How the minimum-wage fight will shape cabinet
Globe and Mail – BC
May 28, 2009
Byline: Justine Hunter

It was a vulnerable niche in the B.C. Liberals' election platform: an eight-year freeze in the minimum wage that has made the province one of the worst places in the country for workers on the bottom rung.

Premier Gordon Campbell insisted a pay hike would kill jobs, but a majority of British Columbians – two out of three – canvassed midway through the election campaign said $8 an hour isn't enough.

There were those in the B.C. cabinet who could have predicted it was a dangerous wedge issue and argued for change early in 2007: Wally Oppal, Carole Taylor, Olga Ilich. Pending a judicial recount in Mr. Oppal's case, all those voices are now gone.

As he puts together his next cabinet, Mr. Campbell will have to consider more than the usual mix of regional, gender and ethnic balances. He also might consider who will represent the social progressives – let's call them the Liberal wing – in his coalition party.

But if the acid test is the minimum wage, it's unlikely there are many champions willing to step forward.

Even when the economy was thriving and employers were competing for even unskilled labour, Mr. Campbell slammed the door firmly shut against a hike. Ms. Ilich, then labour minister, couldn't even get a discussion of the issue on the cabinet agenda.

“I was looking across Canada, the rates in all the other provinces were going up, the economy was booming,” recalled Ms. Ilich this week. “I was pushing to take a look at it.”

Like Ms. Taylor, Ms. Ilich chose not to run in the 2009 election. Now out of politics, she is no longer required to publicly defend the freeze and there is a note of relief in her voice: “I can't see if you move it up a slight bit that it would be a huge thing.”

…. The door was closed in 2007: It is welded shut now.

Still, there must and will be a place for the Liberal-leaning members of his coalition party at the table, people such as George Abbott, Mike de Jong and Gordon Hogg.

But this won't be a good season for any member of Mr. Campbell's cabinet to be pushing a social policy agenda. The Premier refuses to budge on increasing the deficit despite projections of declining revenues. Anyone who wants to bring up child poverty or welfare rates at the table may find, like Ms. Ilich, little sympathy.

That would be unfortunate. As the recession takes it toll on workers and families, the Campbell government will be tested as never before to determine if it has a heart.

The child welfare system in B.C. is already under stress; the province has the highest rate of child poverty in the country and there is a chronic shortage of child welfare workers.

The downturn in the economy will only make things worse for vulnerable children, noted Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, B.C.'s independent watchdog for children and youth.

“Kids in poverty have a legitimate claim on the public purse,” she said in an interview this week.

…. Colin Hansen, may lean to the federal Liberal wing of the party, but he is firmly entrenched in a position that puts keeping the deficit down ahead of any warm and fuzzy notions about all-day kindergarten or higher welfare rates.

“There is an appearance that the hard-liners will run the government,” said Jim Sinclair, head of the B.C. Federation of Labour. Like Ms. Turpel-Lafond, he'd like to see the economic stimulus efforts reach beyond construction projects. “It means training everybody you can get your hands on,” he said. “We have empty classrooms and people who don't have a job, and this government is completely ignoring that.”…