New Federal Minimum Wage Is Now Officially At $15/hr!

Federal minimum wage has officially increased to $15 per hour w.e.f. December 29. This will be applicable to all the federally regulated public and private workplaces. For those working in provinces or territories where the minimum wage is higher, the higher wage will apply. 

As per the recent amendment to Part III of the Canada Labour Code, beginning from 2022; every April 1, the federal minimum wage will be adjusted (rounded up to the nearest $0.05) based on Canada’s Consumer Price Index for the previous calendar year as reported by Statistics Canada.

Ontario is also hiking it’s provincial minimum wage to $15/hr W.E.F. January 1, 2022.

List of federally regulated workplaces:

• Federally regulated private sectors (parts I, II, III and IV of the Code):
  • air transportation, including airlines, airports, aerodromes and aircraft operations
  • banks, including authorized foreign banks
  • grain elevators, feed and seed mills, feed warehouses and grain-seed cleaning plants
  • First Nations band councils and Indigenous self-governments (certain activities)
  • most federal Crown corporations, for example, Canada Post Corporation
  • port services, marine shipping, ferries, tunnels, canals, bridges and pipelines (oil and gas) that cross international or provincial borders
  • postal and courier services
  • radio and television broadcasting
  • railways that cross provincial or international borders and some short-line railways
  • road transportation services, including trucks and buses, that cross provincial or international borders
  • telecommunications, such as, telephone, Internet, telegraph and cable systems
  • uranium mining and processing and atomic energy
  • any business that is vital, essential or integral to the operation of one of the above activities

• Federally regulated public sector (parts II and IV of the Code only):
  • the federal public service
  • Parliament (such as, the Senate, the House of Commons and the Library of Parliament)
• Private-sector firms and municipalities in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut (part I of the Code only)

Who Will Be Benefitting From New Federal Minimum Wage Hike:

As per government of Canada, an estimated 26,000 federally regulated private sector employees earn less than $15 per hour and will benefit from the new rate. The majority of these employees work in Ontario and Quebec. Based on estimates, 59% of these workers are men and 41% are women.  

The largest portion of employees earning less than $15 per hour in the federally regulated private-sector work in non-road transportation (34%), followed by road transportation (23%), telecommunications, broadcasting and others (19%), postal services (12%) and banks (12%).