Low wages: Full employment Oil Patch vs Central Canada

Low wages - Toronto vs the Oil Patch

Annual Average Employees in Thousand 2008

BOTH SEX

15 YEARS AND OVER

Toronto   Calgary

2447.7     594.7            TOTAL EMPLOYEES

488.3       63.9              TOTAL EMPLOYEES EARNING LESS THAN $12.00

19.9         10.7               PERCENTAGE OF EMPLOYEES EARNING LESS THAN $12.00

19.2         2.1                 $6.99 OR LESS

469.1      61.8                 $7.00-$11.99

265.2      22.9                $7.00-$9.99

122.5      24.4                 $10.00-$10.99

81.4       14.5                 $11.00-$11.99

19.71      21.98               MEDIAN HOURLY EARNINGS ( DOLLARS )

20 YEARS AND OVER

2331.1    556.5              TOTAL EMPLOYEES

383.8      41.3                 TOTAL EMPLOYEES EARNING LESS THAN $12.00

16.5         7.4                  PERCENTAGE OF EMPLOYEES EARNING LESS THAN $12.00

18.8        1.9                  $6.99 OR LESS

364.9        39.4             $7.00-$11.99

177.5        12.6              $7.00-$9.99

109.7        15.0             $10.00-$10.99

77.7          11.9              $11.00-$11.99

20.00         23.00            MEDIAN HOURLY EARNINGS ( DOLLARS )

The telling statistic is the employees over 20 at less than $12 an hour. In Toronto it's 16.5% while in the better economy of Calgary it's 7.4%

In full employment Calgary some 5.2% of workers earn less than $11 an hour. The legislated minimum wage for adults should be that $11. This would give some 5.2% of workers a $1 benefit. Minimum wage has always been set low, is really only a fence for the worst off workers from being ran over rough shod by the worst employers. It's always been very minimal because it is thought of a jobs killer. In Alberta pre-recession they raised the minimum wage to $8 or something but even that was dissed. At full employment you are really looking at $11 as a low fence.

Minimum wage is thought of as a jobs killer but at full employment the problem is labour shortages. This is filled with immigrants. So here in Canada they worry about minimum wage being a jobs killer all the while filling labour shortages with immigrants.

An aggressive minimum wage, higher than $11, is a horse of a different colour. An aggressive minimum wage would reduce, downsize, the low wage sector by supply and demand. You would do without low wage businesses and the goods and services they provide. It would make economic growth at the bottom more difficult, causing growth cities to grow slower which in fact is desirable. This all would skew the jobs available and the growth in jobs to a higher average wage. It would have the social benefit of dealing with exploitive wages. This is all practical at full employment, or approaching full employment as in Alberta. An aggressive minimum wage is an unsung macro economic tool. A finese variation on this would be to legislate a different minimum wage for each city. Alberta might properly make the legislated minimum wage $12 or $13 an hour to produce a sounder industrial base. The wages in Calgary inflated pre-recession and an minimum wage of $13 there would not be that aggressive.  

I call myself a jobs activist and work from Toronto here. I actually have recognition of this idea of minimum wage being a macro economic tool in Parliament. Half the Parliamentarians are astute enough to catch the idea while the other half are sort of lack luster. The actual leaders in Parliament today are all full steam ahead with maximum growth. However, people don't like today's leaders and their bad eocnomics is one good reason.

Pipeline would ship oil and jobs south

The proposed treadstone pipeline would pump heavy crude South directly 0into the US where they would create all kinds of jobs for unemployed Americans. Our colonial administrativeship in Ottawa is always the last to know what the Yanks have planned for Canadian fossil fuels.

Bruce

Who is making $6.99?  That's below minimum in Toronto.  Is this labour code violation?

Even Stephen Gordon (who is an opponent of minimum wage) has found there is no employment impact below 40% of the average wage.

I don't know who would be making less than $6.99 especially as minimum wage in both jurisdictions in 2008 was higher than that. It might be marginal self employment or family employment which may be self reporting.  I have never actually read in the media of employers trying to get away with less than minimum wage.

Employment below 40% of average wage is pretty low and a slight increase may not affect many jobs. I see the point.

