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By Josh Hall | @Vancan19

will remain lowest in canada

UCP vote down NDP’s proposed minimum wage hike

Nov 18, 2025 | 12:41 PM

The United Conservative Party government has voted down a proposed bill from the opposition NDP that would’ve brought Alberta’s minimum wage out of the national basement.

Bill 201 proposed Alberta’s minimum wage go from $15/hr to $16 starting December 2025, then rise to $17 sometime in 2026, and finally to $18 by October 2027. But it would be indexed to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and continue to increase with the cost of living.

It also proposed removing the youth minimum wage which allows workers under 18 to be paid just $13.00 per hour.

Finally, it proposed introducing tip‑protection measures to ensure gratuities go directly to the workers who earn them and to prevent tip skimming.

That effort was squashed at second reading in the legislature on Monday, therefore the minimum wage will remain at $15/hr, the lowest in the country, and the only one unchanged since 2019.

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All other provinces and territories have implemented or will implement wage increases this year or next.

“Today, UCP MLAs had the chance to stand with workers, vote for higher wages, and help put the basics back within reach of more Albertans”, said Kathleen Ganley, MLA for Calgary-Mountain View and the sponsor of the Bill. “Instead, the UCP decided to vote against workers and to keep Alberta’s minimum wage the lowest in the country.”

The NDP said they talked to chambers of commerce around the province, in addition to workers and small business owners.

They say discussions centred around proposing something which would give business owners time to plan for cost increases.

“This was going to be a balanced approach to dealing with the urgent need to provide fair wages to workers who often have to work multiple jobs or rely on food banks to get by,” continued Ganley. “The UCP is ignoring the impact of the affordability crisis it created. While costs continue to balloon, the minimum wage hasn’t gone up for seven years.”

Frank Creasey, CEO with the Red Deer District Chamber of Commerce says his organization wasn’t able to find time to give feedback to the NDP, thus they weren’t part of the party’s aforementioned consultations.

Creasey said the chamber was not necessarily for or against the bill, adding that its main focus is working on and advocating for prosperity and competitiveness for small business.

“There’s been a lot of compression, a lot of cost increases. We want stability on a number of different fronts and I think that’s where the focus should be in the short term. Because of the current economic climate, it’s unfortunate this came before us right now,” said Creasey.

He went on to say the chamber would be more in favour of a living wage, which he points out is different from city to city.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the numbers put out last week by the Alberta Living Wage Network, he says.

“We have challenges when it comes to labour. We have an amazing community to live in, and that’s a distinct competitive advantage from a Red Deer and Red Deer County perspective. So for our small businesses, we realize that labour is an issue, and one of the many contributing factors,” he explains.

“Living wage is a contributor in relation to being able to be one: competitive; and two: attracting the necessary labour to our locale.”

But won’t the living wage have to go up eventually? he was asked.

“It is a fair point. In the context of small businesses, there’s a lot of pressures with both revenue and expenses. From a provincial perspective, fact-based decisions are what would be supported,” he says, then asked about what the province could do to create the necessary stability.

“In a larger economic sense, the more you can stabilize your inputs, whether it’s resources, labour, the trade environment, all of those impact the economy, which relates to the business environment in which our small enterprises operate. Anything to create a better environment on any of those fronts would be positive.”

Hunter Baril, press secretary for the Ministry of Jobs, Economy, Trade and Immigration, said in a new statement that 21,000 youth jobs were lost the last time the minimum wage went up — under the NDP who held power from 2015-2019.

“It was less than two months ago that Naheed Nenshi confirmed his team has not and will not be consulting on minimum wage, and somehow they expect government to support a bill that would recklessly force a 20 per cent increase,” Baril said, pointing to a September press conference held by the NDP.

“Since announcing this legislation, not one business has come forward with their support, likely because they know forced increases to minimum wage like this put them at risk. In an already high-pressure entry-level job market stemming from out-of-control immigration and population growth, the last thing we want to do is make that worse by threatening the jobs of our youth through unconsulted increases to minimum wage.”