Wynne's Liberals trumpeted Toronto making it onto the shortlist — 20 seems more like a shorter longlist if you ask me — of prospective cities for the new Amazon headquarters last week as if it was irrefutable proof Ontario is fertile ground for businesses to operate and thrive. Much of the Canadian mainstream media followed suit, easily excitable over any mention of Canada abroad, reporting breathlessly that it was promising news that the third largest city in North America made a list of 20 cities still in the running to see which jurisdiction can best bend over backwards to seal the deal with Amazon. Cooler heads at The Atlantic pointed out that the courting of Amazon from hundreds of cities ends up being a quick race to the bottom, so if Toronto, in the case of a miracle (our high hydro rates and Trump's lowering of taxes in the U.S. should easily be disqualifiers), has the winning bid for the new HQ it will not be proof that Ontario is a safe haven for business, but rather further confirmation this province is highly amenable to giving big business a leg up while continuing to poison the lifeblood of any healthy economy: entrepreneurs and small business.
Drenched in irony, as most things are in Ontario politics, the same week the Liberals hailed the Amazon non-news, Wynne also puffed out her chest in her unofficial role as protectorate of the proletariat by declaring her government had moved to up the amount of bureaucrats policing businesses to crack down on those businesses violating the "spirit and letter of the law" of her new crippling 21 per cent increase of the minimum wage with little notice. Wynne, remarkably, even repeated the false statement — at her taxpayer-funded re-election stop in a Liberal-held riding in Ottawa — that these additional 175 Employment Standards Officers are going to ensure businesses (read small businesses being squeezed by government dictates) follow the spirit of the law in Soviet-Union-like-named The Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act. Let's hope this is merely more grandstanding from the awfully bully-like premier, otherwise we may see enforcement officers interpreting, through their feeling of what Wynne's vision of fairness is, the spirit of the law and punishing mean businesses through extra-judicial, spirited means, perhaps including trashing unfair businesses with nasty Yelp reviews, vandalizing their vicinities, and siccing the premier to publicly denounce greedy business owners on Twitter.
"There certainly aren't any legal repercussion in terms of any business that decides to go against quote-on-quote the spirit of the legislation. And of course that is a subjective term, what matters fundamentally from a legal perspective is the letter of the legislation," explained Employment Lawyer Jason Beeho explained on CBC's The National last week, in the rolling coverage from the state broadcaster that was filled with sources cheerleading the rash minimum wage hike.
As the Liberal government continues to drill into Ontarians heads, through endless repetition of their mantra via new legislation, tens-of-millions-of-dollars in government ads, and talking points, that they're fighting for a fairer Ontario, alarm bells should be ringing for anyone who's read, and fully understands, the allegorical fable Animal Farm.
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
In Ontario — tragically an ongoing recrudescence of this tale — the more equal pigs gorging in the farmhouse are big businesses, public unions, bureaucrats, underachievers, cosmopolitans and politicians.
Big businesses? Loblaw Companies Ltd., despite lately being exposed for sleazy business practices like price-fixing bread (they'll only get slap on the wrist for) and allegedly avoiding paying $404 million in taxes by using a shell company, is being given up to $75,000 from the Ontario government per electric truck it buys from Tesla, which just so happens to be the company that has an old Liberal aide hired as a lobbyist of the provincial government and was also a beneficiary of the Ontario rebate program that gave affluent Ontarians up to $14,000 off their new luxury electric cars. But back to Loblaws, an exemplar of some businesses treated more equal than others, the company was also one of the large grocery store chains entrusted to sell alcohol. Mom and pop stores in typical fashion were given the shaft. And of course the Beer Store, owned by multinational beer conglomerates, was allowed to keep its de facto monopoly over beers sales in Ontario, continuing to deter microbreweries from competing for bigger market shares and keeping their right to gouge consumers. I could go on and on here, but hopefully you get the point I'm trying to make by picking on the all-too-deserving Loblaw Companies Ltd.
Public Unions? One need look no further than the lion's share of third-party spending in the last election or how generous their last collective bargaining agreements were to see how much some unions run the show in this province.
Bureaucrats? Look no further than the growing Sunshine List last year, despite Hydro One names being removed, and public service job increases to see that this is the case. Delve a little deeper and it only gets more abundantly clear.
Underachievers? Minimum wage-earning individuals in Ontario apparently deserve the right to make a comfortable livelihood and career working at a low-skilled job their entire lives, never needing to strive to better themselves. Those more enterprising individuals working for themselves and entrepreneurs will just need to pick up the tab for their comrades. While we're on this topic, why did the servers wage also increase, gouging restaurant's thin profit margin, when they already make far more than back of house workers and way above, on average, minimum wage workers? Want to go to ever-expanding university campuses with lower and lower entrance standards but your parents can't pay for it? Well if you want to study in the liberal arts (the government doesn't cover all of engineering and other more promising fields, which don't brainwash you into believing identity politics and other cultural Marxist theory, mind you) and your parents make a combined income under $50,000 and your grades are subpar then congratulations! You're a winner! You get free tuition! You've earned it! If your parents make slightly more than $50,000 (or your parents just won't pay) and you have above average grades, sorry! You just haven't earned it yet baby! Your parents just make a little too much compared to that subpar student's parents. Get a job or loan or tell your parents to make less. The government is only making things fairer.
Cosmopolitans? All heavily taxed jurisdictions end up plundering the rural areas to feather the nests of the city dwellers. Hog Town — aptly named — votes overwhelmingly Red and Orange for good (self-serving) reasons. This also explains why the rural areas have been burdened with wind farms and solar farms (where Liberal friends made off like bandits with non-competitive 20-year-fixed contracts), as well as being forced to pay the brunt of the higher hydro rates.
Inevitably, as banks' and (honest) economists' and a former Liberal Finance Minister predictions come true, putting fairness on the backs of small businesses is likely to break them like poor Boxer's did. Unless Ontarians grow up and start realizing life isn't fair, and success should be emulated, not condemned, they're going to find out just how unfair things can get in a very ugly way.
Photo Credit: CBC News
Written by Graeme C. Gordon
