“Pay peanuts, get monkeys.”

Nunavut's minimum wage earners will soon take home $10 an hour after MLAs passed changes to the Labour Standards Act earlier this month.

The changes, which take effect early September, mean Nunavut's minimum wage will be the highest in the country. It now stands at $8.50 an hour, the same as Manitoba and Quebec, and less than Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Yukon.

In comments to the committee of the whole June 3, Paul Okalik, the justice minister, said his department rarely needs to enforce the current minimum wage.

"We are concerned that the current minimum wage does not adequately reflect the cost of living in Nunavut," he said. "The information available to the department was that employers were presently paying entry-level employees significantly more than the current minimum wage just to compete with other companies."

That's true for Tara Tootoo-Fotheringham, who owns Rankin Inlet's Sugar Rush Café. She said she already pays new employees $10 an hour, but will still have to raise wages to compete with other businesses.

Still, Tootoo-Fotheringham has no problem with the increase, because people with families or debts can't get by on $8.50 an hour. And well-paid workers are better workers, she suggests.

"If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys," she said.

MLAs backed the legislation, but Cambridge Bay MLA Keith Peterson worried it still might not be enough to help people afford a balanced diet, which he said is nearly twice as expensive in Cambridge Bay as it is in Edmonton or Yellowknife.

And Peterson asked what else the government is doing to fight poverty in Nunavut.

Okalik said by pushing for mining and fishing industries and increasing tuition assistance for students, Nunavut is trying to help people earn more than minimum wage. But the government also has to balance the needs of workers and businesses, he said.

"We want to encourage private businesses to flourish throughout the territory and if we make it cost prohibitive for businesses to hire staff, then it may not be in the best interest of trying to create employment throughout the territory," Okalik said.

Akulliq MLA Steve Mapsalak, chair of the Ajauqtiit standing committee, urged the government to consider a system for automatically increasing the minimum wage.

The Yukon, for example, ties increases in its minimum wage to the inflation rate.

Okalik said MLAs in 2002 voted to retain that power. But he said the government "will monitor the experience" of jurisdictions that have automatic increases.

The last increase to Nunavut's minimum wage was in 2003.