Two Thumbs Up for Two Ideas from the Liberal Party
December 9, 2009 · By Richard Albert
Today, the Liberal Party proposed two bills, both of which, in my initial assessment, merit two enthusiastic thumbs up.
First, the Liberal Party proposed to return rural mail delivery to its 2005 levels, when there were 55,000 more rural mailboxes in service than there are today.
Second, the Liberal Party pledged to treat pay equity as a human right.
Both ideas are quintessentially Canadian, and reflect our core values of equal access and equal opportunity–two values that have made Canada the light of the world.
Are you kidding?
I have a few better ideas:
1) deregulate the entire market for mail delivery and abolish Canada Post’s monopoly
2) let employees accept whatever pay they want from whatever employers offer
“Both ideas are quintessentially Canadian, and reflect our core values of equal access and equal opportunity–two values that have made Canada the light of the world.”
What in God’s name are you talking about.? What a bunch of drivel nonsense. Are you being serious with this because if you are, you are nothing but a raging communist?
JCk,
I beg to differ on that point. Those ideas are Canadian. I just do not like them.
I do not like them because I do not believe anybody is entitled to those services. Also, I do not believe they are practical.
Equal pay as a human right? Ridiculous. I can see the HRC cases now where some lazy slack-ass wants as much as a co-worker who works twice as hard. How about equal pay for equal performance.
Disagree – let employers decide the pay rates of their employees, not judges, the government or the kangaroo courts (human rights commissions).
Charles for PM. Kudos.
Conservative Rule #1: Less State.
Both suggestions by the neo-liberals break the first rule of conservatism, which, interestingly, used to be the first rule of classic liberalism (via Milton Friedman).
What are the parameters for the pay equity bill?
Is it for all jobs classes – ie all bus drivers must make the same salary or is this about bringing the salaries of women and minorities up to the same standard salary paid out to white men?
If it has to do with race and gender, then what’s the problem paying a woman, or a black person the same as a white man to do the same job?
btw Charles, if you deregulate post, who will actually deliver mail to rural areas if not for an exorbitant fee? As much as you’d like run a pure capitalist system, you’d be hurting a demographic that is 80% conservative. If parliamentary conservatives shared your views, they’d simply be biting the hand that has been feeding them and electing them for years.
I’m not advocating paying someone less because of their race or gender, but we already have laws on the books to protect against discrimination of that kind.
What’s the point of another law micro-focused on pay equity – which as you point out, seems a bit vague and ambiguous.
Actually, Ill answer my own questions: because this bill has nothing to do with policy and more to do with politics. Over the past few years the Liberal party has been losing support from women and minorities to the Conservatives.
What better way to get their attention than to pander to them via a ill-advised and redundant bill that is full of useless platitudes pledging equality and rights for everyone?
I’ll never be shocked by political maneuvering in Ottawa.
btw, if it is redundant, then I don’t see why the conservatives are so tolerant of the existing provisions.
If this is the second coming of communism, should not the good fight be to remove all provisions of pay equity from our society?
Well, I guess the devil could be in the details. We will have to wait to see this bill before we can be sure it’s truly redundant, or whether they’re going to try to sneak in a few socialist treasures.
But again, as Mark mentioned above, Less State is better than more state. We don’t need more laws, we need less.
I never said it was communist, but I do believe the incremental socialist policies (like this one could be) will eventually erode our liberties if we are not vigilant.
I apologize if it came off that the communist remark was attributed to you.
In a previous edit, I had referred to a post by jckirlan but I then cut it out.
I think this is one of those situations where either solution will cause certain group’s liberties to be infringed.
An employer may think it’s fair to pay a lady 75% of what a man makes because he only thinks women can do 75% of the work a man can. It’s his freedom to believe that.
On the other hand, a woman should be free to earn a salary based on her abilities and not on her gender in a modern and civilized society.
Agreed – we’re on the same page.
I always remind my wife (who as a women has dealt with these issues from time to time) that attitudes have changed a great deal over the years and that the idea that women are entitled to less than a man (or are less competent) will hopefully be put to rest before our children are in the workforce and our parents generation is firmly out of the workforce.
No amount of laws or human rights commissions are going to change the mind of a bigoted old crank – however, time will eventually remove their overall impact on society as a whole.
However, that isn’t a reason to ignore current injustices, but it does help us avoid some of these ridiculous attempts to legislate equality outside of the commonly accepted axiom, everyone is equal, regardless of our differences.
Now, YOU are kidding too, Greg???
That day should never happen because of one simple fact: women get pregnant.
This discussion is utterly absurd and devoid of reality. You guys are all nuts!
Employees (whether a woman, a man, a child, an animal or an alien) should earn a salary based on what they agree. That agreement is up to them to bargain with their employer. Any insistance that any other agent, in this case the government, should dictate a salary is nonsense.
First of all, the reality of the world is that female employees run the risk of getting pregnant. Male emloyees do not. A pregnant employee MUST take time off — maybe not a lot but at least some time off. The bargaining power of an employee is a function of many things, one of which is the employee’s skills and experience. When everything else is equal between male and female laborers, you can bet your bottom dollar that on average, men will have developed more skills and experience simply because they are luckier never to be pulled out of the workforce.
