Jason Kenney believes hard working Canadians are earning too much and Doug Ford shares a similar view in his province. Kenney told a right-wing business lobby group that gains made by Alberta workers over the last four years were unfair to business owners.
But the workers say otherwise, they say it’s hard to live on minimum wage. Comparing the minimum wage with the standard of living, it is terrible for Kenney to assume the workers are screwing their company.
To level the playing field for bosses, Jason Kenney praised a controversial set of recommendations put forward by the lobbyists, including overhauling holiday pay rules and creating loopholes allowing employers to pay “youth” and “inexperienced employees” and alcohol servers at rates below the minimum wage.
In 2018, Doug Ford canceled a $1 increase in the minimum wage for hard-working Ontarians a rollback of labour reforms introduced by the previous Liberal government. Ford says businesses were hurt by the changes.
Jason Kenney introduced Bill 9 last month in Alberta, the Public Sector Wage Arbitration Deferral Act bill, which delays wage negotiations for about 180,000 union members in Alberta.
Unions pushed back on this, saying the delay amounts to bad faith bargaining and that the government isn’t living up to its obligations. Justice Eric Macklin agrees.
The ruling by the Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Eric Macklin suspends the Public Sector Wage Arbitration Deferral Act, meaning arbitration would go ahead this month as planned.
The next day, the Kenney government filed an appeal of the injunction (which has yet to be heard). So for now, the hard-working people of Alberta win, Bill 9 is in limbo.
