Everald Robley’s electricity was shut off recently because he couldn‘t pay his bills. As winter made its first appearance in Ottawa, he had no hot showers, no heating in his home, no warm food on his plate.
“Can you imagine? It’s freezing cold outside, and you’re sitting down in the dark,” says the Trinidadian-born father of one.
The power is back on now, but getting it back came with sacrifices.
“The money I had to pay for food and stuff, I had to use that to pay my bill,” he says. “So now, the cans of tuna that I could have gone and eaten, I don’t even got that. I’ve got two (pieces of) bread in the fridge and that’s about it.”
Robley, though, is no jobless victim of the recession. He works full time for a cleaning company. But his wages of $9.75 an hour just don’t cut it.
According to a report released last week, Robley’s low wages end up costing Ottawans as much as $1 billion each year.
The report was prepared by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a grassroots anti-poverty organization with chapters in Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton and Vancouver. It says the $1 billion figure reflects the cost of municipal and provincial services used mostly by Ottawans living below the poverty line.
“We know that there are far too many people who work for a living who utilise food banks, who are totally dependent on our healthcare system and utilize it more than someone who is affluent,” says Nadia Willard, a retired nurse who works with ACORN. She says that the current minimum wage of $9.50 creates a dependency on municipal and provincial services.
According to the report, for every $1,000 that Ottawans pay in property taxes, $46 goes toward housing programs such as rent supplements, homeless support services and public housing. That adds up to up to almost $58 million each year. Another $191 million is spent on financial assistance.
“As a result, all tax payers incur the cost of poverty whether we pay (workers) poverty wages or not,” Willard says. “We need a living wage.”
A “living wage” is the hourly pay necessary to keep an individual above the poverty line. ACORN says that in Ottawa this would mean paying full-time workers a minimum of $13.50 per hour.
The report is one more step in the group’s campaign for the City of Ottawa to require all its contractors to pay their workers a living wage.
The city’s community and protective services committee agreed to consider a living wage proposal. Bay Ward Coun. Alex Cullen, who plans to run for mayor in the next election, came out in support of a living wage policy last summer.
Somerset Ward Coun. Diane Holmes says she supports the idea, but wants to see what the numbers say when a report on the proposal comes back to the committee in late January.
She says she also wants to see a thorough public hearing on the proposal.
“I don’t think we want to do this without the public understanding fully,” she says.
Willard says she understands why some councillors might be cautious in supporting the idea.
“I’m really not surprised. This is something new, and that can be scary for councillors,” she says, pointing out that Ottawa would be the first municipality in Canada to adopt a living wage policy.
Robley, who heads up his union local and now works with ACORN, says that when he came to Canada two decades ago he never expected to have to put up a fight just to keep warm food on the table.
“People there (in Trinidad and Tobago) think the streets up here are paved with gold,” he says. “They don’t know how hard it gets.”