Editorial

Workers don’t need 10 cents, they need UBI

UBI could increase financial insecurity, help businesses retain employees EDITORIAL

As of Oct. 1, the minimum wage in Ontario has been raised 10 cents to $14.35 per hour.

This is up from the 25-cent increase on Oct. 1, 2020 and the previous $2.40 increase on Jan. 1, 2018.

While three minimum wage increases in the last few years may look good on paper, the recent 10-cent increase is hardly enough for Ontarians to be excited about. For those minimum-wage workers in Ontario who clock 40 hours per week, the raise amounts to an extra $4 each week before taxes. This difference is even more negligible for those working part time.

The move comes as a result of the Making Ontario Open for Business Act passed in 2018, which mandated the minimum wage be frozen at $14 per hour until 2020. After this, wages would begin to increase annually at a rate consistent with inflation.

Although Ontario’s minimum wage is increasing with inflation, the prices of goods and services aren’t anything close to charitable.

For example, since the beginning of the pandemic, grocery prices in Canada have been steadily rising. This year alone, Sylvain Charlebois — a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, N.S. — said the price of pork has increased by five per cent, and the price of beef has increased by almost 10 per cent. Charlebois predicted a lower food inventory for the fall which, in turn, would drive prices even higher.

Although prices for food items like chicken, produce and pasta have dropped, not all Ontarians have access to big-box stores where these items are sold at cheaper prices. For those living in rural and remote communities, having small, local grocery stores — where food prices tend to be higher overall — as the sole option for shopping makes the rising grocery prices hit even harder.

The extra 10 cents per hour won’t ensure minimum-wage workers come out on top. Instead, it only ensures they lose slightly less.

But minimum-wage workers shouldn’t be the only ones unsatisfied with this increase.

Small business owners may experience significant financial setbacks as a result of the increase. For example, a small business owner with just five employees working an eight-hour shift each day will now be required to pay an extra $16 per month in employee wages. This amounts to an extra $192 per year, which — for businesses that have suffered tremendous losses during the pandemic, including a potential decrease in customers due to Ontario’s vaccine passport mandate for select businesses — can be a big chunk of change. In response, small business owners may be forced to lay off employees or reduce hours, hurting minimum-wage workers and the community even more.

So, if a slight raise in minimum wage is both useless to workers and harmful to businesses, we need a viable third alternative.

Enter universal basic income (UBI).

With UBI, every citizen would receive a guaranteed minimum amount of money regardless of factors like employment or financial need. This means workers would be able to afford the rising costs of goods and services without relying on paltry minimum-wage increases or working multiple jobs. It would also help ensure workers aren’t put in serious financial trouble if they are laid off from their jobs.

Further, UBI could mean businesses have a better shot at gaining and retaining employees — it would ensure workers can actually afford to have their sole employment income be from minimum-wage work. This might entice workers to undertake minimum wage jobs, many of which have been notoriously difficult to fill during the pandemic.

In fact, a recent ongoing experiment in Stockton, Calif. has demonstrated the potential benefits of a universal basic income. Over two years, some individuals living in low-income neighbourhoods were given $500 per month to spend however they pleased with no stipulations. The results were positive — the guaranteed income helped to reduce financial insecurity, and much of the money went back into the economy through the purchasing of basic necessities. Participants were allowed a sense of financial freedom they wouldn’t otherwise have had access to.

Further, contrary to the opinions of opponents of UBI, the study found the guaranteed income did not deter participants from continuing to work or seek employment — the portion of participants with full-time employment actually increased 12 per cent. Unsurprisingly, a two-year experiment in Finland produced similar results. Although not as strong, the Finnish study concluded that, at the very least, UBI did not harm employment rates.

In Canada, a similar, albeit shortlived, project was launched in Ontario in 2017. Various cities and surrounding areas were targeted to assess the efficacy of UBI in both rural and urban areas. However, the project was scrapped in 2018, two years before its proposed end date. As a result, the province missed out on potentially insightful data regarding the effects of UBI for Canadians in the long term.

Although the Ontario government might scoff at the thought of UBI, a 10-cent increase to minimum wage isn’t much better. What’s clear is slight raises in minimum wage harm both workers and employers, creating an economy that’s difficult to survive in. Unless Canada can find a better way to mitigate these harms, considering UBI should not be off the table. For workers getting nickel and dimed by the provincial government with meagre minimum-wage increases, UBI could make a well-heeled difference in their wallets.

graphic / Marina Djurdjevic /

staff

words / Ursula Chojko-Bolec /

staff

Where art and architecture meet

In conversation with Eduardo Aquino

ARTS & CULTURE

Zoë LeBrun, staff Have you ever thought about what it truly means to be in a “public” space? Tapume, an exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG), asks this very question.

