Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On March 27, 2014, employees who are members of the Union of Northern Workers received a notice regarding the 2014-2015 northern living allowance rates that were going to be implemented on April 1st. In that message that they got the notice there was a link showing which communities increased and which ones decreased. As a result, we had numerous communities across the Northwest Territories who are employees of the GNWT decrease in the amount of northern living allowance, one of them being my community of Inuvik. Employees ended up losing about $383 at the end of the day when these negotiations happened. Now, that might not seem a lot when you compare it to other communities such as Aklavik or Tuktoyaktuk, which decreased by about $2,600, but that $383 in the community of Inuvik when fuel costs are going high, gas prices are very high, electricity costs are going up, child daycare has just increased in our Children’s First Centre, that $383 does play a big difference.
The way the northern living allowance is calculated is based on two components, and that’s transportation and the cost of living. However, in the NWT Public Service Act, under Section 41.(7), it states that it prohibits the GNWT from negotiating terms in the Collective Agreement which deal directly or indirectly with payments to employees relating to owner occupied or rent or leased premises, and it includes utilities such as fuel, electricity, water, rent and mortgage. Anybody that lives up in the Beaufort-Delta knows that there is a high cost of living, and once this notice came out we did get a lot of e-mails sent to my office, a lot of phone calls in regards to why is this happening when we know that we have a high increase in the natural gas.
We are working on an Anti-Poverty Strategy here with the 17th Legislative Assembly, and when we decrease the northern living allowance for people across the Northwest Territories, it just goes against the fact that we’re trying to keep people over that poverty line.
I will have questions today for the Minister of Human Resources and talk about how we can mitigate this, how we can change it, what actions do we need to take as a government. I just want to say the good thing is that these northern living allowance rates are updated and negotiated annually, and I think that we need to make those changes now so that in future we don’t have to deal with these kinds of situations.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
