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First published at Global News on September 15, 2017.

I was never much of a math fan in school, but I’ve always understood its relevance and fixity. Those wanting a $15 minimum wage don’t share that deference to quantitative truths.

Alberta will have a $15 minimum wage next autumn, while Ontario’s Liberal majority government is pushing through labour reforms that will hike the minimum wage to $15 an hour on Jan. 1, 2019.

When Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne proposed the increases, she did so in the name of “fairness,” a buzzword shared by most advocates, including Fight for 15 and 15 and Fairness — two groups that have been championing the wage across North America.

That alone should tell us that 15 is an arbitrary number: activists from rural and urban communities from Missouri to Ontario cling to it as the ideal wage, despite how different these jurisdictions are. This comes in spite of a body of research telling us how damaging such increases are.

Consequently, governments that adopt this cause find support from people prone to voting on emotions, rather than facts.

This week, Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office — an independent and impartial agency — published a report predicting 50,000 job losses due to the increase to $15 per hour.

Such a finding should give anyone cause to question the policy. But when people have already decided to disregard the numbers, it makes little difference.

The emotional nature of the minimum wage discussion conflates intrinsic worth with economic value.

Lots of people may seem worth $100,000 a year based on character, integrity, and work ethic, but simply don’t hold jobs warranting that value. (Conversely, I’ve encountered many workers worth a heck of a lot less than minimum wage.)

I’ve worked in the service sector for minimum wage. Some of the hardest working people I know plug away in similar jobs for years. Many have even bought homes and raised families on that income, challenging as it may be.

I love the idea of hardworking employees in unskilled, lower-paying jobs being rewarded with more money, but no matter how good one is at their job, earnings have to be measured against productivity and output, not social justice.

People like to compare the income of a large company’s lowest paid employees to that of its CEO, who likely has a compensation package in the millions; one must remember that each of these executives makes decisions that can earn — or cost — a company billions of dollars. Entry-level employees are more replaceable, and there’s a limit to how much value they can produce.

But supporters of a $15 minimum wage — including Ontario’s labour minister, Kevin Flynn — say it’s not fair for someone to work full-time hours and still have trouble making ends meet.

I’d say it’s not fair to force businesses into situations where they can’t make ends meet because they have to pay workers above market value, but that’s just me.

Flynn acknowledged, in a rare moment of candour, that price hikes or job cuts are inevitable. This goes against Wynne’s earlier suggestion that businesses can simply adapt.

Her supporters are ignorant of the fact that any increase in expenses must come from somewhere, and most small businesses simply don’t have a profit margin that can absorb this. It’s not that it would be cutting it too close, or that entrepreneurs don’t want to pay up. The money simply isn’t there.

Paying drastically higher wages just isn’t an option for many employers.

It’s a noble idea to pay people more money because it’s the “right” thing to do, but this perceived moral imperative doesn’t trump fiscal realities standing in the way of these inflated wages.

If raising the minimum wage is supposed to be rooted in economics, rather than emotion and politics, why not use a number more closely aligned with the cost of living?

Round numbers are rarely the answers to complex problems, so $15 has no significance apart from being memorable and marketable. A cost of living calculation would be likelier to yield a necessary wage that looks more similar to $12.32332958 per hour. (Full disclosure: I’ve done zero calculations to come to that number, but then again, neither did the Ontario and Alberta governments to reach theirs.)

How is $15 an hour a fair, livable wage for someone in the boonies of Alberta and also for someone in Toronto or Ottawa?

It would make more sense to implement a system of municipal and regional minimum wages. It sounds convoluted, but there is precedent for such a mechanism. Seattle infamously put a local $15 minimum wage into effect, which, studies show, had negative consequences for employers and employees alike.

I’m not suggesting this, as I’ve previously argued abolition of the minimum wage altogether. But if governments aim to tackle inequality through managing earnings, they shouldn’t pursue the easy way out.

