Saturday, September 13, 2014

Canada's pretend socialists try for free ride on "$15 is FAIR" coattails

The Canadian political party formerly known as socialist has decreed that $15 is indeed fair; a fair minimum wage for Canadian workers... IN 2019!

How this bit of shabby headline-mongering succeeded is beyond me. NDP leader Mulcair got headlines all across the Great White North on his call for a $15/hr minimum wage. In every case you don't get the 2019 part until you read the actual story.

Nor is Mulcair making a principled statement about the need for a decent minimum wage for ALL Canadians, right now; he's limiting his "demands" to that small minority of Canadian workers who are covered by federal instead of provincial minimum wage legislation.

In other words, these headlines are the result of a calculated attempt to steal a bit of the spotlight from the "$15 is Fair" campaign.

The NDP under Mulcair's leadership has been steadily losing the credibility it had under the late Jack Layton. Mulcair's gutless refusal to say anything other than parrot Harper talking points during the recent Israeli war on Gaza, for the ludicrous reason that his wife's family is Jewish, alienated a lot of traditional NDP types who expect the Party offer something different from the one-sided support for Israeli militarism that we typically get from the Harper gang.

As for that $15/hr minimum wage, listen up, Tom; that's something that the working poor in Canada need today, not in 2019, and they need it across the land, not just in federally regulated industries.

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