On Minimum Wage, Progressive Conservatives Miss the Mark

Concerning the Ontarian minimum wage, the lesser of two bad ideas is still a bad idea.

Less than four months from a pivotal election, disrupted by political turmoil, the Progressive Conservatives have attempted to leverage their opposition to an increasingly unpopular incumbent. Their People’s Guarantee promises common sense change — for many, a refreshing alternative to tired Liberal policy. But buried in the fine print of the PC platform lies a questionable policy position: a change to the Liberal minimum wage plan, which seems much more like a watered-down imitation than a conservative alternative.

Like the Liberal Party, the Progressive Conservatives would raise the minimum wage to fifteen dollars. But to do so in one year would be “too fast” and “too soon,” according to their platform — so they would do it over four. The unstated assumption here is that timing, not the artificial wage floor itself, is the sole reason the Liberal policy would cost Ontarians their jobs. To this end, the PC stance rests on a tenuous economic foundation, bending to misguided popular perception at the expense of principles.

From the Bank of Canada’s job loss and inflation estimates to Tim Hortons’ benefit cuts and price hikes, there has been no shortage of evidence against the Liberals’ new minimum wage. The short-run economic impacts of a twenty-one percent wage increase were as predictable as the partisan responses thereto. Still, the PC Party, handed powerful evidence against a minimum wage increase of any kind, has restrained its criticism and condemned the rashness, not ignorance, of Liberal incumbents.

How reasonable is it, though, for Progressive Conservatives to support a drawn-out wage hike? From a strictly economic standpoint, it is largely baseless.