The Ontario and Alberta governments are more interested in winning over low-information voters than solving poverty.

Feelings are powerful things, but as author Ben Shapiro has noted, facts don’t care about them.

First published at Global News on September 8, 2017.

Whenever I download a new app, I tend to accept whatever demands it makes of me. This admission may make privacy advocates cringe, but such is the price of benefiting from whatever convenience these apps offer.

Especially now that fewer and fewer apps will function without having access to location data and other personal details from your phone.

Perhaps the worst offender is Facebook, whose apps require — depending on how you use them — access to everything from your photo galleries to your contact list.

Doubtless, it’s Big Brotherly, but most of us shrug because we value connectivity more than privacy. This trade-off is what makes Facebook so profitable.

A few people have remarked that if you don’t pay for a product, you are the product. With Facebook’s ad-driven revenue model, the company’s algorithm helps sponsors maximize their investment by targeting users based on relationship status, musical interests, method of commute, and other factors we don’t even think about.

Is talking about something out loud part of that algorithm? Facebook says it isn’t.

Last month, I came across a Facebook advertisement for a private jet company hours after my wife and I had a conversation about private air travel — not a regular occurrence, I assure you.

Within the last week, a conversation between my mother and I about pillows was followed a day later with pillow-related advertisements in my Facebook newsfeed.

When I shared my concerns about “Big Data” — the commercialization of our personal information — dozens of people shared their own experiences of eerily similar occurrences with me.

Speaking on background, a Facebook Canada spokesperson categorically denied that the Facebook app even hears verbal conversations, let alone uses them for ad targeting. The spokesperson said Facebook uses elements of our digital footprint such as browser history and profile information, but the microphone is only on when someone is using features that require it.

After asking the spokesperson if it was just a coincidence that I saw certain ads after speaking about those subjects, I was referred to a 2016 statement Facebook issued.

“We show ads based on people’s interests and other profile information — not what you’re talking out loud about,” it reads.

British math professor David Hand said in an interview with BBC that such phenomena could be explained as coincidences, charging that we simply pay more attention to things that are already on our minds.

In other words, I may have already been getting private jet ads but only noticed one because of an earlier conversation. There is merit to this given how many of us skim our news feeds on autopilot.

We also have to account for the hundreds of ads we may see that have no connection to our personal conversations. Sometimes the improbable happens, and there isn’t always a reason, Hand argues.

Though even if Facebook isn’t tuning into our private moments, we should still be cautious.

As an iPhone user, Siri — the device’s virtual assistant — comes to attention when I say “Hey Siri.” (Also, when I discuss the phonetically similar Syria, which has made for some awkward background noise during my radio show.)

For Siri to respond, my iPhone must always have one ear open, so to speak.

Amazon and Google devices have similar features, though all companies insist their technology isn’t spying on anyone.

But technologically speaking, it’s possible. The same feature that sends a text for me when I’m too lazy to move my fingers, could result in my most private moments being saved or observed by a machine — or even a person.

We will soon have to decide — if the point hasn’t already arrived — whether these compromises to our own privacy are worth the supposed benefits. I’m not convinced we’ll make the right decision. Especially when the technology has advanced to such a point where these privacy-encroaching features are automatic.

I connected my phone to my new car through Bluetooth to take calls through the vehicle’s sound system. But now, I get a notification on my phone every time I get in my car telling me how long it will take me to home or work.

I’ve never programmed my office’s address into my phone — it just knows from my daily visits there.

This isn’t an indictment of any technology companies. After all, we’re all too willing to hand over this information to them. We just need to have a conversation about where this trend is headed.

And let’s leave our phones in the next room when we have it.

First published at Global News on September 1, 2017.

Despite my undying love for my wife, I learned this week that our engagement began with an “egregious” act of sexism and misogyny – according to Cosmo, that is.

The night before I proposed to my then-girlfriend, just over two years ago, I asked her father for his blessing.

