Ontario is set to raise the minimum wage – retroactively. Update: a somewhat “better” explanation here.
53 Replies to “Wynneing!”
Why stop there why not just raise it to $1,000,000 annually. Then everyone would be rich and poverty would be over. Also everyone should get a unicorn.
Absolute nut cases. Alberta and Saskatchewan should apply maximum pressure to have companies move out of Ontario. Time to dump any Ontario provincial bonds you might have….if you haven’t already done so.
Sounds like another play from the brilliant French Government’s handbook.
And Rob Ford is the wacky one!
Shouldn’t that be Wynnering? Because she has the face of an old nag?
I would be surprised if the UFCW had a hand in this move. Imagine them getting to collect 4 back years worth of back dues from all the minimum wage workers that turned over at the various employment locales they infect.
Heck why not make it retroactive to all persons who had a wage below $10.25 since Ontario was founded in 1867. I would like to collect reparations for my ancestors having to work for .25¢ an hour around the turn of the century. Because they didn’t have the benefit of a $10.25 minimum wage and Nag Hag’s obvious fiscal smarts.
Who in their right mind would do business in Ontario.
Wages are a cost for business, aren’t they? So all the tax calculations for those businesses affected by having to backpay minimum wage increases will have to be redone, and taxes refunded. Where will the Ontario government get the money to pay for those refunds? Retroactive tax increases?
C’s suggestion in the first comment is looking pretty realistic for Ontario.
I can’t imagine this means that business owners will have pay employees and former employees back wages. Not only is it impractical to track down all these people in jobs that have a notoriously high turnover rate but is also unaffordable to businesses. I can only assume it is bogus news or it is not really retroactive in the way unions get retro pay after strikes and lockouts.
Well, they already bought votes with the gas plant cancellations, so why not use private business’ money? She’ll have to call an election pretty quick before the layoffs begin. Of course, there could be grants available–just cancel the next cancellation!
Mugabe tried that in Zimbabwe they ended up printing notes with trillions. I think he tried stealing all the Unicorns from the white land owners but they died or something.
-Retroactive- change in the minimum wage? My first reaction is that’s got to be illegal. How can government come along and say to a private business that they suddenly owe $x.xx to every employee for retroactive pay? That’s impossible.
But then I remember that this is Canada, where Parliament can make ANY law they wish, restrained by nothing and no one.
Just in case any of you Lefties want to know what “no right to private property” looks like in the wild, it looks like a retroactive minimum wage hike.
You still think your bank deposits and RRSPs are safe? HA!
A million a year? Don’t be ridiculous. I could make due with a quarter of that, and I don’t need another unicorn thanks.
Just wait and see what happens when OPSEU’s contract for the OPS is up this year.
The great vote buying scheme is just getting started.
“Retroactive” is union jargon.
The unions are very active in Ontario right now with anti-Harper and Hudak e-mails, adds and rallies.
A rally today in Windsor carried “Harper resign Now!” signs.
Wynne is schmoozing with the union.
Funny, but I don’t get a cost of living raise every year. So basically what this does is slowly erode the value of my wage by bringing up the bottom feeders with no skills and no education. How long until the minimum wage is the only wage?
The Ontario government is poised to increase minimum wage based on the rate of inflation since 2010, a source tells CTV’s Paul Bliss.
The annual inflation rate in the three years since the last hike has been 2.9 per cent, 1.52 per cent and 0.91 per cent. That would mean raising the province’s minimum wage from $10.25 an hour to between $11 and $11.25.
The next complaints will come from the welfare recipients as they will feel discriminated against. Glad to hear Ontario is just rolling in money and businesses are tripping over each other to get in on the action. No ? And they thought Dalton was bad. Heh.
Not only would businesses have to track down by mail hundreds of former workers, the returns of these people would all have to be recalculated. If they impacted on family returns as many would, then these would also be subject to reassessment.
I know the ordeal of trying to track multi T4s for a few hours work currently, how would someone do this 3 years back?
This nightmare scenario is something only people divorced from normal business-worker relationships could dream up.
Nothing says kleptocrat like retroactive legislation.
Rule of law?
Contract?
Those are for the old fashioned little straight people.
Unfit to hold public office.
The likes of Wynne need this tattooed on their forehead.
