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OUR VIEW: Living wages are a must

Average workers need pay increases to help offset inflation
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Black Press file photo

Sixty bucks for a small turkey, $11.29 for a head of cauliflower, and lettuce so precious it might as well replace cash as the new green stuff.

It screams, “Time to tighten your belt and don your Sunday-best wooden barrel.”

If supply shortages, coupled with price-gouging at supermarkets, continues apace, many more of us will be getting in line at our local food bank.

Dalhousie University’s Food Price Report 2023 forecasts that Canadian families will spend roughly $1,065 more on groceries next year, as if 2022 hasn’t been tough enough. Predicting a five to seven per cent price increase in food next year, it figures the average family of four will spend up to $16,288.41 on food alone.

What that means is nutrition will increasingly be trumped by the need simply to get by – trying to keep your family’s bellies full on what you can afford, being gouged at the pumps, meeting skyrocketing rent and mortgage payments, shouldering bills and whatever else that’s become more expensive, which is pretty much all of it.

Inflation, of course, means a drop in donations to the food bank. Our story will tell you donations to the Surrey Food Bank, which are generally up leading up to Christmas, have this year plunged by 30 per cent.

What really needs to happen is people need to earn living wages. Instead, the Bank of Canada, like a demented child pulling the wings off of flies, was at this time of writing expected to this week hike interest rates yet again.

Who is this going to hurt the most? The rich?

Average workers need pay increases to help offset inflation.

Nobody wants to be a ward of the state, especially when the state doesn’t inspire confidence it knows what it’s doing.

Now-Leader



edit@surreynowleader.com

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