Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would appreciate this opportunity to actually ask a question that my brain remembered shortly after I sat down.
I’d like to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment this question. I’d like to say that I appreciate that there are funding implications to raising the minimum wage. I do want to say, though, that I think there are likely very few people who are currently working at minimum wage in our territory. If it was a large percentage, I’d be very surprised. People simply can’t survive on that amount of money.
My guess is that even an increase of $1.75 per hour to the minimum wage could relatively easily be funded by finding efficiencies and savings within the department. I love to use this example: doing reports electronically instead of printing them and distributing them. It’s a good example and one I’m fond of.
So to the Minister: will he attempt to do the necessary analysis to see what it would cost to increase the minimum wage to, say, $10 an hour before we meet to review business plans in November?
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Certainly, we need to gather the latest and updated information. It’s been five years since we’ve increased our minimum wage. That information may not be accurate today. That information we need to gather from, whether it’s the employer sector, the change that we have in the restaurants and so forth…. Certainly that information is needed to move forward on this. We need as much information to deal with this issue as possible.
I won’t belabour this, but I do need to say to the Minister that I don’t think there’s much to be gathered. We haven’t raised the minimum wage, so I’m not too sure what information he feels needs to be gathered. Any expense we will incur by raising the minimum wage, I suspect we’re going to save in income subsidy and savings in various programs that we have.
I guess I’ll ask the Minister again: is there any possibility that even if we don’t do a comprehensive analysis or evaluation, we can get something to consider in the business plans in November?
Mr. Speaker, as I stated, we need to consult with the small businesses in the North. I do believe that during the last round of increases there was an outcry from the small businesses. We need to consult with them as well. We can’t just say we’re going to increase wages at this time.
That type of information will be crucial to us to proceed, if we need to proceed forward, to increase the minimum wage. That is the information we need to tackle and consult with the small businesses on. We need that information from the Member as well.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
