New Brunswick has kick-started a discussion on whether minimum wage is enough to survive on.
The Holt Liberal government announced earlier this week it was seeking public feedback on the province’s minimum wage, which is $15.90 an hour.
Among the 13 provinces and territories, only two have a lower minimum wage, Alberta at $15 an hour and Saskatchewan at $15.35. The highest is in Nunavut, at $19.75 an hour, which is set to increase to $20.17 on Sept. 1.
The Canadian average is $17.41.
“Affordability is a key issue for this government,” Alyson Townsend, the minister responsible for labour, told Brunswick News on Tuesday. “We’re going to go into quite a bit of detail to get more fulsome responses on minimum wages.”
However, she stressed no decisions had been made and her government wanted to hear from employers, workers, organizations, and members of the public on the issue.
“We want to know what people think, whether they’re in receipt of minimum wage or whether they pay minimum wage. There’s a lot of areas around minimum wage we’d like to take people’s temperature on.”
As it stands, New Brunswick’s minimum wage is updated yearly on April 1 based on the province’s consumer price index. It went up 25 cents earlier this year.
The Liberals, elected in 2024, did not campaign on raising the minimum wage. But with affordability a growing concern, people have been pressing elected officials to ensure there’s enough for the basics such as food, housing, gas and electricity.
Heather Atcheson, a researcher with the Human Development Council, which fights poverty, said the announcement was encouraging.
“I would imagine that the government is facing a lot of pressure,” she said in an interview. “More and more affordability is becoming a topic of conversation and impacting more and more households. So, I’m really glad that the government is taking these concerns into consideration and that they’re prioritizing it here.”
The small business community sought to blunt the idea of jacking the minimum much higher.
Brunswick News reached Louis-Philippe Gauthier, spokesman for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, just 15 minutes after he had met with Townsend in Fredericton on Tuesday afternoon.
He said minimum wage was one of the topics he mentioned in a document he passed to the minister with the federation’s recommendations.
“Setting the minimum wage is unfortunately seen by too many as some form of a Harry Potter magical wand, or a Doctor Who sonic screwdriver that will fix all the ills of society,” Gauthier said in an interview.
“It’s not meant to be that. It is the lower wage that businesses provide. If governments want to address issues of affordability and other social issues, they have other levers, but minimum wage cannot be, and is not, a miracle one that will address everything.”
The organization has concerns that its more than 3,900 members in New Brunswick would be hurt if they had to pay higher wages in an already rocky business environment.
Gauthier said he reiterated his organization’s long-standing demand that the provincial government tie minimum wage increases to the rise in the median wages of all private-sector workers in the province.
The median would be the point where half the total private-sector workers earn less than that particular wage, and half of them earn more.
Gauthier also said governments should stop tying minimum wage hikes to an April 1 date. Businesses would prefer Jan. 1.
“April 1st is a government date based on government budgets, and businesses don’t run based on government schedule.”
Townsend didn’t weigh in heavily on either idea, only to say she thought many people and businesses had become accustomed to the annual wage increase tied to inflation because it was easy to understand and predictable.
She also pushed back against the notion hiking the minimum wage was easy for government because it would not cost it anything to do, putting the burden entirely on businesses. Gauthier suggested that such a move could actually make the government more money because the higher wages would reap more tax revenues.
“The businesses are our constituents as well, and I’m sure we’d hear from those businesses if there was a great leap in the minimum wage,” said the minister, whose Liberal government is dealing with a record $1.4-billion deficit. “We’re trying to find a balance between what employers can handle and what employees need.”
Only last month, a report by Feed NB and the Human Development Council showed that the number of people using a food bank in New Brunswick had increased by 60 per cent in a little under four years.
In September 2022, about 17,500 people were served at food banks in the province (including children or other family members who did not pick up the food but benefited from the handouts).
By April 2026, that number had jumped to close to 28,200 people, an increase of more than 10,000.
Based on New Brunswick’s census estimate of almost 866,500 in April, the number of people served at food banks is now three per cent of the total population.
While many people who use food banks are on welfare, alarmingly the report found more working people were beginning to use the free service, as many as one in five patrons.
The report was one in a series by the Human Development Council, based in Saint John, showing that affordability was a pressing issue for many New Brunswickers. In February, it released statistics showing as many as one in five of the province’s children was still living in poverty.
And last November, the council issued a study showing that a New Brunswick family with two young children needs both parents to earn at least $24.77 an hour, fulltime, to make ends meet.
That’s $8.87 more than the minimum wage.
Atcheson said indexing the minimum wage to inflation was good, but it wasn’t enough to help people get ahead. All it does is preserve purchasing power, helping people catch up.
“What we’d like to see is gradual increases over time that don’t cause any shocks to employers, but then they also are moving the wage closer to a living wage,” the researcher said.
“The provincial living wage last year was $24.77. And so, the current minimum wage is only about 65 per cent of that living wage. It’s far, far too low, and people who are earning minimum wages sometimes have to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet.”
According to a report released by the department in April, in 2025, there were 18,300 minimum wage earners in New Brunswick (five per cent of all workers), down from 21,700 in 2024.
The most represented groups among minimum wage earners in the province were teenagers, women, parttime employees, permanent employees, non-unionized employees and those who had a high school diploma or less. A significant portion of minimum wage earners lived with their parents or other relatives.
Tuesday’s news release did not say whether the Liberals want to increase the minimum wage.
It stated the department was examining the minimum wage amount, how it is determined and the timeline for any changes to it. The review will also consider the social and economic effects of minimum wage, including how much it costs to afford the basic necessities of life in New Brunswick.
By John Chilibeck, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on Aug 14, 2026 at 10:51
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