Eduardo Aquino, the artist behind Tapume, studied architecture and urban studies in Brazil and earned his MFA in open media from Concordia University. He is also a professor at the faculty of architecture at the U of M and runs his own practice called spmb.

“I’m an architect [and] an artist, and I have been both all my life, and part of my practice actually is working the interstices of those two disciplines, architecture and art,” said Aquino.

“Tapume, the project at the WAG, is pretty much the synthesis of all of that […] That friction between a found architecture structuring the city and a selection of body of paintings.”

The exhibition is also a living example of Aquino’s theory of non-public spaces, which challenges us to consider whether “public” space truly exists.

Tapume consists of a construction hoarding, which was previously in use during the construction of Qaumajuq, as well as a row of smaller paintings along one side of the gallery space.

“For me, there is an interesting, strong meaning on the hoarding, because it really shows the limit between what’s public and what’s not public, what’s accessible [and] what’s not accessible,” said Aquino.

The walkway is covered in swatches of blue paint due to buffing, a practice in which construction companies paint over graffiti tags, tire marks and other public traces. Aquino saw this cycle as a dialogue between the construction company and the public and, as the hoarding accumulated layers, it reminded him of Mark Rothko’s large colour-field paintings. This eventually inspired him to pursue Tapume as an artistic project.

“There was this play going on between taggers, or graffiti people, and the construction company. So, you know, as soon as they would find a mark, it would be covered and then another mark would be on top of it and will be covered,” Aquino said.

“I see the blue wall as a painting, just a large painting created by a conversation in public space.”

Upon entering Tapume, it is almost impossible to resist walking through the structure, particularly when coming from Qaumajuq’s side of the gallery.

In addition to its aesthetic and conceptual qualities, the walkway also mirrors its exact placement outside the WAG’s walls when it was in use and creates a flow of movement through the gallery space, which loops to where Aquino’s paintings line the gallery’s back wall, creating the hoarding’s shadow.

The flow provides a sense of an interior and exterior space in the gallery, a juxtaposition emphasized by the small holes in the hoarding’s wall, which provide a limited view to the paintings on the other side. These contrasting ideas and voyeuristic qualities lead viewers to consider the structure’s original function as an outdoor feature and divisive line between the realms of public and private space.

The paintings of Tapume are intriguing as well. Although they appear identical from a distance, their uniqueness emerges as they are approached.

Amidst their small variations in form, one can also find abrasions, paint splatters and even natural debris embedded in their paint. Each painting feels like a comment on how the world can influence a person, object or our perception, a quality that resulted partially from Aquino’s painting process, which occurred in his back alley.

Aquino’s paintings also speak to the introduction of industrial materials into the context of fine art, recalling artists such as Richard Serra and JeanMichel Basquiat.

“It’s a kind of another subdued way to bring everyday life into the museum, to bring something that’s really accessible to everybody,” said Aquino.

Like Rothko’s paintings, there is also a spiritual aspect to Tapume in Aquino’s eyes.

“For me, one of the most rewarding, spiritual and beautiful — and not even beautiful, I would call ‘intense’ — intensely aesthetic experiences in the city, more than even visiting a museum, is to walk down a back alley,” he said.

“You recognize beauty in things that people totally disregard. Even further, they ignore [it], they are indifferent about it, they even call [it] ugly. But if you go back to art history, every kind of ground-breaking moment or artwork usually is responded to like that […] so the very first moment is a shake-up to people and say, ‘Hey, look around in the world, the world is really beautiful, even a back alley.’”

After leaving the WAG, Tapume will go on to transform into a chapel, as a nod to the Rothko Chapel, at the School of Art Gallery in the new year. It will be further deconstructed into a series of paintings to be shown at the faculty of architecture gallery in fall 2022.

“The project starts in the art gallery as architecture and ends in the architecture gallery as art, as paintings,” Aquino said.

Overall, Tapume embodies a series of actions that transform into a visual and aesthetic element while simultaneously showing the interplay between public and private space. Beyond the power dynamics and social relationships Tapume speaks to, Aquino also impresses upon us the unexpected beauty of the urban world, reminding us that not only is realism still alive, but that it can be conceptual and abstract as well.

Tapume, in its current form at the WAG, is on display until Nov. 7.

arts@themanitoban.com

“I see the blue wall as a painting, just a large painting created by a conversation in public space”

—Eduardo Aquino, architect and artist

/ provideed photo / Eduardo Aquino

’Toban turntable

Moonfield —‘Televox’

4/5 stars ARTS & CULTURE

Grace Paizen, staff

By the end of the 1970s, rock music had splintered into the new wave era. As bands reassembled from the debris, new forms emerged into strains of alternative and progressive rock. 40-odd years later, up-and-coming local Winnipeg band Moonfield can be found in the asteroid field of this musical equivalency of space dust.