I'm working on the arithmetic of a $12 minimum wage. Given that at full employment wages at the bottom go up to $10 - $12 just legislating the $12 would have minimal cost. I calculate that taxes on the increase, an increase in people working by getting folks to migrate to cities at full employment, the elimation of some small business by higher costs and reducing the fragmentation at the bottom which increase productivity would cut the bill in half. The $12 top up for the growth cities of Canada, half the county, might actually cost only $600 million. This would have social benefits: help students, working poor, women in general. It'd be part of the social net if you lost your job. It'd encourage people to work, say some people on welfare. A higher minimum wage would slow growth which would translate into slowing the growth of sprawl in mega cities. I also argue that most extended families have someone working minimum wage so the cost is actually at transfer from better off family workers to the worst off - which probably cuts the cash subsidies within families. Low wages are a womens issue in todays economy. Minimum wage has all these advantages - is quite an interesting device. Economists like Stephan Gordon have pretty much ignored the issue.

You know taxes are ultimately on wages an investment income, mostly wages. Workers carry the load. However this means that tax differences are steep and low wage earners are net subsidized. I estimate the subsidy on a $12 wage is $4 an hour. Thus a $12 minimum wage is in effect $16 an hour.  So that cuts into disparity.

Thanks for responding to the thread. I thought low wage discussions would be more of interest on Babble.

I met a couple from Switzerland who are travelling across Canada. They're prolly in B.C. by now. They were surprised by all the coffee shops and fast food joints we have interrupting the vast expanses of moose pasture and general nothingness. We need some high speed passenger rail service to improve travel times between cities and towns decimated by neoliberal voodoo of the last 30 years or so. It's either that or stack people higher and deeper in cities like Toronto and Vancouver, or something. Personally I think we need to build a real country.

My understanding is that even in cottage country in Ontario you are now only minutes drive away from the nearest Chuckie Cheese.

That reminds me of something I read somewhere that says, no great country was ever renowned for its ditch diggers,  small business owners, or Chuckie Cheese establishments. We need to aspire to more than pizza and beer and low wage philanthropy. We can't export pizzas and beer and expect to pay off the massive national and provincial debts they've cha-chinged up on all our behalf since 1975. We've got to start demanding more in return for the massive amounts of natural resource wealth taken off our collective hands for a song. We have to start creating things of value in our Northern Puerto Rico and that other countries need and are willing to pay an honest price for. Colonialism made new under the neoliberal capitalism is proving to be not a road, nay, but a NAFTA superhighway to serfdom for far too many Canadians.

We can't export fresh pizzas, but with the Canadian winter we could work towards being a frozen pizza superpower!

Stephen hasn't ignored the issue, he has opposed it.

His argument is that it has almost no effect on poverty, since few impoverished people make minimum wage.

I'd like to say more but I have to deal with other stuff.  I will be back.  I do have some questions about some of what you say because I am having a little trouble understanding exactly what you are saying.

I read Stephen's comments about minimum wage and poverty. I notice that the child poverty in Calgary and Edmonton is half the level that it is in Toronto and this would be due to  the econmy as they don't have additional government supports. Any way minimum wage has other benefits.

Generally economists are minimum wage will cost jobs although some say minimally. I don't think they look at the other aspects of it that I list here. I've never see an economist say it'll cost jobs but we are a labour shortage country with immigration.

My explanation is pretty short and not tha good of English, I'd be pleased to rephrase anything.

Thanks again.

The low wage problem in Canada is not popular. People and politicians are concerned where the good jobs will come from. Another approach is as the economy grows to raise minimum wage to reduce the number of jobs at the bottom. This would have the effect of skewing the jobs around and the growth in jobs to a better average. In the growth cities there are jobs being created so you can do this in the cities. Going forward the population is aging and the labour force will be shrinking which means you can even cut jobs in some of the regions. Minimum wage, it's a unsung macro economic device.

You are missing something here, Bruce. I like your concern about the U rate and that poverty is generally unnecesary and detrimental to the economy on a whole. But why would the feds pursue policies for fuller employment when it goes against the grain of what Bay Street bond salesmen want from their hirelings in Ottawa whether Liberal or Tory? 

If there is fuller employment and more of us start paying taxes and country exports more goods and services, then that means Canada will generally be in a better position to pay down massive debts owed to foreign banks and speculators. The speculators and money managers don't really want to see us debt-free or anything, and definitely not to become a net creditor nation, like Norway has become under social democrat rule.

