Thank you, Madam Speaker. Earlier today I spoke about my desire to have paid sick leave in the Northwest Territories. So my question for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment is in the life of this government, will we bring forward legislation to introduce paid sick leave in the NWT? Thank you.
Thank you. Minister of ECE.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. I don't know, maybe. The Member raises some very valid points, and sometimes I joke that he's just trying to chip away at the workweek with the more holidays and paid sick leave but the fact is this pandemic has shown us that when you're sick, we want you to stay home. But not everyone can afford that. So we are reviewing the Employment Standards Act in the upcoming fiscal year which starts not that long from now, and we are going to be going out and speaking with employers and asking them these questions, how they feel about it, and then speaking with the public as well. And the Member mentioned that in BC it's been shown to be a positive for employers. And so I want to say that nothing is stopping employers from implementing paid sick leave in their own businesses right now. So I want to thank the Member for raising that and maybe putting this on the minds of employers before we look at the legislation. Thank you.
Yes, thank you, and I thank the Minister for stating that. I've actually had a number of businesses reach out to me during the pandemic who have introduced paid sick leave. So I suspect the number of people who are actually left in the territory without paid sick days is steadily decreasing, and I would like to thank all businesses who have taken that step.
I'm actually wondering, though, if the department has any of those statistics of who in the NWT labour force or how many workers are presently without any form of paid sick leave? Thank you, Madam Speaker.
No, we don't have those numbers. When employers implement things like this, they're not required to inform employment standards. However, under the Employment Standards Act, I believe there's around between 15,000 and 19,000 employees in the territory who fall under that act, and I would imagine for the most part they don't have paid sick leave. Thank you.
Thank you. Member for Kam Lake.