But observe the presstitutes of the MSM, they will gather and cackle about how clever, forward thinking the unelected premier is.
It does create some interesting possibilities, so we could in theory, same one winee and co are using, retroactively make laws, that lying, stealing and being unbelievably stupid are capitol crimes for elected officials.
Works for me.
Think of the pension money we could salvage.
So “retroactive” for calculation purposes only. That makes more sense.
OK, hang on, total Wynne-hater here. But these comments sound like the thoughtless dreck I see on WK.com all the time. No one’s tracking down any previous workers to give them backpay – they are simply looking back to the inflation rate “retroactively” to 2010 to calculate the increase. These comments are starting to look like they come from LIVs … please read and think first.
First the 9% for the OPP which will cost all of you Ontario taxpayers higher property taxes and now this.
She has taken a page right out of Lenin’s handbook, “bread and land”.
How long are you people from Ontario going to have to suffer these Marxist fools?
Yes, the CP “report” wasn’t clear about what the “retroactive” part was about while the CTV report made it clear.
wynne has avoided election since becoming der leader.
and has side-stepped TOmayor Ford.
just doin the two-step…talkin atcha…what gas plants?
The real joke is the annual April Fools Day adjustment…
Moving to Ontario soon,
Gonna be a mental wage tycoon.
I only hope Obama doesn’t learn about this initiative before his State of The Union speech tomorrow. It’s his kind of progressive idea.
Wynne must not only be deposed but strapped to a rocket and fired into the sun.
The result is known as bad luck.
If anyone is interested, this link is a good read: http://www.thebigquestions.com/2013/02/18/thoughts-on-the-minimum-wage/
Here’s the gist: “If we’re going to transfer income to low-wage workers, it’s both fundamentally unfair and politically unwise to put the entire burden of that transfer on a relatively small segment of the population (namely the owners and customers of businesses that employ a lot of low-wage workers).”
This is one of the most asinine ideas that’s come by in a while. Interest rates now are very low, but here’s a moonbat announcing that a very economically distorting minimum wage is going to go up yearly. The government can’t have its cake and eat it too; it assumes that it can sell bonds which pay less interest than the rate of inflation and also ensure that the totally unskilled are paid more every year.
Minimum wages should not exist. Payment for services rendered should be a private matter between employer and employee (or, for tax breaks, an agreement between two private contractors). I’ve seen patients on welfare jump for jobs that pay $5/hour in cash as they can’t make $5/hour doing the primary occupation open to a person on welfare in Vancouver – dumpster diving.
A person with no skills deserves no pay; what they can negotiate with someone is for their room and board to be paid while they learn some skills. I’ve never worked at minimum wage for more than a day; usually at the end of the first day of work I’d negotiate a much better hourly remuneration for my services by working much harder than the average minimum wage unskilled worker. The fact that more and more people in Ontario are working at minimum wage jobs means that the government’s economic policies are driving industry out of Ontario. The solution is not to increase the minimum wage, it’s to get rid of all of the statist regulation that’s sending companies to more business friendly climes. Of course such common sense thinking is completely foreign to statists.
Loki said “I’ve never worked at minimum wage for more than a day”
did the patient die:-)))))
Is it just me or is everyone tired of Loki pretending to be a doctor.
It’s just you.
The vote buying continues apace!
And with other peoples’ money – bonus!
“…Alberta and Saskatchewan should apply maximum pressure to have companies move out of Ontario.”
Absolutely right, Joey. For several years now various US jurisdictions – well aware of the anti-business policies of Ontario’s government – have been advertising on border radio and TV stations for Ontario companies to move south. Now, with creeping Liberalism having worn off most of the US lustre, Sask. and Alta. should be doing the same thing.
No reason why Ontario’s continued losses shouldn’t benefit another province.
in a word….stupid.
Nice that both news outlets linked to have the exact same misinterpretation of the facts of the story in their headlines. Hey, who needs accuracy when we are talking the news industry?
Raising the minimum wage without consideration for small business is a recipe for disaster. I know, it was the nail in the coffin for my second restaurant in BC back in the mid 90’s. Also, just like the welfare mindset, if you turn a “minimum” wage into a “comfortable” wage, you destroy much of the incentive for the individual to improve themselves and their position in society.
