Victoria forms minimum wage commission
Unionist, business rep and academic will decide how province should transition
The B.C. government has appointed an academic, a labour unionist and a business representative to a three-person commission designed to move the province to a $15-an-hour minimum wage.
Labour Minister Harry Bains named the panellists Thursday: Marjorie Griffin Cohen, an economist and Simon Fraser University professor emeritus who helped establish the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in B.C.; Ivan Limpright, the former president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union; and Ken Peacock, the vice-president and chief economist of the Business Council of B.C.
Cohen will chair the group. The trio has 90 days to produce a report on how the province should transition to a $15-an-hour minimum wage.
Bains said the goal is to provide a gradual, predictable, commonsense schedule to increase the $11.35-an-hour minimum to $15 over however many years the panel recommends.
The NDP campaigned on a $15 minimum by 2021 during the election, but abandoned that after the Greens — which have a powersharing deal that gives the NDP the votes necessary to govern — argued it prejudged the commission’s work.
“We are going to depend on the wisdom of the commission, I think it is best left up to them,” Bains said. “It’s arm’s-length from government. We want to depoliticize this.”
Cohen said panellists will meet to decide how the commission will gather comments from workers, businesses and the public during a consultation process, which will likely involve travelling the province. B.C.’s small-business community, which says it’s most at risk from minimum wage increases, chastised government for excluding it from the panel.
“We’re a little bit disappointed,” said Richard Truscott, vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
“We will try to be the voice for small business entrepreneurs during this debate and put forward the case they need to proceed very carefully and with a lot of thought. But we are worried the legitimate concerns of small business are going to either be ignored or misunderstood.” The government has given the commission a budget of $490,000 over two years, for travel, consultations, research, advisory services and salary. The Labour Ministry would not provide the exact amount of salary.
After it produces the report on a timeline, Bains said, the commission will go on to consider the gap between the minimum wage and a “living wage” in the province.