2014 Minimum Wage Advisory Panel : 2014 Comité consultatif d'établissement du salaire minimum : rapport et recommandations au ministre du Travail

An in-house research team from the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Finance provided information on and analysis of the profile of minimum wage workers and trends in the minimum wage relative to other wages over time. [...] In June 2013, I was appointed to conduct an independent review of the process of setting the minimum wage in Ontario, and to advise the Minister of Labour, the Honourable Yasir Naqvi, on an approach for determining the minimum wage in the future. [...] The Mandate of the Minimum Wage Advisory Panel The Panel was given the following mandate: “T he Minimum Wage Advisory Panel will examine Ontario’s current minimum wage policy and provide advice on an approach for determining the minimum wage in the future. [...] This interpretation is reinforced by the mandate’s focus on the “approach for determining the minimum wage in the future.” The mandate did not specifically ask the Panel to recommend a minimum wage rate. [...] In deciding whether the minimum wage should be tied to the CPI, a number of factors should be considered: •. Which CPI should be used – The Canadian CPI, or the Ontario CPI; •. The CPI can be a negative number; •. The CPI can be driven upward sharply by items that are not likely part of the consumption of a typical minimum wage worker (e.g.