“You’ve had it for a long time,” he said. We shook hands, cried and laughed. It was a special moment, though not as special as the question I asked his daughter the next day. (We’ll celebrate our first wedding anniversary in a few weeks.)

Asking a would-be bride’s father for permission or a blessing, a practice steeped in tradition and respect for her family, was castigated this week in a Cosmopolitan column by feminist writer Jill Filipovic.

“It’s not a sign of respect. It’s a deeply sexist practice,” she said, citing the history of a woman’s desires being secondary to more economic catalysts for marriage.

There’s no denying that throughout history – and even today, in some cultures – marriage has dealt women a raw hand. But that doesn’t mean traditions, when embraced for the right reasons, are anachronistic.

My father-in-law’s blessing was meaningful, but also symbolic. It was my wife’s affirmation that really counted, and all three of us knew that.

Filipovic treats the pursuit of paternal patronage as theft of a woman’s agency, which is nonsensical.

My wife has two degrees and an incredibly successful career. She also kept her maiden name. She’s her own woman, and her father’s blessing on our union didn’t change that.

Just as it didn’t mean he was literally transferring possession of her to me when he walked her down the aisle.

Such traditions simply underscore that a marriage is a union of two families as much as it is of two people.

Marriages are as old as humanity itself, so it’s impossible to separate tradition from them.

I asked my female Facebook friends for their thoughts on the matter, though some men chimed in as well. (Cue “mansplaining” accusations.)

From left to right and atheist to evangelical Christian, most women seemed not only tolerant but excited, about the practice.

“It’s not so much permission as it is respect for the patriarch of a family,” a married grandmother wrote, citing Christian tradition.

Filipovic’s feminism may reject the significance of that, but for Christian women — all Christians, in fact — the biblical framework for marriage is immensely important.

“A father is the first man a girl ever loves, and most times, the measurement of all other men in her life,” said one friend, the mother of a teenage girl. “I think it’s important for the two most important men in her life to give her the gift of support, from both.”

Another said it “signaled that my father trusted him and believed he would fit in with our family, which is very important to both of us.”

Support for the practice was overwhelming, but not universal. A co-worker told me it would be a deal-breaker in her relationship if her partner sought permission from her father.

“Today, women are equals. They hold prominent positions in society and in the workforce,” said another. “As a woman, it is important to stand on your own two feet and make your own decisions.”

Interestingly, this approach was shared by a conservative Christian friend — the kind most likely to embrace these sorts of marital traditions — who told me that despite her love for her father, his life decisions disqualify him from having a say in who she marries.

“No one owns me,” she said. And she’s right.

It’s worth noting that the objectors in my straw poll seemed to dislike the lack of independence implied in the practice, rather than a presence of sexism. They would just as likely oppose a partner asking a mother or both parents for the permission or blessing.

So I’m at a loss for why Filipovic’s feminism excludes marital tradition, even when a woman wants to embrace it.

If feminism is about choice and equality of opportunity, that must include the right of a woman to decide for herself whether these traditions should be accommodated. But to Filipovic, that would be anti-feminist.

“Those of us in feminist relationships should reject that norm – or at least understand that by partaking in it, we’re reinforcing a deeply sexist practice,” she said.

This worldview would also deny women the choice of taking their husband’s surname — which I’ve known progressive feminists to do as well.

Filipovic claims she’s liberating women from the shackles of the patriarchy, but she’s content to limit women to the narrow confines of her radical feminism. This has less to do with choice and more to do with exporting joylessness to women whose loving families and marriages incorporate the tradition she despises.

She and her partner retain the choice to eschew these, or any other, traditions. But that doesn’t make them wrong for everyone else.

First published at Global News on August 25, 2017.

First, they came for the Confederate statues. Then they came for Sir John A. Macdonald. What’s next?

