Dave Barrett may have died last week at age 87 but his impact on B.C. from just three years as premier is still felt to this day.
ICBC. The Agricultural Land Reserve. Pharmacare. The B.C. Labour Relations Board. French immersion in B.C. schools. Question Period and Hansard in the Legislature.
None of these things existed in B.C. before Barrett led the NDP to victory in 1972.
None of them were dismantled when Social Credit returned to power in 1975.
He also banned spanking in schools and lowered the drinking age to 19, which also remain in effect to this day.
Barrett also raised the minimum wage.
When he became premier, it was $1.50 an hour. The NDP raised it to $2 in December 1972, to $2.25 in December 1973, to $2.50 in June 1974 and to $2.75 on Dec. 1, 1975, 10 days before they were kicked out of office.
Despite that, the new Social Credit government, led by Bill Bennett, did not reverse the last minimum wage increase to $3 that the NDP scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 1976.
In other words, minimum wage doubled under Barrett.
It wouldn't go up again until 1980 and it wouldn't double again to $6 an hour until 1993, the next time an NDP government was in charge.
Before being crushed in the 2001 provincial election by the Gordon Campbell/B.C. Liberal landslide, the NDP scheduled an increase for that November to $8 an hour.
Campbell did not reverse it but he didn't raise the minimum wage once in the 10 years he was premier.
His successor, Christy Clark, immediately raised it to $8.75 and raised it twice more before the 2013 election.
It now sits at $11.35 an hour.
As minimum wage has increased in the 45 years since Barrett was premier, so has the size of the service sector in the job market.
In Barrett's day, minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage. It was set low as an incentive for small businesses to hire young and inexperienced workers at a wage that would encourage those workers to stay in school and/or move on to better paying jobs as they became available.
Those days have long past. The modern economy's high-paying jobs favour workers with extensive education and specialized skills, while most people with little or no post-secondary education are permanently relegated to the service sector and the low wages that come with it.
That's how minimum wage became transformed into the living wage championed by anti-poverty advocates.
While the $15 living wage is good for unskilled adult service sector workers, it removes any incentive for employers to hire inexperienced young people for their first jobs to help buy their first vehicle, move into their first apartment and put food on the table while they attend college or university.
Despite being tagged as a "socialist" by the free enterprise folk, Barrett wasn't anti-business. He keenly understood that sticking up for working people also meant championing the success of employers - especially small businesses - that create and sustain new jobs.
If John Horgan is looking to channel some of that Barrett vision to government and to the minimum wage, he would modernize minimum wage.
Along with scheduling several increases over the next few years, so B.C. can keep up with Ontario, which will pay $15 as a minimum wage starting this fall, the NDP government should also set a youth minimum wage.
Workers 15 to 17 years old should be paid two-thirds the adult minimum wage, employers should be allowed to only hire a set number of teenagers at this wage, based on the size of the business and teenagers working alone, supervising others or on the job between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. should receive the adult living wage.
It's not a perfect solution, of course, but it offers some degree of help for youth workers, adult workers and the employers providing the jobs.
That's the kind of bold creativity Barrett brought to the table when he became premier. The man didn't govern cautiously, with an eye on the next election. He lived in the moment, governed accordingly and many of the changes he introduced became permanent.
What an act to follow.
Over to you, Premier Horgan.
-- Editor-in-Chief Neil Godbout
