2021 deadline for $15 minimum wage dropped

B.C. government gives review panel more latitude

The B.C. government has altered an election promise to implement a $15 minimum wage by 2021, and will instead give an independent review panel free rein to suggest a new, possibly longer, timeline.

Labour Minister Harry Bains said he agrees with criticism from Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver that mandating the review panel to a 2021 timeline is too restrictive and locks in the outcome.

So Bains said he’ll remove the deadline when he announces details of his Fair Wages Commission in the next few weeks.

“I think Mr. Weaver made a pretty good point,” Bains said in an interview. “We’re going to work with him. He’s saying that we should not be prescriptive of the fairwages commission and I agree with him. I think we should give them the authority and mandate to decide when we reach $15, and how we reach $15.”

The new timeline could be “anything they come back with,” he said. But the overarching goal will remain getting to a $15 an hour minimum wage eventually, Bains said.

The removal of the timeline alters a promise the NDP campaigned upon in the May provincial election.

“John Horgan and the B.C. NDP will bring in a $15/hour minimum wage by 2021, with increases each year,” read the NDP platform. “Phasing in the increases will allow businesses to adjust, ensuring that jobs aren’t at risk and that employment in minimum wage sectors actually increases, as has been the case in Seattle. Once we reach $15/hour, we will index the minimum wage to inflation to ensure that we don’t fall behind.”

Before the NDP took power, it signed a deal with the Greens stipulating that an independent fair-wages commission would be tasked with recommending the path to $15 an hour. Once he became minister, Bains told the media his plan was to stick to the 2021 timeline, even though it wasn’t written into the Green deal, provoking criticism from Weaver.

Weaver said in a statement Thursday he’s “very pleased” Bains has changed his mind. “Empowering the commission to determine how and when the minimum wage is increased is absolutely crucial to depoliticizing the setting of minimum wage in B.C.” Weaver said.

B.C. Liberal critic John Martin said the NDP is stumbling through the issue: “They are finding out that the easy nice quick rhetoric of throwing a date and number out there is actually quite a bit more complex than that.”

B.C. Restaurant and Food Services Association CEO Ian Tostenson, who has warned jobs could be lost and businesses closed if the minimum wage is raised too quickly, said he was pleased at Bains’s comments.

“It’s a good sign for the government to say: ‘Let’s have some flexibility on how we get there,’ ” Tostenson said.