And the NDP Just Lost the Next Election …
Promising a $15 per hour minimum wage.
There are roughly 2 million small businesses – those that are owned by one or two people – operating in Canada. Given the right environment, they will hire more people, but increasing the minimum wage 50% will force them to re-evaluate their business.
I hate to play into the hands of Con / Libertarians, but a big hike in minimum wage is a bad idea, especially now as all political parties gear up for a year-long battle to win the hearts and minds of Canadian voters.
I have some advice for Mulcair: find ways to support small businesses in Canada. They’re the next best thing to local that you’ll ever be able to get (not like those international conglomerates that pretend they’re ‘local’).
Give incentives, expand write-offs, promise to reduce audits and do anything else you can to make it easy for people to start businesses in Canada. When they’re making money, minimum wages matter for shit.
Another alternative: co-ops.
Co-operatives will continue to draw attention as they provide a real and genuine way for workers to OWN their place of employment instead of depending on it. There’s a massive difference compared to people being serfs for non-caring and non-thinking corporations.
What Tom Mulcair and the NDP have to understand is that all of this comes down to a few simple descriptions:
- People will never fire themselves.
- People need to be making money before they hire anyone else.
These are simple lessons for the NDP.
If they don’t pay attention to them before the next election, I’ll have one less choice to make.