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BC Coalition of Women's Centres
January 30th, 2002
For immediate release
MLA WAGE ROLL-BACK SMALLER THAN
CUTS TO SINGLE PARENT FAMILIES
“SHAME,” SAY BC WOMEN’S CENTRES
In a media release sent out Tuesday, January 29, Gordon Campbell
announced that provincial MLAs would experience a three-year roll-back
and freeze of five per cent.
“The five per cent rollback on MLA wages will only apply to
members of the government caucus,” says the media release. “The current
annual MLA salary is $72,100. Under the rollback, the MLAs' base wage
will be frozen at $68,500 until March 31, 2005.”
The total cut in annual wages for MLAs is $3,600. There
will be no cuts to other payments received by elected officials.
Draconian changes to income support programs in British Columbia
will mean cuts of up to $370 per month for single-parent families.
This loss of $4,440 per year will equal a cut of 26 per cent in the
incomes of single parents with two children.
The Ministry of Human Resources Service Plan, announced January
17, announced cuts of $70 to the support portion of single parents’
income assistance. Additionally, cuts to the earnings exemption,
which allowed working families to earn and keep $200 before it was clawed
back by the Ministry, and the maintenance exemption, which allowed single
parents to keep $100 of child maintenance payments before claw-back, were
also eradicated under the new Service Plan.
This appearance of belt-tightening by MLAs is a charade, of
which the provincial government should be ashamed.
Far from being any kind of savings to the province, or even
a symbolic gesture, the province’s media release describing the wage
roll-back comes, hypocritically, without the details that the Premier
earns an extra $45,000, meaning he will earn $114,500 instead of $117,100.
The province's cabinet ministers earn an additional $39,000 on top
of their base salaries.
MLAs also receive additional monies, such as daily cost-of-living
allowances of $150 per day while sitting in the Legislature.
Prior to the announced cutbacks to income assistance, a single
parent with two children has received a maximum of $13,278.96 per year
in shelter and support from the BC Ministry of Human Resources.
All of this means the wage roll-back for MLAs will be far less
than five per cent of their gross incomes, in sharp contrast to the
26 per cent cut to the net incomes of single parent families in poverty.
Cutbacks to income assistance in British Columbia, called “reckless
and unnecessary”1 by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, will
push women and their families into homelessness, starvation, and sickness,
and will force women to enter or stay in abusive relationships, or even
enter the sex trade out of desperation.
According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, “The
welfare cuts….are the most surprising piece of bleak news—surprising
because the Premier clearly stated during the election campaign that
he would not cut welfare benefit rates, because welfare rates are already
so shockingly low.”
1
Other brutal changes to income assistance include cutting transit
passes to low-income seniors, forcing people with disabilities to look
for work, and threatening single parents of children over age 3 with
further cuts of 11% if they are unable to find employment.
The BC Coalition of Women’s Centres believes the mark of a
civilized society lies in how it treats its most vulnerable citizens.
Yet under cutbacks to welfare, legal aid and other government services,
there can be no doubt that some of our most vulnerable citizens—women,
children, seniors and people with disabilities—will die.
The Province of British Columbia is quickly becoming one of
the most barbaric societies in Canada.
The Coalition demands that the provincial government end their
commitment to a balanced budget and introduce a budget with balance—restoring
social justice to the province of BC.
-30-
1 “Reckless and Unnecessary:
CCPA’s analysis, facts, and figures for understanding and challenging
BC’s January 17 budget and job cuts” by Seth Klein, CCPA—BC Director
(January 21, 2002). Available online at:
www.policyalternatives.ca
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