Exactly!
Three cheers for Loki!
It’s becoming obvious now on which platform Wynne is going to base her election upon: the Ontario Pension Plan (pandering to unions and guaranteeing that businesses costs increase) and the new minimum wage (as Loki so aptly put it: having your cake and eating it, too).
A brilliant plan promising riches to entrenched unions – who will redouble their efforts to villify the PCs through legally questionable election advertising – and buying votes from the low-information voters in the “minimum wage” bracket.
The NDP will be outflanked – short of nationalizing the economy, what else could they offer? And the PCs, well, they might be able to counter this nonsense if they had a strong leader and a dedicated campaign team pushing their message out to the public despite the inanities from the MSM.
God help Ontario.
Most workers will not make one cent more per week. Their hours will be adjusted down, there will be less service for the customers, and they will be abused more frequently by their customers. This is inevitable, and happened with the last big increase under McGuinty.
this will slightly raise the unemployment level to 40% after all businesses who owe back pay declare bankruptcy within a day of it coming into effect.
Typical Lieberal process:
Float one ridiculously stupid and one poorly worded idea: raise the minimum wage to $14, and make the raise retroactive. Then come back and say “No, we meant make the raise cumulative to the last time it was raised, and certainly not $14/hr!”. Then it sounds like they’re eminently reasonable and sane.
It won’t be the disaster that some here predict, but it will be another straw on the camel’s back. Tipping point coming soon.
So as usual the newsies got it wrong, and there is nothing “retroactive” about any of this. Plain old minimum wage hike, nothing different or special other than the sales pitch. Awesome.
Look for the price of everything done with unskilled labor to rise right along with this. Meaning restaurant food, groceries, deliveries, construction etc.
It will sell well to the huge numbers of minimum wage voters out there in Toronto. They have to pay a lot more in gas to drive their long commutes to those minimum wage jobs in the GTA, and extra buck an hour will help.
Until they get laid off, anyway.
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/research-news/display.aspx?id=19280
From the article above:
“Ontario’s debt load is higher than that of California, America’s most-indebted state, and could reach 66 per cent of GDP by 2019 unless the provincial government musters the courage to rein in spending, says a new report released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.”
“…“If Ontario continues spending at its current rate, its net debt will increase to 66 per cent from 37 per cent in just seven years. It took Greece 10 years to experience a similar increase. This highlights the unsustainability of Ontario’s current spending trends,” Veldhuis said.
Inaction or insufficient spending reforms could mean that somewhere down the road, Ontario could experience a fiscal crisis of Greek proportions. While not there yet, the pain and severity of reform needed in Greece serves as an example to Ontarians about the benefits of proactive reform now before a crisis evolves.
“Neither Ontario nor Greece has been responsible in managing their fiscal situations. Fortunately, Ontario is in a position where it can still restore its public finances to good health without the type of fiscal trauma currently underway in Greece,” Clemens said.
Minimum Wage Hike – Because Green Energy costs are not killing jobs fast enough
So the media got it wrong?
Really?
Retroactive theft is so progressive.
Perhaps the media actually reported what they were told.
Like the good little lapdogs they are.
Stranger things have happened.
Or in error they published the true intent of the Ontario Libtards.
Time to start laying off the maid.
Liberals are RACIST!
I’m not sure the link to CTV does make the story any clearer. If they simply mean linking the 2010 wage to the CPI changes, the word retroactive is redundant. Whether you link by the annual rate for each year, or simply link 2013/2010 you will get the same answer within a few cents.Such inflation calcs are widespread in Canada.
Using the rates supplied by CTV would give a wage for 2011, 2012 and 2013 of $10.55. $10.71 and $10.80. Using All item CPI average for Ont 123.0/115.5 would give $10.82. Inflation for Ont between 2010 and 2013 was approx 5.6%
So CTV calculates the new wage at $11.00 to $11.25. This assumes an increase of 7.3% to 9.8%
I don’t expect Ont Liberals to be able to do the math, but CTV seems equally bad. How are they calculating their figure?
“..but CTV seems equally bad. How are they calculating their figure?”
Martin, my dear fellow, are you suggesting that CTV – or any other MSM outlet, for that matter – has that singular ounce of requisite curiosity to dream that such an exercise might be considered, let alone the brains to complete the math?
