Madam Speaker, certainly if we do raise the wages, that is something that businesses will have to bear, but the part that the member leaves out is that if we have low-income workers in a jurisdiction with more money in their pockets, they tend to spend it locally.
In fact, there are several examples in the United States, notably the city of Seattle, which experimented with minimum wages, and it has shown that rather than businesses going out of business, they are actually thriving.
I believe in putting more money into workers' pockets. There are studies that show they spend that money locally, which helps all of our local businesses thrive.