Frieda Martselos

Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell us if she considers the recruitment and retention bonuses to be fairly distributed among healthcare staff? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, on October the 5th, 2022, the Government of the Northwest Territories and Union of Northern Workers signed an MOU providing a onetime labour market supplement in the form of a recruitment and retention bonus depending on eligibility requirements. According to the MOU, the labour market supplement will be applied as retention bonuses for some registered nurses, nurse practitioners, midwives, licensed practical nurses, and medical laboratory technologists. Eligible employees will receive between $5,000 and $7,000 depending on the NWT community they live in...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to question the Minister on the allocation of staff. You know, we have 107 positions and we have North Slave and Yellowknife that are in Yellowknife. So we have 65 staff. It's really misleading how the numbers come out because if you go to the table of active positions summary, so 65 staff are for the headquarters in North Slave and you know, when we're doing these, the mains, we should make sure that we make that very clear and we don't put them in with the regional offices. So you have 41 staff for the rest of the territories and there's 33 communities...

Madam Chair, when you do a business deal like this, you always look for profit. And we are no different, okay. The Government of the Northwest Territories settles for something that is less business oriented and goes with what the federal government and those specs for those houses were over the top. It's almost like building a you know, something that's going to happen within a war zone or something. That's how bad the specs were. There was no collaboration with the Government of the Northwest Territories on the specs, and the prices went up. I'm not blaming anybody that had to build them...

Ok that's a really bad deal. We are we're you know, that is not a business Madam Chair, that's not a business transaction because it sounds like if it's 50 years and one million, that's $50 million, and most of those houses are costing from 1.3 in the South Slave to whatever in the further up. So, really, it's not a really good solid business revenue decision. Who made that decision? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair, is 56 percent of the 2900 units?

Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, we have 2900 rental housing units in 33 communities. Could you tell me how many units are located in Yellowknife and then I could sort of figure out the 33 communities, please. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell us what type of feedback Finance has received from healthcare staff about these retention and recruitment bonuses? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, if Indigenous governments, Indigenous organizations, or a majority of the NWT population rejects these two new policies mentioned, will the Finance Minister take that criticism seriously and amend these proposed policies to better reflect the will of the people of the NWT? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess maybe the Indigenous governments haven't read it yet. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell us if she is confident that the Dene, Inuit, and Metis people from the NWT will be supportive of the new Indigenous Employment Policy and the Employment Equity Policy? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.