Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I just want to follow up a little further on the evacuation travel support program. And I suspect now, the Minister was saying I didn't expect the question but that said, to be all fair in all fairness, she is the Finance Minister of this government and the last government and oversaw the programs, so I expect her to know some elements of the program.
So that said, the evacuation support program paid out $750 to people as a onetime sort of payment. How did they actually come up with that specific $750 for the impacts of individuals obviously per vehicle? Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife Centre. Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when I say I wasn't expecting the question, I don't necessarily have the policy documents in front of me. I certainly wouldn't want to mislead anyone with respect to what was the specifics of the policy.
As far as the $750, again, firstly, these were efforts being made in response to emergencies and often by staff who themselves had been evacuated and were under somewhat difficult conditions. We were making an effort at the time, I believe with respect to the evacuation payment, to align with the income disruption payment that had been decided upon earlier in the season. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. But that actually didn't answer the question in any way. Like, how did they actually come up with the $750 mark? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, with respect to the income disruption support payment, that was the first one that was provided and that was really meant to be an opportunity, really, just to acknowledge the fact that individuals who had been evacuated at that time may be in situations where they didn't have anything to provide some of their daytoday costs and to sort of mitigate some of those daytoday costs. $750 was we were looking at we certainly did do a jurisdictional scan of what was going offered elsewhere. It was very clear at that time that very few jurisdictions, indeed I think perhaps at that time initially only one, were providing any kind of direct payments to residents. As the summer wore on and other jurisdictions faced similar challenges of evacuations, there was at least one jurisdiction, if I'm not mistaken, that did ultimately provide a payment, and we tried to ensure that ours was not too far off of what was being offered, noting that, of course, there were some differences in how they were being allotted and who was eligible. And at that time, the evacuation travel support payment was introduced to try to further offset some of the costs that were being incurred for individuals knowing that accommodations and some fuel and food were available for those who were registered through the other evacuation programs that were available. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, let's use some easy numbers. The CERB payment was about $2,000 a month. That's about $500 a week. So the fire was about three weeks, and so if we use their $750 mark, that's 250 a week. So there's quite a bit of a disparity. There's a standard, a considerable one. But CERB was during COVID and people stayed home, so they didn't have to worry about driving out. That said, how can we justify and explain that $750 was an impact payment worthy of the expense that many people paid considering they pulled the government ordered people out of the Northwest Territories. It wasn't like an encouragement saying hey, got nothing to do, go to Edmonton and Calgary. So how do we justify that? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, people were asked to evacuate in the face of wildfires that were threatening communities. So as far as being ordered to leave, it was not done lightly. It was done in the interests of safety to protect residents but also to protect first responders, to protect firefighters, to protect infrastructure. So just to draw a distinct line, there this is not the same as the situation under CERB. We are also not the federal government and don't have the deep pockets of the federal government and we're doing our best to try to make our programs such that they could be affordable for the GNWT, that if possible, we could still see reimbursement by the federal government. In the case of both of the support payments, it is unlikely that they're going to be supported back by the federal government's disaster assistance programs, and with respect so I gather that this is now with respect to the travel subsidy. Mr. Speaker, so the travel subsidy is really was meant to be for those folks who didn't have access to the flight evacuation option or who had didn't have access to, you know again, there was accommodations being offered, food being offered, and some fuel costs being offered. So it was really just meant to be if there were some additional costs being incurred that we weren't aware of or hadn't accounted for. That's what that was supposed to be. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Finance. Final supplementary. Member from Yellowknife Centre.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, would the Minister be willing to either give a ministerial statement or table some documents that demonstrate how many people actually applied and received this program, be it the numbers of people applied and the amount paid out? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, certainly I can provide those numbers. Thank you.
Oral questions. Member for Monfwi.
