Minimum hourly wage increase in Ontario has different impacts on students .

Waitress wears food at work in the restaurant

By – Ishan Sohi

Harkirat Jaura almost burst into tears talking about how she has to manage her tuition fees and study loans back home in India, but she isn’t getting any well paying job. She works for minimum wage.

She says her ambition is to pursue a career in nursing, but it costs her a lot in each and every term. Sometimes she even skips meals to save money on food.

Ontario’s minimum wage is set to rise to $16.55 an hour on Oct. 1.   The hike, according to Labour Minister Monte McNaughton, will mean Ontario will have the highest minimum wage of any province in Canada.

 “I’m pleased with my record around minimum wage.  But I also want to be clear that working for minimum wage should only be a starting point. That is why we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to upskill and retrain workers so they can earn more money.”

Students at the York University campus aren’t sure the increase will make much of a difference.  Jaura says  “A one dollar increase per hour won’t pay our rents and tuition fees.”

 Eknoor Kaur , an international student studying business marketing says the higher hourly wage will make it easier to save a couple more ‘coins’ that she could put in her piggy bank .

She also says she won’t have to work more hours at the Tim Hortons and that will help to pursue other interests such as giving more attention to her studies . Although she says “it’s not big increase, but still it’s better than nothing.”

 Luis An has been living in Canada for almost 10 years. He says that it’s not a noticeable difference. He added that the government is also increasing taxes. He pays almost thousand dollars a month for his tiny apartment room in campus .

He says he can’t even afford a car over here even if he were working full time. And with full time studies leads to nothing in his ‘own pockets’ and if he avoids unnecessary expenses then , still he has to pay a lot for groceries.

Sonal Khehra  is an international student who came to Brampton to study and pursue dreams in Sheridan College for which she has to manage the skyrocketing expenses of living abroad .

She says she has had to work for $8 per hour cash at a warehouse scanning job because she isn’t getting any better jobs in GTA areas.  She works ten hour days and she says she can’t tell anyone because she is afraid that people, rather than supporting her, will criticize her.

She says the increase in hourly wage won’t help, because she is already getting paid only half of the current minimum pay.

 Chadha, a student rights paralegal, says that he has taken a lot of cases where students and other people are paid even less than basic pay .

Chadha explains why students often go this way.  A shortage of jobs and a lot of people of applying for them often leads to competition. he adds the alarming increase in taxes leads some people to choose to work for cash, even if it is less, rather than earning nothing to survive .

Under Working for Workers 2023 act with the increase of hourly pay, someone making minimum wage and putting in 40 hours per week would earn an extra $2,200 a year but that’s not a significant amount as compared to ratio of taxes and expenses nowadays on rent, grocery and transportation .

“Under the leadership of Premier Ford, our government is putting workers in the driver’s seat of their careers, and their lives,” said Monte McNaughton, Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development. “This latest increase is a fair and balanced approach that means more money in their pockets so they can support their families and continuing building a stronger Ontario for all of us.”

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