Second, it makes sense for an employer to offer less pay to a female employee as a risk premium of having that same female employee temporarily out of work. To put it an other way, if you had to hire an employee, would it make sense to pay the one that has “Sorry, but I might have to quit working for nine months. I have the right to do this randomly whenever I want. I might tell you I will take a year off but then half-way through it, I might change my mind and come back early. Oh and just in case you did not know, you will be hung, drawn and quartered if you do not re-hire me whenever I want to return. I deserve equal pay for equal work!” written on her chest the same pay as the guy willing to take the job beside her???
Put those two things together in a labor market, sketch your supply and demand curves. What you get is a logically lower average wage for females. Nothing else — outside of socialist control of the markets — makes sense.
Just in case any of you reflexive egalitarians have trouble getting past the fact that females get pregnant, replace “pregnant” with “out of the labor market for several months” and complete the exercise.
If you are level-headed enough to understand that the salary differences incorporate risk-premiums, you have a hope in hell of understanding labor economics. Otherwise, you will forever wallow in the nonsense of social activism.
—
Mark,
Thanks for the endorsement but in our current state of affairs, elections are expensive and I could never afford to run for public office on my own dime. As such, I would need to get some rich cronies to back up my candidacy and like all other cronies, they would expect pay back. I have no platform to offer them.
I’m not arguing with you.
Meh, I see your point but I don’t necessarily believe the “pregnancy factor” should be the deciding factor when hiring (or promoting) a female employee. I’ve met and employed plenty of women whose work ethic and quality of workmanship far outstripped their male counterparts. The fact that they theoreticallycould get pregnant wasn’t really a factor in the decision to hire them.
I certainly wasn’t willing to hire a male with sub-par qualifications to balance out for the cost associated with a accommodating a women who chooses to have a child.
Greg,
I may not have been clear but I am talking about “When everything else is equal between male and female laborers” here. In the context of policy, I am sure we can agree that anecdotal evidence is irrelevent.
If it was relevent, then I need to make the following disclaimer: All of the people that I have ever hired in my entire life have been all been women. That is not to say that male candidates have never applied. They have applied several times and I have categorically dismissed precisely because they were male.
New low Charles…
Charles – have to disagree about the “Canadian values” bit. If I may, let me suggest that the true Canadian tendancy on display is the tendancy to equate “Canadian-ness” with a collection of cherished public policies, like our health care system. We Canadians do this all the time, but a majority preference for progressive policies doesn’t translate to a definition of what is and isn’t truly Canadian. It’s kind of tacky and unbecoming, on a par with saying we’re all Tim Hortons slurping hockey fans. The Liberals play this trick all the time, branding non-Liberals as “un-Canadian” when they fight for conservative values. Don’t let them define away our identity so cheaply.
RD – a couple of things about the rural post delivery issue. Firstly, only the oldest and least internet savvy citizens still regularly rely on snail mail, so I can’t help but believe physical mail usage is in decline. At some point we will cross from providing a regular necessity to providing a overpriced luxury. Apparently the Conservatives have decided that time is now.
Secondly, we don’t subsidize newspaper delivery in the country, and yet private news providers have found a way to deliver their product to rural addresses at a price country dwellers can afford. I have to believe that a private mail deliverer could do the same.
Thirdly, other than farm gas, we don’t subsidize regular transportation costs in the hinterland, and yet people who choose to live there find a way to acquire employment and the necessities of life. Why should mail be different?
Lastly, let’s say your numbers are accurate about rural voters being largely Conservative in their voting. If that’s so, what incentive does a newly elected Liberal government have to restore a service to them, when there are so many other Liberal priorities ahead of that? What I’m saying is, what’s done is done at this point. Conservatives made a policy choice that may bite them in the short term, but it won’t help the Liberals for more than one election cycle, if at all. I think your idea of keeping this service to placate Conservative voters is moot, especially for a service which most people won’t be using at all in the near future.
I’d just like to belatedly note here that the Star is up to it’s usual standard of pro-Liberal trickery in this article as well. The lede paragraph sets the stage by refering to “equal pay for work of equal value”; later, when actual dollar values are cited this becomes “equal pay for equal work”. The first turn of phrase invokes a philosophy whereby it is possible to assess common values criteria between completely different job descriptions, and thereby rank and compare the value of every type of work under one objective system. (A system other than and contrary to the system which is already in place and working perfectly, which is the labour market.) Outside of academic circles there really isn’t a lot of support for this type of analysis. The second turn of phrase is more in line with the concept of being paid the same wage for doing the same job, which in fact almost everyone can agree with. The journo is playing at a classic bait and switch in reverse, by slyly conflating the unpopular definition the Liberals actually endorse with the more popular and better known (and utterly different but similar sounding) definition.
I’m not fan of Canada Post, but the rural mail delivery initiative does seem pretty “Canadian”. It kind of reminds me the railroad.
That being said, I might support Brian Tobin’s idea of giving everyone broadband access if it meant we could stop wasting lots of gas shipping dead trees all across the country.
When I have a chance, maybe I’ll weigh in on the pay equity thing, but it seems it’s been pretty much covered.