Lin Gackle has correctly listed the statistics outlining Alberta’s minimum wage profile. She also describes some of the difficulties our youth experience today. She misses the point entirely! “How are we going to pay for a satisfactory increase in the minimum wage”? In typical socialist fashion, she believes that businesses should be made to provide through more government legislation. Everyone seems to forget that before a society can share the pie it must first increase the size of that pie! It is a terrible truth that with all of Canada’s magnificent natural wealth, our national economic pie is slowly shrinking as a direct result of Canada’s devastating economic policies. Disastrous taxation policies (including unnecessary and totally ineffective carbon taxes), excessive regulatory restrictions on industrial development and an absolute absence of any national energy policy (that prevents Canadian access to world markets), have all combined to recently cause the price of a barrel of western Canadian select to drop to as low as $13.65, resulting in an economic shortfall of about $100 million PER DAY! Trudeau can disingenuously tell Albertans that he “feels their pain” but until these ugly Liberal government policies are overturned there is no possible way in which any sensible government can increase minimum wage standards beyond those already in place. The policies (or absence thereof) described above continue to drive small businesses into bankruptcy or closure, while corporations are leaving Canada at rates not seen for years. Investment losses in Canada are in the fifty percent range and will only get worse. When asked about the price of Canadian oil, our fool of a finance minister Mr. Morneau responded with some sarcasm that, “there’s no silver bullet”! Canadians are not asking for a silver bullet. We’re simply asking our government to use its constitutional authority to get a pipeline built. This of course would require that our Liberal government would have to give up its supportive coddling of the environmental thugs that appear to be governing the country. Contrary to Ms. Gackle’s accusation that minimum wage earners are less worthy than wealth creators she had better understand that without the wealth creators who remain to increase the size of the pie, there will be little to share. Canada must not increase the size of its national debt which already costs our treasury over $28 billion in annual interest payments. As usual, Ms Gackle let’s her “gimmee gimmee” Socialist politics get in the way of realism. Lloyd Leugner
