Canada minimum wage
Statutory federal minimum hourly wage for employees in federally regulated private-sector industries, indexed to CPI each 1 April under the Canada Labour Code.
| Current value | 18.15 CAD/hour |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2026-04-01 |
| Official source | Canada Labour Code, RSC 1985, c. L-2, Part III, s. 178(1) (federal minimum wage) and s. 178(2) (annual CPI indexation each 1 April); Employment and Social Development Canada news release, 'Government of Canada raises the federal minimum wage', 24 March 2026; rate confirmed in the ESDC Labour Program Minimum Wage Database (page Date modified: 2026-07-20) |
| Last verified | 2026-07-20 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
FEDERAL/SUB-NATIONAL MATRIX — read this before using the value. CAD 18.15/hour is the federal statutory floor, but it directly covers only the roughly 6% of Canadian workers in federally regulated industries (interprovincial and international transportation — air, rail, marine, trucking — banking, telecommunications, broadcasting, postal services, grain elevators, uranium mining, First Nation band councils, and most Crown corporations). The overwhelming majority of Canadian employees are covered instead by their PROVINCIAL or TERRITORIAL general minimum wage, each set by separate provincial legislation. Statutory tie-break under s. 178(1)(b): where the general minimum wage of the province or territory in which the employee usually works EXCEEDS the federal rate, the federally regulated employer must pay the higher provincial rate — so 18.15 is a floor, not a ceiling, even within federal jurisdiction. General rates in force on 2026-07-20 per the ESDC database: Yukon 18.51 (from 2026-04-01), British Columbia 18.25 (2026-06-01), Nunavut 19.75 (2025-09-01), Ontario 17.60 (2025-10-01), Prince Edward Island 17.00 (2026-04-01), Northwest Territories 16.95 (2025-09-01), Nova Scotia 16.75 (2026-04-01), Quebec 16.60 (2026-05-01), Newfoundland and Labrador 16.35 (2026-04-01), Manitoba 16.00 (2025-10-01), New Brunswick 15.90 (2026-04-01), Saskatchewan 15.35 (2025-10-01), Alberta 15.00 (unchanged since 2019-06-26 — the lowest and longest-frozen general rate in Canada). Only Yukon, British Columbia and Nunavut currently exceed the federal rate. Scheduled increases already published: Nunavut 20.17 (2026-09-01), Ontario 17.95 (2026-10-01), Nova Scotia 17.00 (2026-10-01), Manitoba 16.40 (2026-10-01), PEI 17.30 (2026-10-01) then 17.60 (2027-04-01). Indexation mechanism: the federal rate rises every 1 April by the percentage change in Canada's annual average all-items CPI for the preceding calendar year, rounded UP to the nearest CAD 0.05 — the 2026 increase was 2.1% (2025 annual average CPI), taking 17.75 to 18.15 (17.75 x 1.021 = 18.122, rounded up to 18.15). Access quirk: the canada.ca news release returns HTTP 403 to scripted fetchers; the ESDC Minimum Wage Database subdomain (minwage-salairemin.service.canada.ca) is the more machine-friendly primary and carries an explicit Date modified stamp.
Earlier values
| From | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2021-12-29 | 15 | — |
| 2022-04-01 | 15.55 | — |
| 2023-04-01 | 16.65 | — |
| 2024-04-01 | 17.3 | — |
| 2025-04-01 | 17.75 | — |
Get it programmatically
curl https://usaref.dev/v1/ca/minimum-wage
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://usaref.dev/v1/ca/minimum-wage/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://usaref.dev/provenance/ca/minimum-wageOther Canada series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates · official exchange rates