As much as I admire your ideas, Bruce, I just don't see them catching on in Ottawa anytime soon. National indebtedness is a good thing for rich people and banks. They've got 33 million co-signers for the hundreds of billions of dollars we owe them and growing by  impressive rates of compound interest, and plenty of juicy profit from Canada's natural resource wealth to bleed off. They don't want us to pay down debts owed to them, and they don't want fuller employment policies either. As Linda McQuaig once decribed the situation with Canada's intebtedness to private sources, the rich are probably down there in NYC right now and twisting the arm of Moody's chief of operations to downgrade the government of Canada's credit rating, and so we would owe them even more money due to higher rates. N-no, certain superrich people love a good recession in Canada. Three decades and three recessions. It's not by accident.

I don't actually have good information on high finance and the banking system. However I know that Bay St. does not know as much as they think. They missed all the hidden unemployment information, the excessive immigration information and of course the world wide bank conspiracy. I'm not so sure they're keen about excessive indebtness.  Note that in the next ten years energy resources will tighten and trillions will have to be found for that and at good interest rates. If the world economy turns around you could see in a few years the government tugging the sleeve of Bay St. for a trillion in energy investment.

I actually have some support in Parliament and some leaks from the MPs there. Basically the savvy MPs know that jobs are as volitile politically as taxes are. However the four current leaders are actually slow about this. The stage is set for some changes, as MP jobs are on line. The leaks I get tell me the Liberal MPs are incredulous at Ignatieff's lack of communication with them.

Well luck to you, Bruce. Personally I don't think big things are going to happen until some internationalised gambling debts and worthless iou's are written off.

Thanks for the well wishes Fidel. In fact the issue of low wages is contengious and I have some diffuse but widespread illegal protesting going on in name of the cause. It involves leaking what is private and confidential about businesses and individuals and is a too subtle to actually post about here. Nevertheless the protest is nation wide and is virulent but the government has stonewalled reports of the problem. You could see a scandal in Ottawa about this as the protestors are of a mind to turn themselves in to the police. On the street low wages is a womens issue, all these retail shops being staffed by return to work Moms. The womens issue is sort of the flagship. A lot of the MPs know about the illegal protest, this is actually history.

Stephen is remarkably closed-minded on this question, given many threads of discussion that we've had. Minimum wage legislation is not principally about mitigating poverty. It is a minimum standard of working conditions, just like mandatory vacation rules, maximum weekly and daily hours of work, minimum health and safety standards, maternity and parental leave, etc. The workers' movement has long fought for improved minimum wages for two main aims: 1) to set a lower limit on their exploitation; 2) to set a lower limit on competition between workers in the "race to the bottom". The union movement has always been in the forefront, even though there are virtually no union members who earn minimum wage - not just for reasons of class solidarity, but also to limit wage competition.

Stephen sets up a straw man: "Minimum wages must be aimed at limiting poverty - I can't see what other purpose they might have", and then he defeats it in quixotic fashion. The mitigation of poverty proceeds by entirely other means:

- social policy aimed at acquisition of skills and training and access to decent jobs;

- social insurance for those unable to work (disability, retirement, etc.);

- provision of as many social services as possible on a free or low-cost universal basis (health care, education, affordable housing, etc.);

... and you know all the rest. Minimum wage legislation plays a very very minor role in this respect, and that's not its aim. Many minimum wage-earners are not among the poor at all (look at young workers first entering the workforce whose family has other wage-earners).

There are only two ways to address low wages: 1) legislation - which is not entirely within our control!; and 2) unionization and united struggle. Beyond that, the market plays a huge role, obviously. Higher cost-of-living will necessarily mean higher wages (because it costs more to maintain workers). Unemployment obviously puts downward pressure on wages.

My conclusion: the trade unions, and progressive people as a whole, must expressly embrace unionization of the workforce as a prime social goal. In this aim, they will have all the bosses and their political stooges arrayed against them - as well as the inertia and reluctance and complacency of the trade union establishments themselves. But it remains a primordial goal without which inequality and injustice among workers will persist and deepen.

The way I see it in general is that a minimum wage should cover the cost of minimal living. Can someone earning minimum wage earn enough to pay for a small Soviet era in size apartment, put food on the table and afford a few basic necessities? The answer is a resounding no. And resistance to a higher minimum wage seems to be qualified by seemingly rational arguments that employers can't afford to pay higher wages beyond some hourly rate.

The same things were said in 1938 America, that imposing .25 cents an hour on US employers would ultimately harm the economy. US capitalists said it represented the Stalinization of America. They kicked and screamed at rising minimum wages all through the war and into the 1950s. There were no complaints from US employers though in 1929 or by the mid 1930s that an average wage of one dollar(per day) was working to end poverty or doing very much to damage the economy already in depression even further.

