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Day: August 23, 2018

Alberta's minimum wage goes up to $15 an hour October 1 and the business lobby is on the angry train to derail the hike.

Now sitting at $13.60 an hour, the province's minimum wage is second highest in Canada.  The Oct. 1 hike will push Alberta to the top of the provincial heap.

But the Canadian Federation of Independent Business is sounding the alarm.  The group wants a delay to assess what the hike will do to the provincial economy, code for 'let's delay it long enough for a likely United Conservative Party election win in the spring, thus completely kiboshing any increase.'

The CFIB cites its own poll of small business owners to argue that since the last hike to $13.60 business people have reduced plans to hire new workers and young people, eliminated some jobs and raised prices to the consumer.

Radio talk show hosts have been happy to jump on the issue, inviting CFIB's articulate director of provincial affairs Amber Ruddy to outline the concerns, particularly in the hospitality and food service industry, that the escalating wage has created.

"Hikes to entry level wages go too far, too fast and ultimately positions for young workers are disappearing," says Ruddy in a CFIB press release.

The number that oft times gets quoted is a City of Calgary report showing the loss of 25,700 service sector jobs in Calgary over the past year.  The city gained in other sectors, however, for a net job loss of 9,200 in all sectors.  There is no doubt Calgary has been sluggish on the employment front and is continuing to struggle with the deep economic dive it took in 2015-16, thanks to the faltering oil and gas sector.

All those empty towers on the downtown skyline in Calgary mean fewer well-heeled customers for city bars and restaurants, among the businesses most likely to be hit by the minimum wage increase.

So it's natural that the loudest voices on the call-in shows come from Calgary.

The minimum wage issue just doesn't seem to spark the same level of outrage in Edmonton, underscoring the difference not just in the politics of the two cities, (Edmonton went entirely NDP in the 2015 election and has a long history of centre-to-left politics) but now also in the economy of the two cities.

Edmonton never dipped as low as Calgary and is recovering at a fairly steady pace.  The overall unemployment rate in Edmonton is 6.5, compared to 7.9 in Calgary.

In a province-wide call-in on CBC, John Rose, economist for the City of Edmonton, pointed out that while Calgary was shedding jobs, Edmonton gained, in total, 23,000 jobs in the past 12 months.  He admitted accommodation and food sector jobs shrank slightly by 4,500 jobs but overall Edmonton's economy is not dealing with the same circumstances as Calgary.

For Alberta, minimum wage focuses right in on who's interests hold the day for the provincial political agenda.  UCP and Alberta Party politicians are thumping for a halt to the Oct. 1 hike, predicting dire economic consequences.

But for the NDP the issue is at the very core of their 2015 election platform.  When Rachel Notley's government came to power in spring 2015 Alberta's minimum wage was tied for the lowest in the country at $10.20 an hour.  The government swiftly put an annually stepped increase in place to culminate with this year's $15 rate.

Notley has been chiming in on Twitter in the past couple of weeks reiterating her government's determination to keep going.

"Who benefits from a higher minimum wage?  It's women.  It's single parents.  It's families who are working more than two full-time jobs but who were still struggling to put food on the table and pay rent.  We're not going to let working people get left behind," tweeted the premier.

The NDP argues Calgary's business malaise is not a function of a high minimum wage, which should puff up consumer spending while reducing historic wage inequities.

The relative health of Edmonton's job environment, not so dependent on the oil and gas economy, backs up the argument.

But for Calgary small businesses and their conservative backers, the NDP wage policy is an issue which will likely have strong legs through the fall and, they hope, into the spring election period.

It will be one of the issues that further define the different between Alberta's two largest cities, politically and economically, and might well be reflected in how the vote differs city to city.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

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I've made countless videos mocking him.  I've written article after article calling him out.  Yet, up until his much-derided tweetstorm where he decided that Canada had too much diversity, I'd never been able to put my finger on what it was about Max Bernier that irked me so.

I knew that it had something to do with his very virtue-signally and disingenuous brand of "libertarianism", which apparently can be stretched to include the kind of culturally conservative sentiments he espoused online.  (This, despite the fact that a year ago he was blasting Kellie Leitch for saying things that were not half as closed-borders-y.)

I knew it also had something to do with the distinctly cult-like manner in which his Road Warrior acolytes rationalized away these broad and yawning chasms in their leader's ideology.  Bernier the former separatist, a guy who hails from a part of the country where literally everyone is obsessed with proving they are distinct and unique in barely quantifiable ways, can coexist quite comfortably in the minds of his obsessed fanboys with Bernier the slayer of the identity politics dragon, for example.

But only now, as this less shiny pony runs wild across the Canadian Twittersphere, claiming to speak for a silent majority of voters who are allegedly sick and tired of all this "balkanization" being brought upon us by Trudeau and his globalist pals, do I realize exactly what it is about him that makes me want to make videos pouring milk over myself in protest.

It is the naked and completely delusional self-aggrandizement that he operates under, that would cause him to believe, and say aloud, that the brain drippings of his tiny circle of self-professed intellectuals are actually in line with what Canadians want.

