Already, it appears, our newly-elected provincial NDP government is finding that, as they say, “you can’t please all of the people, all of the time.”
Despite the fact that most of the NDP MLAs elected in May in a sweeping out of the longtime PC incumbents are likely still finding their way around the legislature in Edmonton, meeting to discuss what the future really holds, meeting with staffers, finding nearby coffee shops, locating their parking spots, etc… decisions they are making are already causing glee and gloom.
On the one hand, local school boards (page 18)are giddy in that the NDP, as promised, rolled back on education cuts proposed by the PCs before they were suddenly swept from power and announced that $103 million in funding would be restored.
Our boards can now look into the near future, at least, with some faith that staffing and funding levels won’t be negatively affected. Local school boards pinch pennies aggressively, so there’s little doubt a collective sigh of relief accompanied the NDP announcement.
And with student enrolment expected to increase at École Notre Dame des Monts, the idea of retaining, or adding, staff will be a relief.
Education and health care are important to Albertans, something which some in successive PC governments, to their eventual detriment, often seemed unaware of. Few Albertans, even those without children in a school system, find it hard to argue with appropriate funding as a means of ensuring a quality future for young people.
On the other hand, an NDP proposal to boost Alberta’s minimum wage in stages to $15 per hour by 2108 is being met with opposition from Banff businesses (page 1).
Banff businesses in the food and beverage sector, in particular, are gloomily anticipating negative effects for their operations should the boost go ahead.
The conundrum here is that while a boost to the minimum wage would obviously be a real boon for seasonal workers in a high rent, limited availability housing town like Banff, if it caused jobs to be lost, there would be no positive effect.
Always a fine edge.
Currently, Alberta’s minimum wage of $10.20 per hour (according to the Retail Council of Canada as of June 1) is roughly in keeping with that of the other western provinces – with Saskatchewan at $10.20, but moving to $10.50 on Oct. 1, B.C. at $10.25 and moving to $10.45 in September and Manitoba at $10.70, an increase from $10.45 in 2014.
Other Canadians provinces are in the ballpark on minimum wage, with Northwest Territories highest at $12.50, as of June 1.
So, in Banff, and slightly less so in Canmore, the issue of affordable housing is unlikely to ever go away and the issue of affordable living will remain inextricably tied to both wages and housing costs.
The difficulty is, businesses in both towns rely on an influx of seasonal workers, especially with temporary foreign workers now in limited supply. Those seasonal workers need to earn a living wage and they must be able to find some kind of affordable housing or, no matter the wage, many will decide to forego the “Banff experience” of working through a summer or winter season as so many before them have done.
The question now is, would a rising minimum wage mean a happier, somewhat wealthier workplace, or would it hamstring the local food and beverage industry?