The whole problem with economic recessions according to Keynesians is that too much money ends up concetrated in the hands of a rich few while the working class and poor don't have enough. And bachelor's hovels don't come so cheap these days. We have shortages of affordable housing as a result of inflated real estate prices and too much reliance on market diktats to provide what too many people can not afford.

And then there is the business of Canada's large low wage, lowly skilled and non-unionized work force. Next to the USA, Canada is home to the next largest lowly paid workforce among richest countries. Is it by design? Surely it is. This truth tends to be avoided in favour of suggesting that it's only teenagers who work for minimum wage. The implication is that there are no adults earning low wages in Canada. And that's just not true. There are millions of us who are stuck in lowly paid, non-unionized work and living anywhere below an outdated poverty line. They continue telling us that a higher minimum wage will upset some delicate balance in the neoliberal scheme of things. And it's the neoliberal scheme of things that doesn't work overall. Not really.

And another thing. Is this low wage burger economy doing people any good? Do we have enough McJobs and pizza and beer to go around and costing the health care system more and more as workers are transformed into human neutron absorbers, and all because we don't have a national food strategy? Health Canada is finally looking at reducing sodium content of our well travelled food. We could be eating more real food fit for consumption that comes from the ground and produced right here in Canada with a teensy bit of central planning. Where's FarmPunk when you need him?

Jrootham said he was going to come back so I've re-explained some economics.

The Canadian economy, jobs, can be rebuilt from the bottom rather than trying to grow good corporations.

There's a concern in Canada over the lack of good jobs, exploitation and the issue the country isn't what it used to be. Talk of jobs always focuses on where the good businesses are going to come from. The alternative is to put pressure on the worst jobs, minimum wage jobs. You could restructure the Canadian economy by pressure on the bottom. You can tap the growth in the economy and apply it to the bottom.

The idea is to legislate the minimum wage to $12 in the cities of Canada where there is already good economic growth. This would be done by legislating a higher minimum wage for a city area only. About half of Canada has the growth to support an aggressive minimum wage, that's some 2 million workers would be affected.

The full employment de facto market minimum wage is $10 to $12 anyway so legislating it to $12 is a modest program. In addition a tighter labour market in cities going forward will boost the number of people working in the population and more than pay for the inflation from a $12 minimum wage. This is actually an ace in hand, paying for inflation by boosting the number of people working. Family income would go up from having another person working, the additional wages would be taxed and easy the tax burden. The idea is to move most cities toward Alberta's level of people working.

A $12 minimum wage cuts exploitation. Note that people at $12 pay less tax than people at $20 which is the average and this is a subsidy. I estimate the subsidy at $12 to be $4 so the effective wage of a $12 worker is $16. They get the benefits of health care, government pension and policing and that.

A $12 minimum wage would skew the wage of the average job up. It'd also cause some businesses to downsize or close and this would have the net effect of reducing the size of the cheap and cheerful sector. People would do without the goods and services produced at the bottom. Rather a lot of our economy is in non-essential, discretionary spending. A $12 minimum wage would make growth in the low wage sector more difficult and skew net growth to better jobs.

In addition the emphasis on skilled and profession immigrants can be replaced with training Canadian youth. Skilled and professional immigration made sense in the hay days of the 1960's but now youth are looking for opportunity. Immigrants can do the working class jobs instead of Canadian youth.

The aging population means the regions of Canada will develop labour shortages in the future and the $12 minimum wage could be extended to most of Canada. This would affect another 2 million workers for a total of 4 million protected workers.

It's possible to squeeze the bottom further. If stagflation was controlled the BOC could keep interest rates down and propel the country to better jobs. You'd want to squeeze mega city Toronto, land short Vancouver and wild growth Alberta in any case.

Canadians have not kept a close eye on the labour market and job creation has not been average jobs on average. This is important for social order. It's useful to discuss such issues as affecting family rather than the working class in the modern milieu.

