$10 A step towards wealth redistribution, not THE step.

It has been at least a month or two since both the Ontario and Federal NDP introduced bills to increase the minimum wage to $10/hr.. While I'm still excited of the prospects of having such a minimum wage in place, I'm cautious of a few things.

Firstly, this may not pass. The Liberals and Conservatives represent the interests of big business far too much to support this lock-stock-and-barrel. The Liberals would like to argue that "they understand the economy" because they use archaic excuses for not doing things of this nature, and protect the petty profits of the worlds wealthiest. I expect if it makes it through, it will be tight; if it doesn't, it will be close with several MPs not bothering to show up.

Secondly and more importantly, this is like Kyoto for climate change: not the be-all-and-end-all. At the moment our society suffers from the delusion that we can "end poverty", and somehow leave the heaps of wealth sitting in the banks of the largest corporations and the top 1% of the worlds wealthiest untouched. The left is constantly slagged for being naive on many issues, not the least of which is the economy. Believing that a series of tiny tweaks here and there is going to massively change the state of the world, or nations poorest is in fact truly naive.

It is quite typical for such a legislation to pass, and to have the Liberal mouthpieces in the media along side the corporate apologists talk about how they are "acting on social justice issues". Perhaps because Canadians are looking for reasons to love the Liberal party, so they can rationalize voting out the Conservatives; they jadedly echo this nonsense. The Liberals have no intention to take on the mentioned wealth redistribution initiative to truly make poverty history.

As the recent Campaign 2000 report card shows, child poverty has fluctuated a little, but has nevertheless rose since the objective of 'eliminating child poverty in Canada' was declared in the 1980's. They have mentioned another series of issues which will seem to go untouched by the LibCons. Childcare would be one that stands out for me, as the Liberals have waited 13 years until it was sure to be an election issue- fodder against the NDP for putting their minority government to the ballot box. If we believe in making poverty history though, we need more than these albeit important measures, we need to engender a sense of change in our society about the economy, so things like this nolonger become "sqeakers" in parliament, and that many more issues make it into the spotlight.

I will mention that Ontario welfare rates are 40% below what they need to be to function properly. Changes in the Bank Act are desperately needed to empower smaller credit unions to invest in local economies; at the moment, there is a revolving-door lobby-investment relationship between the CCCE, Bay St, and the big banks. We're losing high-paying primary and secondary economy jobs, under the pretext that education will enable labour to shift towards tertiary and quaternary jobs. I will not go into how much I oppose this doctrine, I will mention that it is not working as education is becoming more and more inaccessible. There is no plan in place to utilize the co-operative model in Canada to replace these lost jobs. I'm going to also mention that quality, public healthcare which encorporates preventative treatment, group practice, regular checkups, alternative medicine, and comprehensive coverage is one of the best ways to battle poverty. The statistics between health and poverty are staggering; and yet we don't seem to demand for better healthcare as part of the "make poverty history" campaign.

There are thousands more. Suddenly, the $10 minimum wage seems insignificant. It isn't. It will mean millions of families will receive more in their pay cheques for their long and hard days work. It will mean perhaps not as many single mothers will work overtime to pay the bills, and have more time to spend with their children. There are millions of reasons this will benefit the economy, but that is not why this should be on the table. We need this legislation because it will mean millions of families will not be evicted and millions of children will make it to school with a lunch. We have to do this because for whatever we might claim it will sacrifice: our comfort, profits, material wealth; it will provide food, shelter, time at home for families, and education for those of us who have so little. It will not single-handedly make poverty history, but we have no excuses on this one.