The Making Ontario Open for Business Act aims to bring jobs back to the province, lighten the burden on business and make sure hard work is rewarded. It is not clear that repealing Bill-148 will have all those effects or exactly what the impacts the alternate government measures will be. But we do know that keeping the minimum wage at $14 an hour for nearly three years will be bad for public health.
Poverty is one of the best predictors of health. People making minimum wage earn less than $20,000 for a 40-hour week, and hover near the poverty line. They will live up to five fewer years than people who have higher wages, they will use more health and social services and their children will do less well at school and be at increased risk of illness themselves. Canada has a high poverty rate for a developed country and Toronto is the child poverty capital of Canada.
Poverty and low wages decrease your life expectancy and increase the risk of cancer, heart disease, respiratory diseases, diabetes, accidents, and mental health and addiction problems, just to name a few.
It’s like treading water in the sea. If you stop treading, you’ll drown; if you keep treading, you use so much energy that you just wear out. The eventual outcome of both cases is the same.
We need a way to keep people’s heads above water.
A decent minimum wage and job security puts a platform under people’s feet. It gives them the opportunity to do more than tread water. It can allow them to participate fully in society and make the most of themselves. By doing this, it can decrease health inequities.
Some will argue that most people who earn a minimum wage are students. In fact, 40 per cent of people who earn the minimum wage and 60 per cent of people who earn a few cents more than the minimum wage are over 25 years of age. They are more likely to be women and from racialized groups. Their pay makes a real difference to their families.
We could focus on building an economy that is favourable for business and hope that businesses pass on the benefits to workers. But recent history has shown this is unlikely. Profits linked to increased productivity have not been passed on to lower-paid workers. Automation, globalization, decreased union membership and changes in the number of people getting benefits has meant that, in real terms, low-paid workers are getting the worst deal they’ve had for 50 years.
The Wellesley Institute used an evidence-based approach to calculate how much money a person needs to live a healthy life in Toronto and found that a single person aged 25-40 would need $46,000 a year after tax. A person earning minimum wage would have to work more than double the healthy 40-hour work week to achieve this. If not, they would have a gap of more than $25,000 to fill.
But if they do not fill the gap, the costs do not go away. We will all have to pay for increased health services, social services and increased crime, a predictable consequence of a population earning low wages.
At some point, we must decide who or what will fill the gap. Will it be industry, the province, or will we just let people fend for themselves? If we do the last, we are agreeing to build an economy and society favourable for business at the expense of public health.
We need to attract industry that offers jobs we can afford. We need to decide whether low-paid jobs are the way forward in Ontario and consider what needs to be done so that we do not trap workers in poverty.
Hard-working people are just a paycheque away from going under, and their health is suffering. Those earning the current minimum wage will have health impacts and these will only increase.
It has been said that a job is good for your health. But the truth is that only a good job is good for your health. And good jobs are good for Ontario.
Dr. Kwame McKenzie is the CEO of the Wellesley Institute.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2018/10/27/minimum-wage-of-14-per-hour-bad-for-public-health.html
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