On September 21st, the Greater Charlottetown Area Chamber of Commerce submitted its recommendations to the provincial Employment Standards Board’s Annual Minimum Wage Rate Review.
The Chamber emphasized the importance of improving the financial situation of workers while developing a more predictable long-term strategy for the process of determining minimum wage. Specifically, concerns were presented around the timing and frequency of rate increases, the inequity between the rates of change of minimum wage and the consumer price index, and the status of Prince Edward Island’s basic personal tax exemption.
Recommendations to the Board included: conducting a full review of the process for setting the minimum wage rate, based on the principles of predictability, transparency and fairness; establishing a fixed date for announcing rate changes; indexing future minimum wage increases to the Consumer Price Index; increasing PEI’s basic personal tax exemption; and tying the basic personal tax exemption to the rate of inflation.