Social Policy in Ontario

Re: Ontario’s minimum wage hike is too much, too fast, and could cause job losses, business coalition warns, June 10

Re: Ontario looking for public input on $15 minimum wage, June 10

Re: Minimum wage hike could spell spike in child care fees, daycare operator warns, July 5

Ontario’s minimum wage hike is too much, too fast, and could cause job losses, business coalition warns, June 10

Wage growth has been pitiful over the past two decades in Canada. Spread that wealth around a bit more and build a healthy balanced economy. Keeping people on the balls of their feet regarding their future is bad for the economy and puts undue stress on our social safety net. If you can’t provide a living wage pegged to inflation you don’t deserve to be an employer.

Richard Kadziewicz, Scarborough
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The wailing and gnashing of teeth about raising the minimum wage continues. There are two points to be made to those that oppose the increases. Studies have shown that when wages go up, people spend more thus helping businesses and the economy in general. Secondly, if the only way you can run a business is by paying poverty wages then perhaps you shouldn’t be running a business.

John Morton, Toronto
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Ontario looking for public input on $15 minimum wage, June 10

If indeed Ontario seeks public input on the proposed increase to minimum wage, why did newspapers only start announcing the public consultations on Monday? The deadline to apply to make an oral presentation at last week’s hearings was July 4, and the deadline for this week’s hearings was Monday.

These hearings should be postponed to give Ontarians enough time to indicate their interest in making an oral presentation, and everyone applying should be heard.

Trudi Jane Wyatt, Toronto
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The Chamber of Commerce sees disaster in paying the lowest level of workers a living wage. Funny, but when CEOs add millions to their salaries, that apparently doesn’t add to costs.

Stratton Holland, Markham
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Minimum wage hike could spell spike in child care fees, daycare operator warns, July 5

We agree with Minister Indira Naidoo-Harris that the proposed changes to Ontario’s labour laws increasing the minimum wage to $15 by 2019, introducing paid sick days and increasing vacation pay for experienced workers is “. . . good for child-care workers, good for children and good for families.”

However, there’s an important caveat: Public funding must increase to ensure that the burden of increased operating costs in child-care programs is not carried solely by parents.

Currently parents are the main funders of licensed child care in Ontario, notwithstanding the important yet limited provincial funding to enhance the wages of early childhood educators and child-care workers.

In the budget of a well-organized non-profit child-care program, staff salaries and benefits amount to about 80 per cent of the total operating cost. Thus salaries and parent fees are inextricably linked. At most, an estimated 25 per cent of parents who use regulated child care receive a fee subsidy to defer the cost, but most pay fees that are among the highest in Canada.

To break this symbiotic relationship of parent fees and staff salaries, Ontario needs to transform the current market-based patchwork of non-profit, for-profit and publicly operated early learning and child-care programs into a publicly planned, funded and operated system of high quality services that better balance the contributions of parents, early childhood educators and child-care staff. The recently announced Renewed Early Years and Child Care Policy Framework provides a timely opportunity to do this. We look forward to collaboration to achieve a universally accessible system that ensures affordable fees for parents, decent work for educators and accountable child-care services that are operated by public or non-profit entities.

Laurel Rothman, interim public policy co-ordinator, Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, Toronto

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editors/2017/07/15/presentations-and-caveats-on-minimum-wage-hike.html