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Toronto Still Eating Its Young
Nearing the tail end of a year marked by mounting homelessness, an alarming spike in related deaths, and the continuing closure of an unacceptably high number of emergency hostels and shelters, a report published Tuesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is a timely reminder that, yes, untold numbers of people in Toronto are being desperately, royally, systemically screwed.
The culprit: woefully inadequate living wages for working families. According to the report, titled A Living Wage for Toronto, parents would need to earn an average hourly wage of $16.60 each—full time and year-round—just to eke out a sustainable living in the GTA. Defining a living wage as “the income a family needs to support its participation in the social, economic, cultural and political life of the community,” the report highlights the specific requirements needed by such families to attain a standard of living set by basic expectations like education, proper health, and “full participation in modern life”: for rent and utilities, $14,751; for transportation, $6,573 by vehicle, $1,248 by transit; for child care, $9,140. In total, the income needed to scrape by, keep stomachs full, and provide for a child’s future comes to a final bill of $57,400. Considering all applicable deductions, benefits, and taxes, cash-strapped parents would need to be pulling in a household income of $64,783.
The problem, of course, is that many families—to say nothing of everyone else—are earning incomes hovering around minimum wage, barely enough to skirt the poverty line. “There’s a big difference between having enough to survive—and Ontario’s minimum wage doesn’t even do that—and having enough to participate in the life of the community,” notes the report’s co-author and CCPA research associate Hugh Mackenzie. “The living wage is the income threshold a family has to cross to avoid being marginalized.” Despite one of the highest national income averages throughout 2007, a Statistics Canada study found that 17.4% of jobs in this province pay less than $10.00 per hour by 2002’s fiscal yardstick; even worse, Ontario came through the last decade as the only province in which the number of jobs paying less-than-sufficient wages increased—regardless of economic growth during the same period.
Meanwhile, Ontario’s minimum wage is set to reach $9.50 by March 31, 2009.
Photo by Kelsey *