Why
people watching their budgets are also watching Mulcair
Minimum-wage increases, affordable daycare are issues average
Canadians care about.
PATRICK DOYLE/THE CANADIAN PRESS
After a scattershot start in Opposition, NDP leader Thomas
Mulcair has focussed on pocketbook issues.
By: David Olive Business, Business Columnist, Published on Mon Aug 03 2015
The
federal election is more than two months away. Yet it’s already apparent why
the NDP has a decent chance of winning it, with issues that turn on household
economics.
In a
nutshell, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair will run on crowd-pleasing pocketbook
issues, including increased CPP payouts to seniors on fixed incomes, affordable
daycare, a pay raise for tens of thousands of minimum-wage workers, and a
rollback of the seniors’ pension eligibility age to 65, from the 67 years of
age imposed by PM Stephen Harper.
Apart
from copious attack ads, the Harper playbook isn’t ideally suited to a 2015
election. Many of its policy points lack voter relevance, and some will put him
on the defensive. Harper is at his most effective, sadly, when on the
offensive, slagging his adversaries — bait that a statesmanlike like Mulcair
seldom takes.
Harper
is also touting his record of economic stewardship. That could be a tough sell.
Canada’s
national debt has increased 27 per cent on Harper’s free-spending watch, or
$131 billion. At 6.8 per cent, the jobless rate remains higher than before the
Great Recession (it was 6.0 per cent in 2007). And after five consecutive
months of negative GDP growth, Canada might be heading into a recession (six
months would make it an official recession).
Harper
claims Canada is outperforming its G-7 peers in terms of long-term economic
vigour. But in the past two years, the U.S. and the U.K. have outperformed
Canada in GDP growth and job creation. The International Monetary Fund (IMF)
forecasts Canada’s future economic growth rate at 1.5 per cent per year,
trailing that of the U.S., Germany, Britain and even Spain, which is currently
enduring a severe recession.
Harper
is also already trotting out more of his “boutique” tax cuts, which have the
ring of genuine help. But they actually affect very few Canadians, in part
because Canada’s 4.4 million people living in poverty do not have enough income
to benefit from tax breaks.
Past
examples of this Tory political “narrowcasting” — appealing to niches of the
electorate rather than all voters — are the Harper tax breaks on the purchase
of children’s hockey equipment.
Harper
was at it again Sunday, Day One of the longest, costliest campaign in modern
Canadian history!
(The $375 million tab for Elections Canada alone would pay
for 2.5 million affordable housing units.) Harper kicked off the Tory campaign
with a pledge of tax breaks for businesses that hire tradespeople.
That is
the microscopic approach to job creation long favoured by this government, and
a dubious one that in this case would waste $60 million. A tax break won't be
the deciding factor for a business owner contemplating an investment in the
wages, benefits and training costs of a new hire. But this trivial policy plank
does give Harper a talking point with his small-business constituency,
extolling the hugely exaggerated role of small business in job creation.
Justin
Trudeau, sixth leader in the past 12 years of an underfunded Liberal Party,
will struggle to break out of his appearance as the me-too candidate. Trudeau
mimics Mulcair in pledging to roll back the retirement eligibility age to 65,
and in faulting Harper’s record on job creation.
Minimum-wage
increases were once a contentious issue. But today, Mulcair is aligned with
popular and business sentiment in calling for them.
In a
milestone decision in late July, New York State raised its minimum wage for
fast-food workers to $15 (U.S.) an hour by 2018, a stunning 71 per cent
increase.
Britain
and Germany have recently raised their minimum wages; and Barack Obama and U.S.
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton each support minimum-wage hikes. Premier
Rachel Notley has committed to raising the Alberta minimum wage to $15 (Cdn.)
by 2018.
Major
U.S. cities also have been raising their minimum wages, among them Los Angeles,
Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. So have many large
employers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp., McDonald’s Corp., The
Gap Inc. and retailer TJX Cos. (owner of Winners, Marshalls and HomeSense).
For
several years, dating from even before the Occupy movement of 2011, public
sentiment has been shifting toward fairness for the working poor, twinned with
a growing contempt for the wealthiest 1 per cent.
