Ontario’s minimum wage hike could hurt the very people it’s designed to help, according to Martinrea’s executive chairman.

“The broad thrust of the minimum wage legislation includes people like my daughter as a student working at Longo’s who’d be quite happy to make $10.40 an hour,” Rob Wildeboer told BNN on Wednesday.

“At $15 an hour, she may not have a job. And we want to encourage people to enter the workforce and get that experience when they are teenagers,” he said.

Ontario’s Finance Minister Charles Sousa told reporters on Tuesday that the increase was designed to help younger workers get a better foothold in the workforce.

"We want to help young people find meaningful employment," Sousa said Tuesday. "To find their first job, or take their first steps towards building their career. And we want to support small businesses that hire these young people."

However, Wildeboer believes that the increases – which will raise the starting rate by 32 per cent over an 18 month span – are too extreme a measure to meet the province’s stated goals.

“I think that there are different ways to deal with wage situations and you can do it through the tax system, for example,” he said. “I just think it was a blunt instrument in terms of going forward. I think there are many ways that you can craft labour legislation better than it’s been proposed.”

Wildeboer added that he does not see the changes having much of an impact on Martinrea from a personnel perspective, but raised questions on how it will affect the auto industry.

“The minimum wage has less impact on us than some of the other [companies],” Wildeboer said, “but some of the other elements of Bill 148 are expensive and basically almost an attack on manufacturing. I think it makes us less competitive as a jurisdiction, as do some of the energy policies that we’ve seen.”