Moving P.E.I. minimum wage to $17 next year could add to inflation, business group says

Thinh Nguyen · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 14, 2025 12:37 PM EDT | Last Updated: 17 minutes ago

A nationalist advocacy radical says a $1 summation to Prince Edward Island's minimum wage implicit the adjacent twelvemonth volition bring challenges for Island businesses.

Starting Oct. 1, the minimum wage volition emergence from $16 to $16.50 per hour. It volition summation again to $17 per hr connected April 1, 2026.

The changes were announced successful the provincial operating fund tabled past week by Finance Minister Jill Burridge.

"Obviously, minimum wage does person to spell up… Our low-wage earners person to person a livable wage, and this is different measurement towards that," Burridge told reporters Friday.

A livable wage is defined arsenic the minimum income indispensable for a idiosyncratic to conscionable their basal needs. A 2024 study from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives estimated the livable wage connected P.E.I. to beryllium $22.76 an hr — good supra the coming increase.

The province's timeline for the wage hike is six months aboriginal than what was recommended by the Employment Standards Board — the committee the province relies connected to assistance usher its minimum wage decisions.

In its 2024 report, the committee recommended the summation to $17 per hr instrumentality effect connected Oct. 1 of this year.

Small concern concerns

Frédéric Gionet, the manager of legislative affairs for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business in Atlantic Canada, said Burridge's caller fund includes respective taxation cuts that volition assistance businesses successful an uncertain time, fixed the still-unknown interaction of U.S. President Donald Trump's planetary commercialized war.

However, he's acrophobic implicit the interaction of the P.E.I. minimum wage increase.

He said portion minimum wage hikes are often utilized arsenic poverty-reduction measures, the attack is excessively simplistic and whitethorn not beryllium the champion solution to the precocious outgo of living.

The $1 increase Islanders volition spot translates into lone a humble nett wage rise for workers, Gionet said, adding: "It's not going to marque a quality connected reducing poorness successful that sense."

However, helium said astir 60 per cent of CFIB members volition request to rise prices and summation wages for different employees successful effect to a wage increase.

"If you're making $20 an hour, and past the minimum wage is going up, there's immoderate benignant of upward unit connected those who are already making much than minimum wage, and that's the bulk of tiny businesses already paying supra minimum wage. So really, it's inflationary a small bit."

Labour costs marque up the bulk of expenses for tiny businesses, Gionet said. With galore challenges already straining operations, including the lingering impacts of the pandemic, changing user habits and planetary commercialized instability, helium said paying higher wages could beryllium a large conflict for many.

"They're not going to person immoderate different prime but to rise prices, which contributes, therefore, to the outgo of living," helium said.

'A race to the top'

Elsewhere successful Atlantic Canada, minimum wages are besides rising.

In New Brunswick, the minimum wage roseate by 35 cents connected April 1, bringing it to $15.65 an hour, up from $15.30. The summation is portion of a scheduled yearly accommodation tied to inflation.

Nova Scotia's minimum wage accrued from $15.20 to $15.70 connected April 1 and is acceptable to emergence again to $16.50 connected Oct. 1.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, the minimum wage went from $15.60 to $16 an hr connected April 1.

"I spot P.E.I. is going to person the highest minimum wage again. And past New Brunswick and Nova Scotia drawback up, and past P.E.I. goes. And truthful it seems similar a contention to the top," Gionet said. "I deliberation this rise to the highest minimum wage needs to stop… We are pleading with governments to find different methods to found minimum wage, thing much grounded."