It is not the fault of the minimum wage worker when a business shuts down. It is the huge rents demanded by the landlords - the tenants of these retail spaces are pushed to the edge by landlords in the boom period - and when the economy falls, the landlords do not react and reduce rents to acknowledge the poorer business conditions. Thank goodness the provincial government did not slash and burn like the previous PC governments did - there is no doubt that a reduction in government spending will happen but on a much longer time table. By then we can hope that the oil patch has recovered. The PC Party was not a great steward of the future of Alberta. They pissed it away when they had it.