Why stop there why not just raise it to $1,000,000 annually. Then everyone would be rich and poverty would be over. Also everyone should get a unicorn.
Absolute nut cases. Alberta and Saskatchewan should apply maximum pressure to have companies move out of Ontario. Time to dump any Ontario provincial bonds you might have….if you haven’t already done so.
Sounds like another play from the brilliant French Government’s handbook.
And Rob Ford is the wacky one!
Shouldn’t that be Wynnering? Because she has the face of an old nag?
I would be surprised if the UFCW had a hand in this move. Imagine them getting to collect 4 back years worth of back dues from all the minimum wage workers that turned over at the various employment locales they infect.
Heck why not make it retroactive to all persons who had a wage below $10.25 since Ontario was founded in 1867. I would like to collect reparations for my ancestors having to work for .25¢ an hour around the turn of the century. Because they didn’t have the benefit of a $10.25 minimum wage and Nag Hag’s obvious fiscal smarts.
Who in their right mind would do business in Ontario.
Wages are a cost for business, aren’t they? So all the tax calculations for those businesses affected by having to backpay minimum wage increases will have to be redone, and taxes refunded. Where will the Ontario government get the money to pay for those refunds? Retroactive tax increases?
C’s suggestion in the first comment is looking pretty realistic for Ontario.
There’s a better report on this here that does a better job of explaining the “retroactively”:
http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-to-hike-10-25-minimum-wage-retroactively-to-2010-source-1.1657371
Still, a massively stupid idea that will be whitewashed with “at least it’s not caving to the $14/hour crew so it’s moderate!” I’m sure.
I can’t imagine this means that business owners will have pay employees and former employees back wages. Not only is it impractical to track down all these people in jobs that have a notoriously high turnover rate but is also unaffordable to businesses. I can only assume it is bogus news or it is not really retroactive in the way unions get retro pay after strikes and lockouts.
Well, they already bought votes with the gas plant cancellations, so why not use private business’ money? She’ll have to call an election pretty quick before the layoffs begin. Of course, there could be grants available–just cancel the next cancellation!
Mugabe tried that in Zimbabwe they ended up printing notes with trillions. I think he tried stealing all the Unicorns from the white land owners but they died or something.
-Retroactive- change in the minimum wage? My first reaction is that’s got to be illegal. How can government come along and say to a private business that they suddenly owe $x.xx to every employee for retroactive pay? That’s impossible.
But then I remember that this is Canada, where Parliament can make ANY law they wish, restrained by nothing and no one.
Just in case any of you Lefties want to know what “no right to private property” looks like in the wild, it looks like a retroactive minimum wage hike.
You still think your bank deposits and RRSPs are safe? HA!
A million a year? Don’t be ridiculous. I could make due with a quarter of that, and I don’t need another unicorn thanks.
Just wait and see what happens when OPSEU’s contract for the OPS is up this year.
The great vote buying scheme is just getting started.
“Retroactive” is union jargon.
The unions are very active in Ontario right now with anti-Harper and Hudak e-mails, adds and rallies.
A rally today in Windsor carried “Harper resign Now!” signs.
Wynne is schmoozing with the union.
Funny, but I don’t get a cost of living raise every year. So basically what this does is slowly erode the value of my wage by bringing up the bottom feeders with no skills and no education. How long until the minimum wage is the only wage?
The next complaints will come from the welfare recipients as they will feel discriminated against. Glad to hear Ontario is just rolling in money and businesses are tripping over each other to get in on the action. No ? And they thought Dalton was bad. Heh.
Not only would businesses have to track down by mail hundreds of former workers, the returns of these people would all have to be recalculated. If they impacted on family returns as many would, then these would also be subject to reassessment.
I know the ordeal of trying to track multi T4s for a few hours work currently, how would someone do this 3 years back?
This nightmare scenario is something only people divorced from normal business-worker relationships could dream up.
Nothing says kleptocrat like retroactive legislation.
Rule of law?
Contract?
Those are for the old fashioned little straight people.
Unfit to hold public office.
The likes of Wynne need this tattooed on their forehead.
But observe the presstitutes of the MSM, they will gather and cackle about how clever, forward thinking the unelected premier is.
