FACT: In Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario, 1.2 million working women and men earn less than $10 an hour.

FACT: Those 1.2 million Ontarians are predominantly women, young people and New Canadians.

FACT: Someone working 40 hours a week at $8 an hour earns $320 a week or $16,640 a year, $4,000 below the low-income cut off.

FACT: In 2004, Santa Fe, New Mexico, raised its minimum wage from to $8.50 from $5.15. In Canadian dollars that’s like raising the wage from $7 to $10. Despite big business fear-mongering, no retail jobs, fast food jobs or temp jobs were exported overseas. Two years later, employment has stayed the same or gone up.

FACT: In real terms, the minimum wage has declined by nearly nine per cent since 1995 and 16 per cent since 1976. In 1976, the minimum wage was 9.9% below the poverty line for a single person; but as of 2005 it was approximately 32% below the poverty line.

FACT: A single parent with two children has to earn $31,081 to lift her family out of poverty. To earn that much money at the current minimum wage, she would have to work 75 hours a week.

FACT: A typical corporate CEO earns a minimum wage earner’s yearly salary by 12 noon on New Year's Day.

FACT: Raising the minimum wage is good for small business because that's where minimum wage earners spend their wages.

FACT: In the UK the minimum wage is £5.35 an hour, in France it is 8.27 Euros an hour, in Australia it is 13.47 Australian dollars an hour and in Ireland it is 7.65 Euros, all of which amount to at least $11 Canadian. They all have strong economies and healthy job creation.

FACT: It only took Dalton McGuinty eight days to give himself a $40,000 pay increase. It has been months since the introduction of Bill 150, the NDP’s Living Wage Bill. The premier still hasn’t made it a priority.

FACT: Dalton McGuinty's recent $40,000 raise is two-and-a-half times the annual salary of a minimum wage earner.

Filed Under: Minimum Wage