With the self-proclaimed sound of Radiohead and the Cure, the space debris of electronic and progressive music past found in Moonfield’s new EP Televox ranges throughout the alt-rock spectrum.

Dropping Oct. 16 during the band’s concert at the Royal Albert Arms, the four tracks play like a solid full album in the making.

Opening track “Don’t Go” is the perfect launching point for the EP. With a solidly paced tempo, lead vocalist Hayden Major’s singing style evokes the Strokes’ Julian Casablancas.

The components of the song itself give shades of New Order, particularly with the theme of “Don’t Go” emphasized in the chorus — “will you take me away to a place I know I belong” — and the bassline reminiscent of New Order’s “Singularity.”

Second track “Bad Days” gives off immediate Wallflowers vibes. A slow burn, the song bursts in a melodic chorus akin to Keane’s “Perfect Symmetry.”

The timbre is distinct — the spaceage-like instrumentals lend the feeling of floating into an asteroid field and out of our solar system.

“1919,” the third song of the EP, is redolent of the Alan Parsons Project through its experimental sound — the drums, then voices set the listener up for the story of the song.

Though the guitar riffs are energetic, the dissonance featured throughout the song does its job best in the conclusion as it paints a picture of physical conflict through sound, bringing about the theme of the song’s namesake.

Finally, apart from glimmers of Nirvana in closing track “Lay My Crown,” this is where Moonfield hits its mark. The mid-song instrumental and the elongated conclusion give a glimpse into Moonfield’s own sound — an instrumental conversation marks the band’s unique electronic space-rock vision.

The EP’s only real flaw is the heavy influence of great bands past. However, the talent showcased in

’Toban cornertable

Síle Englert — ‘The Lost Time Accidents’

ARTS & CULTURE

Zoë LeBrun, staff Sile Englert, an Ontario-based poet and multidisciplinary artist, has released her debut full-length poetry collection, entitled The Lost Time Accidents. Published Oct. 5, Englert’s release is introspective and metaphorical, yet imbedded in reality, time and connection.

Throughout The Lost Time Accidents, it’s evident that every piece of Englert’s vivid and complex writing carries multiple meanings and reference to a vast array of topics, which ultimately feel autobiographical. On the surface, the poems focus on one subject — such as the body, insomnia or childhood toys — while a whole other narrative exists beneath.

The collection is split into three parts, all of which are left to the reader to determine their meaning. Within these sections, Englert includes poems of varying lengths, styles and forms. These components work together to convey her surreal and psychological subject matter, coalescing to create a body of work that is not only cohesive but manages to maintain intrigue and momentum throughout.

The standout poems were those in which Englert strayed from conventional formatting, breaking up sentences with large spaces or into columns on either side of the page. This not only adds visual interest to the pages but allows the reader to find the rhythm Englert may have intended these works to be read with easily, centring on a flow of words that allows their meaning to sink in appropriately. This effect was strongest in “The Day I Swallowed a Dragonfly,” which can almost be read as two separate poems consolidated into one.

Englert’s shifting of narrators throughout The Lost Time Accidents is a very successful aspect of this work as well. While each poem has the undercurrent of Englert’s voice, different speakers bring slightly different tonal values, colours of emotion and perspective that lend themselves to a deeper understanding of each the messages the author intended to convey in her poems.

For instance, “Voyager 1 Sings to Her Sister” reminisces about life on earth, as told from the perspective of the satellite itself, pulling us back from our own existences to think about the world in a different way. In contrast, the plural voices in “Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death” travel in between our current base of historical knowledge and the past, reminding us of our collective history and experience as human beings. Englert’s many historical, scientific and artistic references are a nice touch. Coupled with their shifting narrators, these seemingly disparate references brought a truly multidisciplinary feel to Englert’s poems in an intelligent way. Additionally, they refocus interest on the writing each time they come up, particularly when what the author is referring to is immediately apparent.

Some poems which were especially fascinating in this regard are “Claudel and The Age of Maturity,” which references the sculptors Camille Claudel and Auguste Rodin, “We Are Barnum’s

provided Moonfield / image /

the EP is bursting to find a larger audience.

By the end of Televox, Moonfield reveals itself as a band to watch as they grow toward nurturing and harnessing their own unique sound in the asteroid field of rock music.

Moonfield’s EP, Televox, will be available Oct. 16. Want us to review your album? Email us at arts@ themanitoban.com today!

arts@themanitoban.com

provided Goose Lane Editions / image /

Feejee Mermaid,” which dives into the real-life Fiji mermaid hoax from the perspective of the mermaid and “Unearthing,” which speaks to Amelia Earhart’s disappearance and near discovery.

Beautiful, haunting, psychological and vividly real all at once, Englert’s The Lost Time Accidents is definitely worth the read.