As a movement to purge America’s south of its monuments to Confederate leaders continues, Canada’s largest province is seeing a push from its elementary teachers’ union to wipe the country’s first prime minister from school names.

The motion, passed last week at the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario’s annual meeting, calls on Ontario school boards to “examine and rename schools and buildings named after Sir John A. Macdonald, in recognition of his central role as the architect of genocide against Indigenous Peoples, the impact that this has on the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, parents, and educators, and the ways in which his namesake buildings can contribute to an unsafe space to learn and to work.”

The ETFO isn’t the first group to launch a smear campaign against Macdonald. Just last year, a statue of the Scottish-born leader was removed from Wilfrid Laurier University, after a project to display statues of every Canadian prime minister was aborted, and later relocated to an off-campus location. The successful petition to cancel the installation charged that housing bronze casts of Macdonald and his successors on historically aboriginal land was “politically and culturally insensitive (if not offensive).”

There’s no public push for this latest ETFO motion, so I can only assume that teachers are virtue signalling in response to discussions emerging from the United States. I expect better of those tasked with educating the next generation, and I’d hope Canadians do as well.

If we are to take a critical lens to notable Canadians, why stop at Macdonald?

Ontario and Saskatchewan have schools named after Tommy Douglas, CBC’s “greatest Canadian” for his foundation of Canada’s universal health-care system. But Douglas was also a champion of eugenics, arguing in his university thesis that forced sterilization was the answer for those “anywhere from high-grade moron to mentally defective.”

As the New Democratic Party’s leader, he characterized homosexuality as a “mental illness” and “psychiatric condition.”

Former British Expeditionary Force commander Earl Haig has schools in his honour across Canada, though his wartime leadership earned him the moniker of “Butcher Haig.” According to the Canadian War Museum, Haig’s “epic but costly offensives… have become nearly synonymous with the carnage and futility of First World War Battles.”

Sir Wilfrid Laurier is rightfully heralded as one of Canada’s greatest leaders, but his premiership was not without challenges. Laurier hiked a head tax on Chinese immigrants from $50 to $500 — at the time, the price of two houses — to discourage them from coming to Canada.

No historic figure, however great, can emerge unscathed from scrutiny by today’s standards of justice and decency.

Studying and understanding history involves looking at it through the lenses of the past and present. This means assessing figures by the gestalt of their lives, rather than specific chapters.

When we do this with Macdonald, he emerges as an overall positive force in creating the Canada that we inhabit today.

He united the country’s founding provinces, connected the nation for trade and travel with the Trans-Canadian railroad, and forged a relationship with the United States, which has withstood the test of time.

Macdonald expended political capital to keep the Canadian federation together when facing opposition. Had a different leader been in his seat, the Canada we know may not exist.

His legacy has persisted over the last 150 years in a way that no modern politician’s will.

And it’s worth noting that Macdonald seems to have been fairly progressive in his own era. He attempted in 1885 — albeit unsuccessfully — to extend voting rights to women, calling for “completely establishing (a woman’s) equality as a human being.”

On his “complex” relationship with aboriginals, historian Don Smith wrote, “If judged by the standards of his age, not ours, he emerges as a complex and relatively tolerant individual.”

Macdonald’s legacy isn’t above criticism, but it’s a shameful act of historic revisionism to allow the negatives to outshine the positives. I fear seeing how the teachers who voted for the motion would actually teach Canada’s history in the classroom.

As a country, we must strive take the best achievements of each generation into the next, and leave the worst behind. That’s called progress, and we’ve made a lot of it, despite the charges of those on society’s radical fringe.

Rather than tarring Sir John A. Macdonald’s name, let’s use his namesake schools — and all schools — to teach the good, the bad, and the ugly of Canada’s history, to continue our nation’s growth.

To say Macdonald — or any of his contemporaries, for that matter — was solely sunshine and roses would be a gross mischaracterization. But to say he was all bad would be worse.

First published at Global News on August 18, 2017.

