The Northern Ontario Party says the minimum wage increase announced by the Liberals this week won’t help low-income earners. NOP vice president Tommy Lee says employers will have no choice but to raise their prices in order to pay workers more money. That means the wage hike low-income earners get will be spent on higher prices. But Lee says a big loser is the middle class. He says there’s no way this group will get three and four dollar an hour increases and that means they’ll lose purchasing power when prices rise. Lee says a better move would have been a modest increase in the minimum wage and not the huge spike the Liberals are proposing. The minimum wage jumps $2.60 an hour in 2018 to $14 from its current $11.40 an hour and then to $15 an hour in 2019.