It does create some interesting possibilities, so we could in theory, same one winee and co are using, retroactively make laws, that lying, stealing and being unbelievably stupid are capitol crimes for elected officials.
Works for me.
Think of the pension money we could salvage.
So “retroactive” for calculation purposes only. That makes more sense.
OK, hang on, total Wynne-hater here. But these comments sound like the thoughtless dreck I see on WK.com all the time. No one’s tracking down any previous workers to give them backpay – they are simply looking back to the inflation rate “retroactively” to 2010 to calculate the increase. These comments are starting to look like they come from LIVs … please read and think first.
First the 9% for the OPP which will cost all of you Ontario taxpayers higher property taxes and now this.
She has taken a page right out of Lenin’s handbook, “bread and land”.
How long are you people from Ontario going to have to suffer these Marxist fools?
Yes, the CP “report” wasn’t clear about what the “retroactive” part was about while the CTV report made it clear.
wynne has avoided election since becoming der leader.
and has side-stepped TOmayor Ford.
just doin the two-step…talkin atcha…what gas plants?
The real joke is the annual April Fools Day adjustment…
Moving to Ontario soon,
Gonna be a mental wage tycoon.
I only hope Obama doesn’t learn about this initiative before his State of The Union speech tomorrow. It’s his kind of progressive idea.
Wynne must not only be deposed but strapped to a rocket and fired into the sun.
The result is known as bad luck.
If anyone is interested, this link is a good read:
http://www.thebigquestions.com/2013/02/18/thoughts-on-the-minimum-wage/
Here’s the gist: “If we’re going to transfer income to low-wage workers, it’s both fundamentally unfair and politically unwise to put the entire burden of that transfer on a relatively small segment of the population (namely the owners and customers of businesses that employ a lot of low-wage workers).”
This is one of the most asinine ideas that’s come by in a while. Interest rates now are very low, but here’s a moonbat announcing that a very economically distorting minimum wage is going to go up yearly. The government can’t have its cake and eat it too; it assumes that it can sell bonds which pay less interest than the rate of inflation and also ensure that the totally unskilled are paid more every year.
Minimum wages should not exist. Payment for services rendered should be a private matter between employer and employee (or, for tax breaks, an agreement between two private contractors). I’ve seen patients on welfare jump for jobs that pay $5/hour in cash as they can’t make $5/hour doing the primary occupation open to a person on welfare in Vancouver – dumpster diving.
A person with no skills deserves no pay; what they can negotiate with someone is for their room and board to be paid while they learn some skills. I’ve never worked at minimum wage for more than a day; usually at the end of the first day of work I’d negotiate a much better hourly remuneration for my services by working much harder than the average minimum wage unskilled worker. The fact that more and more people in Ontario are working at minimum wage jobs means that the government’s economic policies are driving industry out of Ontario. The solution is not to increase the minimum wage, it’s to get rid of all of the statist regulation that’s sending companies to more business friendly climes. Of course such common sense thinking is completely foreign to statists.
Loki said “I’ve never worked at minimum wage for more than a day”
did the patient die:-)))))
Is it just me or is everyone tired of Loki pretending to be a doctor.
It’s just you.
The vote buying continues apace!
And with other peoples’ money – bonus!
“…Alberta and Saskatchewan should apply maximum pressure to have companies move out of Ontario.”
Absolutely right, Joey. For several years now various US jurisdictions – well aware of the anti-business policies of Ontario’s government – have been advertising on border radio and TV stations for Ontario companies to move south. Now, with creeping Liberalism having worn off most of the US lustre, Sask. and Alta. should be doing the same thing.
No reason why Ontario’s continued losses shouldn’t benefit another province.
in a word….stupid.
Nice that both news outlets linked to have the exact same misinterpretation of the facts of the story in their headlines. Hey, who needs accuracy when we are talking the news industry?
Raising the minimum wage without consideration for small business is a recipe for disaster. I know, it was the nail in the coffin for my second restaurant in BC back in the mid 90’s. Also, just like the welfare mindset, if you turn a “minimum” wage into a “comfortable” wage, you destroy much of the incentive for the individual to improve themselves and their position in society.
Exactly!
Three cheers for Loki!