Bernier and his fanboys want the end of supply management.  Canadians don't.

Bernier and his fanboys think there is some conspiracy afoot on reserves to defraud taxpayers of their hard earned dollars.  Canadians do not.

Bernier and his fanboys think that "identity politics" is a scourge to be rooted out.  Canadians do not agree.

The rightness of Bernier's views, or the wrongness of his critics' views, have no bearing on the fact that if Canadians shared Bernier's opinions, then he would not have to write whiny tell-all books complaining that he was screwed out of the CPC leadership by a bunch of conniving dairy farmers, or cry about how Andrew Scheer is being mean to him.

We know that this is so because somehow, no matter what kind of censorious trials and tribulations poor Max is subjected to, no posse of rescuers ever comes over the hill to save him.  No angel ever cries out from heaven on Max's behalf.  And when Max can't even soak up enough sympathy votes to move his agenda forward, he stops being a tragic figure (if he ever was one) and becomes a pathetic one.

Max and his Road Warriors would have you believe that this sad state of affairs is due to Canadians simply not being properly exposed to his gospel, and that his multiple losses are actually victories.  Every Twitter meltdown, every policy pronouncement released to an underwhelming response, every demonstration that he is completely unable to handle anything above a low-speed, low-energy baseline of trading on his dad's name in his little Quebec City fiefdom, is actually a validation of how amazing he and his team are doing when it comes to promoting "the ideas of liberty."

Instead, Max's sad fate is the fate of the Canadian conservative movement as a whole, and the progressive movement, and any other such "movement" that aims to disturb the centrist peace, which is maintained by the Liberal globalists to be sure, but also by the will of Canadians until they prove otherwise.

This reality, chosen by Canadians in vote after vote, poll after poll, is one where they are perfectly happy being farmed for taxes, dictated to by the CBC, and subject to as much immigration as the Liberals think they can get away with.

Maxime Bernier, the professed libertarian, cannot bring himself to accept the possibility that this is the reality that they willingly consent to.  I do not like this reality any more than any other conservative, but I cannot pretend, as Max does, that by saying so I speak for anyone other than myself.

Photo Credit: CBC News

Written by Josh Lieblein

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The Quebec election is kicking off Thursday and the results could fundamentally change the political landscape in Quebec and in Canada.

Since the Parti Québécois arrived on the political scene in the 70s and formed its first government in 1976, Quebec elections have been fought on the constitutional axis.  Federalists voted Liberal, separatists voted PQ, and soft nationalists switched back and forth, allowing for some gains and losses between the two main parties.

The rise of the PQ meant the ideological debates on the left/right axis happened mostly within the two parties, who could both count on a very progressive wing and a more conservative one, battling it out internally for the control of their respective party.

The rise of the PQ also lead to the disappearance of the Union Nationale as a dominant political force, before it's complete extinction before the 1989 election.  L'Union Nationale was founded in 1935 as a result of the merger between the Conservative Party of Quebec and the Action Libérale Nationale, a splinter party from the then governing Liberals.  Led by Maurice Duplessis, l'Union Nationale formed government on its first attempt in 1936.  The very conservative, church-aligned party was in power without interruption from 1944 to 1960.  However, after Premier Jean-Jacques Bertrand lost to Robert Bourassa in 1970, the Union Nationale was a spent political force.

Is the PQ on the same trajectory?

Between 1976 and 1998, in each election the PQ competed for government and never received less than 38% of the vote.

After the failure of the Meech Lake Accord, the Quebec Liberal Party adopted an official constitutional policy known as the "Allaire Report", advocating decentralized federalism and significant increased powers for the Quebec government.  The Liberals eventually dropped the report in 1992 in favor of the Charlottetown accord.

This brought the creation of another splinter party by dissident Liberals.  Led by the report's author Jean Allaire and his lieutenant Mario Dumont, the former president of the Liberals Youth Commission, the dissidents founded the Action démocratique du Québec.  Dumont replaced Allaire as leader soon after.

From the beginning, the ADQ advocated fiscal conservatism and soon played the identity card.  Dumont was elected to the National Assembly in the 1994 general election and became a key player in the 1995 referendum campaigning for the OUI camp, alongside Jacques Parizeau and Lucien Bouchard.

This was the beginning of a slow rise for the party: from 6% in 1994, the party steadily climbed to 12% in 1998, 18% in 2003 and became the official opposition in 2007, with 31% of the vote and 41 seats, placing Jean Charest's Liberals in a minority situation and relegating the PQ to 3rd place.

Quebec had entered a period of political realignment.  Several years of political upheavals and partisan changes were ahead.  After the PLQ minority government in 2007, disappointing results for the ADQ in 2008 led to Dumont's resignation and eventually the transformation of the party into the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), led by François Legault.

The PQ formed a minority government in 2012, the Liberals then mounted a comeback in 2014.  During this period, the PQ changed leaders seven times!

Meanwhile, Legault has been steadily building support for his party.  The CAQ is entering this campaign as the favourite, the Liberals are fighting against voters' fatigue and the PQ is struggling to keep its head above water and is polling below 20% regularly.

The realignment might very well be complete on October 1st.

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