About 535,000 thousand Ontarians are set to get a raise as the province boosts the minimum wage to $11 hourly and proposes indexing it to inflation.

“I think it’s time to take the next step,” Labour Minister Yasir Naqvi said Wednesday, noting almost one in 10 workers toils for the general minimum wage, which has been frozen at $10.25 since 2010.

“We want to make sure minimum wage in the future is determined on the basis of fairness and predictability.”

Sources said Premier Kathleen Wynne will make the announcement Thursday morning at the Centre for Social Innovation on Bathurst St., but needs to pass a law in the minority legislature tying annual increases to the consumer price index.

Naqvi said the push from some anti-poverty groups for a $14 minimum wage was rejected as “too much of an increase . . . our job is to make sure there is fairness and predictability.”

Business groups are concerned pushing the minimum wage too high could stunt job growth and Wynne herself has said “we have to move very carefully, because this is about making sure we retain and create jobs.”

The move follows a report earlier this week from an advisory panel calling on the government to peg future minimum wage increases to inflation and pointing out inflation has risen 6.7 per cent since then. The panel said businesses should get four months’ warning that the minimum wage will go up annually on April 1.

Making up that gap with an $11 minimum wage would still leave people working for that hourly rate 16 per cent below the poverty line, according to the Workers’ Action Centre, which has been advocating for a hike to $14.

Meanwhile, the minimum wage became an issue in the Feb. 13 byelection campaign in Thornhill, where Progressive Conservative candidate Gila Martow suggested Tuesday that few if any adults in the riding make so little for their labour.

“I don’t think that, especially in the Thornhill riding, there’s too many families . . . that are working — the parents — at real minimum wage jobs,” she was quoted as saying by the Thornhill Liberal, a community newspaper.

Naqvi said the remark shows Martow appears unaware that nine per cent of Ontarians work for minimum wage.

“That’s across the province, so I’m sure it’s reflected in everyone’s riding. . . She represents a party who, under Mike Harris and Tim Hudak, froze minimum wage for nine years from 1995 to 2003,” added Naqvi, who evaded questions on why the Liberals have frozen the minimum wage for the last four years.

Campaigning in Thornhill on Wednesday, Hudak would not directly answer questions on whether he supports a minimum wage increase.

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“If you want somebody focused on minimum wage jobs, you’ve got Kathleen Wynne. . . I think we can do a lot better than that.”

Hudak’s office declined to provide a statement on Martow’s remarks.

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