Actually, no. You've posted this enthusiasm of your from time to time and I don't get it. It's not unionization that makes workers strong rather it's the economic power of the company they work for. It's economic power. The big corporations have the market strength to pass on price increases to the workers. Typically private sector unions are in big companies with oligopoly power. In most of the economy there isn't anywhere near the market power to pass on higher wages. Some areas are too fragment and competition is sharp while other areas are just marginal goods and services. Small to medium businesses aren't that profitable thay you can take it out of owner profits. Unionization in Canada is at 30% and most of the prime real estate is unionized. Unions are not complacent about expanding rather there isn't much left to the economy that is prime. My reaction to your enthusiasm for unionization is why would a union worker be insensative to the basic process of unionization, capturing the market. I don't know who you work for, most Canadians work in "holes" that are limiting. There's a whale of a difference between a worker that works at a major, world class plant that is highly capitalize and a basic part of the economy and a worker that works at some small business hole that could disappear tomorrow with no one having much problem replacing the goods and services they got from that company.

I have an economic initiative worked out that I've posted here before. It revolves around tightening the labour markets, squeezing out the hidden unemployed, and then legislating a better minimum wage. The below is the latest and greatest write up. I am trying to make the write up short, essential and clear.  

I actually have support for this in Parliament. It would be the next social program. The advantage politically is the costs is low while there is rather a list of benefits. I can get people upset with the problem with the Nabobs.

.......................................................Brucenomics

It's possible to capture the economic growth in a city as benefits for the local citizens. This would be done be having a tighter labour market. It turns out most Canadian cities, most Western cities, have significant hidden unemployment with people doing other things because of a lack of half decent jobs. This hidden unemployment goes down with a tighter labour market which can come from appropriate, timely immigration.

In the case of a tighter labour market not only is there more people working, unemployment goes down, but the bottom in particular runs out of bodies and becomes firmer. The de facto minimum wage rises. At that point it'd be possible to legislate a slightly aggressive minimum wage, a $1 extra for $12in the  Canadian context. This is fair as low wages are caused by unemployment from immigration for the long term growth anyway,  minimum wage affects family and particularly women that have been bringing up the children, and many sectors of the labour market are not sensitive to the free market, are protected as it is. An aggressive minimum wage doesn't actually cost jobs in a growth city, it dents immigration. The immigration and the minimum wage can be finessed to a city-by-city program, possible with a city Czar which acts like an auditor.

The effect of a tight labour market and legislated minimum wage would be to cut off the very bottom. This skews the average job around to a slightly higher wage. A higher minimum wage would stop growth at the bottom which has the happy effect of skewing job growth to a better average as well. In addition higher wages at the bottom would cause that entire part of the economy to downsize. In particular mechanisms at work would be citizens simply doing without the cheap and cheerful goods and services produced at the bottom and the rag tag businesses at the bottom consolidating into bigger, busier and more effective outlets. Most Western cities have a bottom heavy economy and this is plan addresses that.

Skilled and professional immigration should be countered with training of the next generation. Businesses are in the habit of hiring pre-trained employees and want to increase pre-trained immigrants at the cost of the indigenous being shunted into the laboring jobs. In the future as the population ages and economic growth continues labour shortages could be met by working class immigrants from poor countries doing the laboring jobs. The better jobs would go to the indigenous citizens. That's the deal apparent.

The advantages of a tighter labour market and a legislated minimum wage are several. Tax revenues go up with more people working. Family income goes up as a family member re-enters the labour force. The average job becomes better, as I said. Slower growth is ecologically desirable but more realistically it restraints mega-cities from becoming too large and very expensive. A better city labour market would encourage people on welfare to take the work option, provide a place for citizens in the poor regions to move to, be a social net for the loss of a job - including in recessions. A better economy at the bottom would help reduce number of the working poor and ease the problem that low wage earners are heavily subsidized in the nanny state. Individual cities could vote on the future of the local economy if it was controlled by a Czar.

An aggressive legislated minimum wage does cost, it's a social program, and the cost is some inflation. However the increase in the number of people working produces enough tax revenues to cover this increase in costs. It's paid for. Half the inflation from a minimum wage increase comes from a tighter labour market anyway. The deal here is to go with the legislated minimum wage costs because low wages are exploitive and now affect family while the various benefits of improving the bottom of the labour market affect everyone. It's strategic, cost effective.

Stagflation, it turns out, remains the problem. There is significant wage inflation at rather high levels of unemployment, on close inspection.  The business class, hiring managers, will raise wages to keep a stable work force and simplify their job. However wage increases are a vicious circle of managers chasing the same people around and will eventually cause a recession so businesses actually don't win; the business class only half wins.

A tighter labour market and legislated minimum wage in your home city is a defense against a turbulent economy. Going forward in the 21st Century the emerging economies, China, will be jumping to high tech and there will be a world economic maelstrom.

