By Lynne Fernandez
Observers were not expecting anything more than a middle-of-the-road federal budget for 2014, but even so the Finance Minister managed to disappoint. Why then did the government choose to release a ho-hum budget when the country is focused on the Olympic Games? So we wouldn’t notice how re-cycled and contrived it is? Maybe, but it could also be because if one digs a little beyond the official budget story – lackluster as it is, things begin to look a little bleaker than we’re led to believe.
By Molly McCracken
This past weekend, Theresa Oswald, Minister of Jobs and the Economy, said she agreed with a long-standing anti-poverty goal. “We agree that 75 percent as a target is the right goal”. The provincial government has finally heard the community cries to increase the Employment and Income Assistance (EIA) shelter allowance rate to 75 percent of the median market rent. The question is, now that the government agrees, how soon can we reach this goal? People struggling with poverty have been waiting too long and are caught in a system mired in bureaucracy.
Lynne Fernandez, Errol Black Chair in Labour Studies, CCPA MB.
“Living Wage Laws don’t help the most vulnerable” by the Fraser Institute’s Lammam and MacIntyre, is based on a misunderstanding that is evident in the title. Living wage campaigns across Canada are not calling for legislative enforcement of a living wage; the idea is to convince governments and large corporations of the advantages to adopting a living wage policy which considers a combination of wages, employer non-mandatory benefits, and benefits provided by government.
By Bilan Arte
It’s no surprise that students today are feeling the pinch. The cost of tuition and ancillary fees, costs of living, and textbooks all increase year after year but we aren’t really seeing any substantial increases in the quality of higher education. We also aren’t seeing increased wages, leaving a growing gap in how we can pay for school.
Lynne Fernandez, Errol Black Chair in Labour Issues
As reported in today’s Winnipeg Free Press, Unifor president Jerry Dias is visiting communities across Canada with an important message: attempts by a variety of political forces in Canada to undermine unions have, and will continue to erode the middle class.
Dias is right: we’ve lived enough of the neo-liberal experiment, with its attendant union bashing, to see the effects. Even mainstream players are seeing this: the OECD finds that member states with low union density rates have the highest rates of poverty. Recent research out of the US by Western and Rosenfeld finds that “. . . unions helped institutionalize norms of equity, reducing the dispersion of nonunion wages in highly unionized regions and industries. Accounting for unions’ effect on union and nonunion wages suggests that the decline of organized labor explains a fifth to a third of the growth in inequality—an effect comparable to the growing stratification of wages by education.”
Manitobans of all stripes would do well to listen to Dias’ message: unions help all workers, not just their members. If we want to seriously tackle the growth in inequality in Canada, we need to have a serious conversation about the role unions play in our society.
By Josh Brandon
Across Canada, housing prices slowed down in 2013, but in Manitoba, there are no signs of the housing crunch abating. Last month, the average house price in Winnipeg surpassed $300,000 for the first time ever, according to new data from the Canadian Real Estate Association. Good news if you are looking to sell, but tougher if you are just getting into the housing market.
However, it is not just home buyers who should be concerned about this news. Because the housing system is interconnected, these prices affect everyone. The increased cost of property pushes up shelter costs for both owners and renters. Although the Provincial government has made welcome investments in affordable housing in recent years, other levels of government need to ante up to ensure that all Manitobans can afford a place to live and call home.
- More information is available on these data on our annual update Manitoba and Winnipeg Housing Data
Once again, here are the updated housing statistics for Winnipeg and Manitoba. CCPA-Manitoba compiles an annual update of housing data from a number of sources including Statistics Canada, CMHC, and the Province of Manitoba. This year’s update is the first to include data from the 2011 National Household Survey.
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