Waddell: Labouring on

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Published on Thursday, September 5, 2013

By: Ken Waddell

myWestman.ca

Labour Day weekend came and went and it was relatively quietly at our house.

Lots of labour, but mostly the yard and household variety. The weekend got me thinking about labour, wages and taxes in Manitoba.

Manitoba is built on loyalty and lifestyle choices. It must be as there are certainly better places to live if one looks only at wages and taxes. Alberta is eight per cent cheaper when it comes to PST but, of course, it’s more expensive to buy a house in Alberta.

Wages are higher but so is the cost of goods and services I am told.

At any rate, there’s a lot of people still going to Alberta and a lot of people migrating to the ever nearer ‘Oil Patch’. The oil rigs seem to be getting closer. The lure of black gold is only about an hour and a half a way now in southwestern Manitoba.

I hear a lot of complaining about the PST in Manitoba – eight per cent compared to five in Saskatchewan and, as mentioned above, zero in Alberta. Lots of complaining about municipal taxes – and they’re high. Assessment keeps going up and even if the mill rate drops, taxes still seem very high. The biggest complaint I hear is about inequities in tax assessment. It seems that the property assessment estimates are all over the map.

I believe that the assessment officers are under orders from the province to jack up the assessment as high as they can so that the province has to pay less in education support. The officers deny it, but whether it’s on purpose or not, raising the assessment makes for more school taxes raised locally.

Therefore, the province is less obligated to put in provincial dollars.

I doubt that we will ever see it happen, but education taxes should not be on residential or farm property. Education is a service to people, not to land. Thus, education taxes should not be on residential or farm land. Education taxes should be generated from general revenue. It’s a tougher decision to take education taxes off commercial land as a company – such as a pipeline or a railway – that doesn’t pay income tax in Manitoba and might not pay anything towards education if it weren’t for property taxes.

One solution might be to charge education taxes on commercial land if the company doesn’t file income taxes in Manitoba.

One of the biggest costs of running a government, regardless of the level, is wages. Public sector wages are much higher than most private sector wages. Usually there are good benefit packages as well. It’s very tough for private industries to keep up with the public sector wage scale. The oil industry seems to be able to compete with public sector level wages but few businesses can. Again, the loyalty and the lifestyle choice factor comes into play.

I read over the weekend that the Canadian Auto Workers union and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada have merged to form a new group called Unifor. The newly elected president said he’s going on the offensive against the government and on behalf of unemployed youth. Not sure where all the unemployed youth are but it’s certainly not around here.

I am told that membership in unions is rising in the public sector but dropping in the private sector.

Maybe that’s why Unifor is going on the offensive – and that is to try and build membership.

Considering all the labour laws we have today, I’m not sure unions have much of a place anymore. I have never been a fan of unions.