The Parti Québécois promises a minimum wage of $18 an hour within 3 years and reform of the Equal Pay Act with penalties for companies that do not comply.
“There’s no reason why people working full-time shouldn’t be able to meet the sustainable income threshold, it’s not logical, it’s not acceptable,” said chief executive Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, back in Montreal, in his equestrian sport Camille-Laurin (Bourget).
As of last May, the minimum wage is $14.25 an hour. A group of unions, including the FTQ and the CSN and the SFPQ, and community groups, the Coalition Minimum 18, are calling for the minimum wage to be raised to $18.
“The government has a responsibility to around 200,000 workers earning minimum wages to provide them with the means to reach the sustainable income threshold,” he added.
According to the Institute for Socio-Economic Research and Information (IRIS), a single person needs to earn between $25,128 and $34,814 to live in dignity and free of poverty.
“It’s not normal that we put people who work full-time in precarious financial situations,” stressed St-Pierre Plamondon.
Equal Pay Act
The party is also proposing to reform the Equal Pay Act, passed 25 years ago, to correct inequalities between men’s and women’s wages.
The gap has thus narrowed from 17% to 9%. The PQ wants to reduce this gap to 5% in a first term of office. “This is the next step to ensure that gender equality is not just a concept,” says the party leader.
Among the measures to this end, he wants in particular to establish new analysis grids for all occupations and no longer just compare positions within the same industry, but to compare occupations with a larger proportion of women with occupations that are predominantly male.
“Because we know that women-dominated industries are paid less than men in the majority,” he says.
He adds that 26% of companies in the private sector have not implemented a pay equity process. “I’m surprised to have to tell you this myself, I can’t believe it,” he said.
According to him, these companies don’t care about wage equity. However, he acknowledged that he could not say whether these companies are unruly and refusing to apply the law, or whether they have taken steps that have not yet been successful.
But the problem remains the lack of oversight and restrictions in the law. ” [l’idée] is not the fault of the companies,” he said.
She therefore proposes fines. When asked about the measure, he points out that it’s in the thousands of dollars, but he couldn’t provide details, such as whether those penalties would be determined based on a company’s profits. “We will create a bill based on other laws […] which have punitive measures for companies and on behalf [parlementaire] We’ll be able to judge what level we’re fixing at,” he said.
“We didn’t draft the bill this morning,” he continued.