B.C. to see minimum wage rise to $12.65

B.C.’s lowest-paid workers will get a $1.30-an-hour raise June 1 on the way to earning at least $15.20 in 2021, Premier John Horgan announced.

The NDP government’s plan to increase the minimum wage by 34 per cent in less than four years drew a mixed response from businesses, analysts and anti-poverty advocates.

Richard Truscott of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said small businesses will feel the pinch.

“While bigger businesses can figure out some economies of scale or increase prices in the market because they’ve got some power, for small businesses, they’re simply left in the squeeze.”

Truscott said smaller operators will have to find savings by dipping into training budgets, cutting benefits, scaling back employee hours or forgoing hiring altogether.

“Simply put, there’s adjustments that have to be made,” he said. “So, yeah, we were certainly hoping they would have had a longer phase-in period for smaller business beyond the 2021 deadline.”

The Together Against Poverty Society in Victoria, on the other hand, wanted to see the wage increases take effect much sooner. “What we had hoped to see was that they would take advantage of the really low unemployment rate right now to front-load some significant changes,” said David Huxtable, an employment standards legal advocate at the society. “We were hoping to see $15 an hour by 2019.” He said the government’s plan means that caregivers and other low-wage earners will continue to struggle to survive — particularly in expensive cities such as Victoria. “The cost of living is going to eat up most of those changes between now and 2021.”

Frank Bourree, a hospitality and human resources consultant, said a number of employers in Victoria are well ahead of the government, having already boosted wages in order to recruit and retain workers.