(Quebec) The minimum wage could exceed $15 an hour in 2023, predicts Labor Minister Jean Boulet, who believes that the purchasing power of employees at the bottom of the scale is protected despite inflation.
Posted at 12:05 p.m.
“It’s inclined to go to $15, and maybe more than that,” Mr. Boulet said Thursday in a press scrum. The situation is explained by a probable increase in the average hourly wage in Quebec. “I have the impression [qu’il] going to see a significant increase this year, so if it exceeds $30 an hour, we would go to $15 an hour and maybe even beyond. I am not closed at all,” he explained.
From 1er May, the general minimum wage rate will increase to $14.25 an hour, and it is currently at $13.50 an hour. This is already an increase of “5.6%” which “takes into account the cost of living last year,” said Mr. Boulet. In his budget tabled last week, Finance Minister Eric Girard predicts an inflation rate that should rise to 4.65% for the whole of 2022.
He believes that the mechanism put in place by his government, which “determines” the minimum wage by dividing the average hourly wage in Quebec by two, strikes the right balance between “increasing the purchasing power of low-income earners and “the ability to pay of SMEs that have been greatly affected by the pandemic”.
Mr. Boulet believes that he does not have to accelerate this increase, or anticipate it, even if inflation is felt at the grocery store, or in the cost of housing, for example.
“It’s always been the math. To me [le 50 % ] it’s an objective criterion, it takes into account the increase in the average hourly wage. But we must not forget the impact that the pandemic has had on SMEs,” he said.
He believes that since the Coalition avenir Québec came to power, the rise in the minimum wage “has gone beyond inflation” and “has contributed to increasing the purchasing power” of minimum wage workers.