The North Bay and District Chamber of Commerce is the site Tuesday afternoon of a demonstration by the interest group Nipissing Decent Work.
The group plans to protest outside the building because the Ford government is repealing legislation to let the minimum wage rise to $15 an hour in January from the current hourly level of $14.
Nipissing Decent Work says provincially, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce stated earlier that the rise to $14 an hour would put 185,000 jobs at risk.
The interest group says nothing could be further from the truth and large scale layoffs never materialized.
In fact it says according to figures from Statistics Canada, the unemployment rate in Ontario dropped to 5.4 percent in July and that was six months after the minimum wage had increased to $14 an hour.
Nipissing Decent Work says the unemployment drop is the lowest it’s been in Ontario since 2000.
Additionally, concerns that prices would rise after the minimum wage increased are also unfounded because Nipissing Decent Work says Ontario’s annual inflation rate is 2.2 percent, a figure it says is modest.
Jared Hunt, who is organizing the protest, wants to know why Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli “is siding with the lies and misinformation of Doug Ford and the Chambers of Commerce.”
Hunt asks if Fedeli won’t protect workers’ rights, who will.
In addition to freezing the minimum wage at $14 by repealing legislation introduced by the former Liberal government, the Progressive Conservatives are eliminating the paid sick days and equal pay for work of equal value provisions that were contained in the original legislation.