Those who don't regularly surf the Campbell Liberal website might be surprised to learn that it contains a page that goes to extremes in opposing an increase in the minimum wage. Not content with simply saying that they don't support a $10/hr minimum wage, the Liberal website makes misleading and inaccurate claims with respect to the working poor. They claim that the government provides monthly rental supplements for over 20,000 families earning $28,000 or less. The 2008 Throne Speech contradicted that claim when it said that only 4,300 families have been given new support through the rent supplement program, despite forecasts when the program was announced that it would immediately assist 15,000 low income working families.

The Liberal website and the Campbell's government's position are based on a contradiction; first they argue that unemployment is down and wages are up, then they argue that increasing the minimum wage to $10/hr would result in $450 million in "new costs". If wages are so high that an increase in the minimum wage is irrelevant, then how can it be that it would cost $450 million?

Statistics Canada does not regularly publish data on the percentage of workers in each hourly wage category. Its annual publication (which costs $209) revealed that in 2006, over 245,000 British Columbians earned less than $10/hr. Over 90,000 of them were between age 25 and 54, and two-thirds of those were women.

Just as the Campbell government denies the number of homeless, it also denies the crisis in poverty caused by low wages. Most of the poor are the working poor. The Campbell government should not turn its back on a quarter million British Columbians who are working, but living in poverty. It is disgusting that the governing party would publish a website denying the problems faced by so many of its citizens.