Whenever a tragedy unfolds, too many people view it solely through the lens of how it either reinforces, or threatens, their pre-existing worldview.

We see this after Islamic terrorist attacks, after police shootings, and after last weekend’s Charlottesville protests.

The so-called Unite the Right rally on Saturday in the small Virginia college town did not simply morph from a reasonable protest into a magnet for the country’s true basket of deplorables — those folks were the ones organizing it.

From the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website to Richard Spencer’s alt-right National Policy Institute to the National Socialist Movement, the event’s masthead reads like a Who’s Who of human excrement.

Yet I defend the right of these fecally-minded people to speak out, just as I do for the right of those standing up to them.

There is a clarity to the goals of the Unite the Right protesters — terrible people standing up for terrible things, and thus easy to condemn. The groups opposing them have more shades of grey. Many, perhaps most, showed up to unite against racism and white supremacy — but many didn’t.

Antifa in particular, with its network of bandana-clad agitators, has a history of violent and hateful rhetoric and actions, from shutting down disagreeable speakers to shattering store windows to dousing people with urine.

Former dictator Benito Mussolini saw the rejection of individual identity and liberty as a hallmark of fascism, rendering Antifa, which seeks a singular worldview, the very portrait of what it claims to oppose.

These protesters, who often shroud themselves in Communist regalia and symbols, are at odds with history, the rule of law and free speech itself.

There is no moral high ground for Antifa’s pursuit of silencing dissidents and creating chaos.

How are they at all superior to the alt-right types seeking a white ethnostate?

They’re fascists, yet are rarely criticized as such by the mainstream left or media.

We can haggle over whether one of the group’s goals is marginally more immoral than the other, but our contempt for one side shouldn’t take away from our ability to criticize the other.

I’m a right-winger who thinks both are awful, yet I’ve been accused multiple times this week of being a “Nazi apologist” or “fascist” for saying such.

This double standard is similar to the widespread acceptance of communism — an ideology that has claimed over 100 million lives — whilst condemning the equally brutal Nazi fascism.

This is apparent in the backlash to U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments taking aim at Antifa on Wednesday.

In true Trump fashion, his messaging shifted in just a few days from a call for love to triumph over hate, to a statement condemning white supremacists and violence “on all sides,” to the tense back-and-forth with reporters at Trump Tower during which he asked, several times, “What about the ‘alt-left?’”

“Do they have any semblance of guilt?” he asked.

I thought the exchange was tactless and juvenile compared to Trump’s previous statements, which actually struck the right chords. But he is not wrong to call out violent, radical leftists.

More people should. Not instead of calling out those on the right, but in addition to that.

But we can’t do this when conservatives and liberals are limiting their finger-pointing to the other side’s problematic members.

The media doesn’t even want to acknowledge the existence of an alt-left.

Scott Gilmore, the allegedly conservative Maclean’s columnist, tweeted a Second World War image of Allied soldiers storming the beaches with the caption, “Alt-left, violently coming at the alt-right, circa 1944.”

After Trump’s “alt-left” remarks, Wired ran a column titled “There is no ‘alt-left,’ no matter what Trump says.” CNN concluded that “experts say it’s a ‘‘made-up term.’” Vice writer Eve Peyser urged people to “stop saying ‘alt-left,’” a sentiment shared by many others.

The left is ignoring the alt-left problem at its own peril. If past fringe movements are any indication, this group will grow to be such a force that people will start to see it as representative of the mainstream left, as has happened to conservatives with the alt-right, which was originally dismissed as little more than angry YouTube commenters.

Everyone has a moral obligation to condemn the radicals in their midst. Moderate Muslims must rebuke radical Islam. Christians must cast out phonies like those in the Westboro Baptist Church. And the political left and right must disavow their own extremists.

If we are to find our common ground and condemn the reprehensible, it must be done, as Donald Trump said, “on all sides.”

A true anti-fascist would do this.