Thank you, Mr. Speaker. During the Minister of Health and Social Services Minister's statement today, she mentioned that the gap between what we pay our nurses and what other jurisdiction are paying is closing, and we are one of the only jurisdictions in Canada that, during COVID19, did not give recruitment and retention bonuses. But one line jumped out at me is that we she went to FMB and got approval to give those bonuses and then in consultation with the union there was not agreement to provide that money.
My question is for the Minister of Finance, who is responsible for that relationship, can I just get an explanation of what is going on here; why we can't pay our nurses more money? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. Minister responsible for Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So Mr. Speaker, the labour market supplement was something that we didn't have before. It does provide a tool. Given that the collective agreement is the bargaining document on which all of the salaries are based, all the recruitment any recruitment bonuses would be based, the total package of salary is based. So to go outside of that to offer something extra, we had to create this labour market supplement that would give us that proper tool or that basis on which to do that. In that policy, it does state that, of course, still the UNW remains the representative for all of our employees. And so before going ahead and doing something such as a labour market supplement, we would consult with them. The policy itself speaks quite clearly to the conditions under which one group of employees would be offered an enhancement to their salary. There's some fairly specific parameters that it's for certain conditions, particularly when there are shortages, particularly when there's great need. For instance, also that it would be the kind of a position that goes to health and safety of the people of the Northwest Territories. So when we apply that policy and we get to a certain point, we then go to the UNW and unfortunately we weren't able to come to an agreement. They took a different view as to what might be appropriate or needed in the circumstances. And again, you know, Mr. Speaker, they're there to represent their people and we are doing our best to maintain that relationship. We'll continue to do so. And as the Minister of Health detailed today, there are many other avenues by which we are going to continue to pursue an improvement for the morale of the staff over in the Department of Health. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I recognize that the Minister, you know, probably there was some negotiations maybe going on, or still ongoing in this matter, but I am still looking for a bit of an explanation of how this did not happen.
I hear that we got a labour market supplement. Somehow we got money out of cabinet, never an easy task, and we wanted to pay nurses more money and the union said we will not let our members have more money, is what I am hearing. Can I just get a clarification from the Minister as to why they said that? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I am not here to speak on behalf of the union. That would not be appropriate. It's a relationship that I have a great deal of respect for. So I'm not going to combat out and detail what their own reasons would be and be certainly seen to be speaking on their behalf.
Mr. Speaker, we are in a situation where in the course of a pandemic, we have held firm on not having cutbacks to our services and not having cuts to the public service. But to do that, we are running a lean operation. And so to be able to be offering any kind of additional bonuses and salary on top of the existing collective agreement, which does have increases in it unlike some jurisdictions during the last pandemic during this pandemic, in order to do that we're running a lean operation, Mr. Speaker, and there's only so much we can do and it's going to have to be narrow and targeted, and that was the position we were attempting to take here. As I said again, Mr. Speaker, we're not done looking for ways to continue to improve the system for nursing staff but we're just going to have to do that in a different way. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
