Dear Editor
I see that Vic Hult is doing some electioneering in his last opinion column (Aug. 19 Regional Optimist). He appears to be campaigning for the Conservatives again but he is getting rather loose with his "facts."
Vic says that the NDP plan to raise the minimum wage to $15/hr “all over Canada.” This is not true. This policy only applies to those in federally regulated industries and will affect only about 100,000 people. Regular minimum wage is still for the provinces to set. I must also argue that a decent minimum wage is not a “job killer philosophy” as Vic writes. Stats from Quebec, Ontario, and the three western provinces from the last 10 years show that whenever the minimum wage was raised the unemployment rate went down or stayed the same (except for 2009, the year after the global crash). Good wages evidently bolster a good economy.
The federal NDP also does not want to stop pipelines and oil sands as Vic reports. They do want to stop throwing a billion dollars a year of taxpayers money at "big oil" but oil production and oil movement will continue. It is thought by many in the NDP that oil pipelines should lead to Canadian, not foreign, refineries. This runs opposite to what appears to be the Conservative "strip-and-ship" resource plan.
Glenn Tait
Meota