In
retailing, food service, tourism and other non-union low-wage ghettos, an
increase in the minimum wage is the only pay raise the working poor will ever
see. It’s worth repeating that most poor people go to work each day.
The
chief argument against minimum-wage hikes is that the extra cost kills
unskilled, entry-level jobs.
But that
assertion, which countless studies have cast doubt on, is offset by improved
employee morale and resulting efficiency gains. Higher pay also translates into
a drop in costly employee turnover and in “shrinkage” (employee and customer
theft).
And
while rich people often don’t know what to do with a tax-cut windfall, or even
notice they’ve received one, low-income households spend every additional
dollar on postponed basic necessities. And that boosts consumer spending across
the entire economy.
Mulcair
arguably emerged from the shadow of his popular predecessor, Jack Layton, last
September when he committed the NDP to restoring the minimum wage for federal
government employees, and setting that wage at $15 (Cdn).
“It is
unacceptable that in a country as rich as Canada people can work full time and
still live in poverty,” Mulcair said at the time.
While
that step would affect only federal workers and employees of federally
regulated industries, increases in the federal minimum wage would put upward
pressure on the lowest wages elsewhere in the economy. That not only would
boost consumer spending, it would also reduce the growth rate of social-support
funding to alleviate the hardships of poverty.
As noted
earlier in this space, a recent poll by Global TV found that 74 per cent of
Canadians support a higher minimum wage. And a majority — 52 per cent — favour
a $15 minimum wage.
The NDP
platform heading into the federal election also calls for tougher measures to
curb global warming, restoring the thorough environmental assessment process
for new energy projects that Harper has gutted, and an industrial strategy that
promotes alternative-energy technologies and other high-pay job-creating
21st-century industries.
But
those aren't the issues by which the NDP will command attention, if it succeeds
in doing so against an exceptionally combative incumbent PM.
More
effective will be the NDP’s commitment raise Canada Pension Plan payouts beyond
the current maximum of $12,000 a year, yet another populist measure. The Harper
government has flatly refused to increase CPP assistance to fixed-income
Canadians.
Harper’s
dismissal of the issue prompted Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne to promote a new
Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP) to top up inadequate CPP payouts. Wynne
now says that the bureaucratic expense of creating an ORPP can be avoided if a
future PM strengthens the CPP, which would be a break for Ontario taxpayers.
The NDP
is also committed to creating 1 million $15-a-day daycare spaces across the
country over the next decade. In a GTA that is growing by the size of Calgary
every seven years, daycare spaces are both scarce and expensive. Annual daycare
costs for just one child can run to $14,000 a year.
Affordable
daycare, long a mainstay of European life, is an overdue reform. It was
pioneered years ago in Quebec, where Mulcair was, of course, a popular
provincial cabinet minister. Before Paul Martin’s government was toppled, the
then-PM had promised to roll out the Quebec daycare model across Canada. That’s
not a radical notion. It’s similar to Lester Pearson’s landmark achievement in
making Saskatchewan’s pioneering Medicare system a coast-to-coast realty.
It’s
Mulcair’s social-policy initiatives that likely account for most of the recent
NDP gains in the polls. Affordable daycare, decent pay, and better CPP benefits
that kick in at 65 rather than 67 are among the close-to-home issues to which
voters most powerfully relate.
Mulcair’s
first year in his current post was marked by a scattergun approach to issues.
But the NDP has steadily gained traction since he made affordable daycare, a
decent living wage, gridlock-busting urban infrastructure funding and enhanced
CPP benefits the centrepieces of his party’s platform.
One of
my friends behind the counter at my local Tim Hortons (many of whose
minimum-wage employees work two jobs) would like to have a second child. But
with daycare expenses of $12,000 a year, she and her husband cannot afford to
do so.
That
makes the minimum wage a genuine “family values” issue, since their current
miserably low level is an impediment to family formation.
My
friend is not the only denizen of “Tim’s Nation,” supposedly part of the Harper
political base, who is paying a lot of attention to Mulcair these days.
More on thestar.com
Posts
The long-awaited decision, which will see the pipeline pass through northern Kenya so that it can also serve Kenya's prospective oil blocks as well as Uganda's own vast reserves, is expected to provide a much-needed boost for both countries and could transform the region into a major oil hub. 