All this applies to Western cities in general; where main stream economists concern is now focused on that the population is aging rather than improving jobs. Economists and governments have been inattentive to the quality of jobs. The quality of jobs is progress and social order.

Going forward you could have some good years. A good economy might get rather a lot more people working, including aging baby boomers, stagflation might ease as the business class faces up to its dysfunction and the regions might come to full employment as their labour markets shrink with the aging population. The problem of skilled and professional people not being able to find work in their field, and this includes recent immigrants, could ease. A marker of  better performing labour markets would be more private sector jobs with pensions, in recent years this has been going down. Canadians are living the problem of labour market issues, it's the elephant in the room in every family and social group, but the Nabobs at the top stand ready to worsening if left to their own devices.

I call the above Brucenomics.

The more you raise the minimum wage, the more you squeeze would-be entrepreneurs out of the game, and thus you chase jobs away.

The cost of living grows as wages grow, as businesses raise prices in order to maintain profit-margin in the face of growing expenditures.

I understand that proponents of the minimum wage have their hearts in the right place, but the unintended consequences wind up making things worse for those that the measure is designed to help.

Instead of favoring government controls on wages, we'd be better off shrinking government, thereby lessening regulations that hamper new employers from entering the job market, lowering the costs of doing businesses, and creating the conditions where businesses of all sizes can expand, and likewise, hire.

Raising the minimum wage is a game without an end...when the minimum wage reaches $50 or $100 an hour, the same arguments will still apply because the cost of living will also have risen in accordance with those wage controls.

I think actually no, there Junebug. What you say is what economists will tell you, without thinking. For example I say the raise in minimum wage be in growth cities that fuel labour shortages by immigration. This is the Canadian situation. Bureaucrats with an undergraduate degree in economics will say minimum wage costs jobs and completely drop out immigration.

Also the inflation from an increase in minimum wage is small. People will put up with it because the bottom of the economy is heavily subsidized in the nanny state, affects family and especially women who raise kids and then go back to work, is otherwise socially defuctional and exploitive and the bottom is economically dysfuncational as well. The bottom is characterize by businesses that produce goods and services you don't need, are higly fragmetized and inefficient and could be relocacted to poor regions.

To say that there's no end to it, minimum wage might go to $50, is to say you'd like to argue a different topic.  

You are advocating raising the minimum wage in "growth cities"?  Does that mean yet another bureaucrat or committee of bureaucrats gets paid to determine just what are "growth cities", and thereby worthy of wage hikes?

What do you mean by "fuel labour shortages by immigration"?  I think we should make an even clearer path for people to come to this country...in essence I believe we should open the proverbial floodgates...the more the merrier.  Of course, that plan only succeeds if the market is allowed to function free of intervention - and new businesses can open and put all of the unemployed back to work.

I'm not sure I follow your argument in general, but I do agree we have too many service sector jobs at the moment...and not enough goods producing jobs.

Statistics Canada keeps monthly data on what the labour force in each of the main cities in Canada is, so we have an exact idea of what the labour market requirement is.

Canada is an immigration country, and labour shortages are meet by immigration. My English on that wasn't too good.

There are too many service jobs, that is low wage service jobs. It's not popular, is actually not good economics when you factor in the nanny state subsidies.

Thanks for reading my post.

for info:

the charts at the top show $21 is roughly the median hourly wage in Calgary and Toronto,

meaning $840 gross per (40-hour) week, $3,612 for average 4.3 weeks  a month, and $43,344 a year

I have been living outside the country long enough that I have to look close to figure what is high or low pay now (and not mix it up with my '70s student days, when $40,000+ was big money),

but I do know that the unions in Switzerland have proposed a $20/hr minimum, so Canada trails the top European countries in general compensation, for sure, hence the influx for example of French Quebec nurses to staff Geneva hospitals

Pelosi to Canadians: I'm Ready to Run Your Economy Too

Pelosi is a critic of the tar sands. I think the Yanks are going to tell Canadian taxpayers that we have to cough up a lot of money to clean up the oil sands process before giving it away to corporate America for a song. Apparently the Yanquis don't want to have to pay the full market price our dirty oil now that they've siphoned off the majority of our most valuable crude oil reserves for real cheap over the years.

Our stoogeaucrats in Ottawa will likely fawn all over her and the oil industry anyway when they come to Ottawa with caps in hand looking for handouts.