "skewed" outlook from the right and those in the business community. While I sometimes listen in, I can't imagine that many of the opinions that are discussed are coming from those affected by stagnant and depressingly low wages. When you listen in on that program, just understand that. After all, up until recent, it has been a Rex Murphy program for decades.

I pm'ed you.

Would be tough trying to tax billionaires. The vast majority of their net worth is basically theoretical as it's tied up in stock.  
Their material assets they enjoy such as cars, planes, properties are owned by investment corporations.  
They don't take salaries.  
Peel away all the layers of an average billionaire and you will find they personally possess little, usually just a primary residence and a comparatively small amount of cash. If their doing it right, their net worth is money they control but not personally own in a legal sense.