California Company Plans Sarnia Pilot Plant.

From Paul Morden, Sarnia Observer.

A California-based bio-chemical company set to open a commercial-scale demonstration plant in 2018 at the Arlanxeo site in Chemical Valley is already expanding in Sarnia.

It was announced this week that Origin Materials is moving a pilot plant it purchased from Tennessee-based Eastman Chemicals to the Western Sarnia-Lambton Research Park, next to Modeland Road.

Bioindustrial Innovation Canada, a government-funded agency based in Sarnia, said in a news release it is supporting the $6-million pilot plant project in partnership with Lambton College and the research park.

“We’re quite excited about it,” Origin Materials CEO John Bissell said Wednesday.

“We really wanted to establish what we’ve been calling a ‘beachhead’ in Sarnia.”

Initially, the company plans to use the oxidation pilot plant at the research park to work with terephthalic acid, “but we’re probably going to expand it to some other chemicals,” he said.

Oxidation is ‘on the trickier side\ of chemical processes and ‘the staff and the safety culture in Sarnia is just incredibly important to us,’ Bissell added.

“It makes (us) a lot more comfortable than a lot of the other places you can imagine starting something like this up.”

Link to the rest here.

Image Credit.

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The Minimum-Wage Debate in Ontario.

R. Michael Warren

Before I argue that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s higher minimum wage and other workplace improvements will benefit our economy and democracy, let me make a couple of things clear.

First, I’ve had experience meeting payrolls in my own businesses. It’s challenging. Second, I’m not a left-leaning economist using this platform for political advocacy. Instead, I am trying to take an evidence-based look at the longer-term political and economic benefits of improving the employment conditions of low-wage workers in Ontario.

It’s hard to avoid the raging debate in the media. A variety of business groups have turned up the volume on their objections. And they have an important point.

Implementing a $15 minimum wage by 2019 (up from$11.40) is too fast and the pre-election timing reeks of political expediency. In 2014, Wynne promised to eliminate minimum wage politics. She set the amount at $11.24 and told business it would be increased annually based on the rate of inflation.

However, this May she broke that promise and introduced an expanded employment standards package including a proposed minimum wage increase to $14 by this January and $15 by 2019.


Link to the rest here.

The Financial Accountability Officer’s take. (CBC.)

Additional coverage, (Toronto Star.)

Here’s a story from 2009. (Sarnia Observer.)

Minimum Wage Threatens Jobs, (Toronto Sun.)

Image. Ms. Magazine. (Defunct.)

Editorial Opinion.

The basic takeaway here is that business interests will always be against anything that tends to drive up labour costs. It is also clear that there are serious imbalances of social equity, including precarious work, and the inability to feed, house and clothe a family, for too many citizens, issues that need to be seriously addressed here in the province of Ontario. There is the question of whether the province or the taxpayer really needs to pay for housing, income supplements, food or rent supplements, or whether our cities and towns should be studded with food banks and homeless shelters, when the so-called free market economy is supposed to the supreme arbiter of all that is right and just and fair in the employment marketplace.

In the absence of any really socially-responsible leadership on the part of business, the rather myopic view of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, and the difficulty of unionizing part-time, precarious or underage workers, government is the only entity that has the power to bring social change to two million Ontario workers, presently engaged in a daily struggle just to get by. Note that the FAO is an accounting office, and Stephen LeClair is, by definition, among the most conservative of men.

If you think of it, the loss of 50,000 minimum-wage jobs would be well counterbalanced by a thirty-two percent increase in wages for the other 1.95 million minimum-wage workers now making a $15.00/hr minimum wage. This is the part that Mr. LeClair and others tend to forget or downplay. 

Fact is, they don’t even mention it, and this is a key to understanding the situation.

Even if, in the worse-case scenario, which claims 185,000 lost minimum-wage jobs came true, it would still be a big net gain for the economy, as well as the roughly 1.815 million workers who benefit. And the employers may very well have to choose between raising prices. or accepting a reduction in their profits—something else they don’t want to talk too much about. No, for them, it is about ’50,000 vulnerable children losing their jobs’.

A fifteen-dollar minimum wage would mean that the price of a box of Kraft Dinner would go up by one penny at Walmart. These guys are willing to fight over a penny, while too many Ontarians suffer from food, housing and other social insecurities.

The other thing is that the opposition, and it is safe to say that none of the naysayers are likely to be voting for Premier Kathleen Wynne and the provincial Liberals in 2018, are hoping to make this some kind of knee-jerk, reactionary election issue.

Let us hope that they fail. In response to Mr. Warren’s article, this writer can only feel that this change can’t come soon enough. Also, with the more agile government of the present day, and, one must hope, the more agile business person, we will find that the timeline is doable.

—   Zach Neal 

For Wit Ventures.

Additional research.

https://neuvoo.ca/salary/food-processing/

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/employee-turnover-statistics-restaurants-16744.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/06/27/seattles-higher-minimum-wage-is-actually-working-just-fine/?tid=ss_fb&utm_term=.3f2f7c598cfa (Paywall.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/business/economy/seattle-minimum-wage.html?smid=fb-share (Paywall after a few free articles a month.)


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185,000 Ontario Students Receiving Free Tuition.

From Allison Jones, Canadian Press.

TORONTO — Ontario’s minister responsible for post-secondary education says 185,000 students have received free tuition this year under a new government program.

Advanced Education Minister Deb Matthews is announcing the figures later today, which equal more than a third of all full-time college and university students in Ontario.

First announced in last year’s budget, the new Ontario Student Assistance Program that gives a combination of grants and loans took effect for this school year.

For example, a student going straight from high school to university whose parents make $70,000 could receive $7,300 in grants, which would cover the average cost of tuition, and $8,300 in repayable loans.

Matthews says a 3% tuition increase cap is continuing, but these grants will ensure more people, especially those from lower income families, can pursue post-secondary education.

Link to the rest here.

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