It’s becoming obvious now on which platform Wynne is going to base her election upon: the Ontario Pension Plan (pandering to unions and guaranteeing that businesses costs increase) and the new minimum wage (as Loki so aptly put it: having your cake and eating it, too).
A brilliant plan promising riches to entrenched unions – who will redouble their efforts to villify the PCs through legally questionable election advertising – and buying votes from the low-information voters in the “minimum wage” bracket.
The NDP will be outflanked – short of nationalizing the economy, what else could they offer? And the PCs, well, they might be able to counter this nonsense if they had a strong leader and a dedicated campaign team pushing their message out to the public despite the inanities from the MSM.
God help Ontario.
Most workers will not make one cent more per week. Their hours will be adjusted down, there will be less service for the customers, and they will be abused more frequently by their customers. This is inevitable, and happened with the last big increase under McGuinty.
this will slightly raise the unemployment level to 40% after all businesses who owe back pay declare bankruptcy within a day of it coming into effect.
Typical Lieberal process:
Float one ridiculously stupid and one poorly worded idea: raise the minimum wage to $14, and make the raise retroactive. Then come back and say “No, we meant make the raise cumulative to the last time it was raised, and certainly not $14/hr!”. Then it sounds like they’re eminently reasonable and sane.
It won’t be the disaster that some here predict, but it will be another straw on the camel’s back. Tipping point coming soon.
So as usual the newsies got it wrong, and there is nothing “retroactive” about any of this. Plain old minimum wage hike, nothing different or special other than the sales pitch. Awesome.
Look for the price of everything done with unskilled labor to rise right along with this. Meaning restaurant food, groceries, deliveries, construction etc.
It will sell well to the huge numbers of minimum wage voters out there in Toronto. They have to pay a lot more in gas to drive their long commutes to those minimum wage jobs in the GTA, and extra buck an hour will help.
Until they get laid off, anyway.
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/research-news/display.aspx?id=19280
From the article above:
“Ontario’s debt load is higher than that of California, America’s most-indebted state, and could reach 66 per cent of GDP by 2019 unless the provincial government musters the courage to rein in spending, says a new report released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.”
“…“If Ontario continues spending at its current rate, its net debt will increase to 66 per cent from 37 per cent in just seven years. It took Greece 10 years to experience a similar increase. This highlights the unsustainability of Ontario’s current spending trends,” Veldhuis said.
Inaction or insufficient spending reforms could mean that somewhere down the road, Ontario could experience a fiscal crisis of Greek proportions. While not there yet, the pain and severity of reform needed in Greece serves as an example to Ontarians about the benefits of proactive reform now before a crisis evolves.
“Neither Ontario nor Greece has been responsible in managing their fiscal situations. Fortunately, Ontario is in a position where it can still restore its public finances to good health without the type of fiscal trauma currently underway in Greece,” Clemens said.
Minimum Wage Hike – Because Green Energy costs are not killing jobs fast enough
So the media got it wrong?
Really?
Retroactive theft is so progressive.
Perhaps the media actually reported what they were told.
Like the good little lapdogs they are.
Stranger things have happened.
Or in error they published the true intent of the Ontario Libtards.
Time to start laying off the maid.
Liberals are RACIST!
I’m not sure the link to CTV does make the story any clearer. If they simply mean linking the 2010 wage to the CPI changes, the word retroactive is redundant. Whether you link by the annual rate for each year, or simply link 2013/2010 you will get the same answer within a few cents.Such inflation calcs are widespread in Canada.
Using the rates supplied by CTV would give a wage for 2011, 2012 and 2013 of $10.55. $10.71 and $10.80. Using All item CPI average for Ont 123.0/115.5 would give $10.82. Inflation for Ont between 2010 and 2013 was approx 5.6%
So CTV calculates the new wage at $11.00 to $11.25. This assumes an increase of 7.3% to 9.8%
I don’t expect Ont Liberals to be able to do the math, but CTV seems equally bad. How are they calculating their figure?
“..but CTV seems equally bad. How are they calculating their figure?”
Martin, my dear fellow, are you suggesting that CTV – or any other MSM outlet, for that matter – has that singular ounce of requisite curiosity to dream that such an exercise might be considered, let alone the brains to complete the math?