Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Today, Mr. Speaker, my colleagues and I will be speaking to the theme of services to the communities in the area of social programs, Mr. Speaker.
A little over a week ago, I raised the plight, Mr. Speaker, of non-government organizations with regard to difficulties they are having in staffing, wage disparities and the need for multi-year sustainable and predictable agreements with our government. I tabled some correspondence from the president of the YWCA, Mr. Speaker, which detailed a pending staffing crisis that this very necessary organization faces. The majority of non-government organizations are in the social program areas. Examples are the Y, Mr. Speaker, the Literacy Council, the NWT Association of Persons with Disabilities, the Centre for Northern Families, to name a few. They are all delivering essential and much needed programs, many of them on behalf of this government. I believe, Mr. Speaker, we get exceptional value and great quality from these organizations, many of them, all of them, really governed by volunteer boards who work because they believe in this and for the benefit of the communities. They also raise a lot of funding on their own.
Mr. Speaker, the survey at the YWCA showed that, against the market value of other work done in 2004, their frontline workers are at least $10,000 a year, or about $5 an hour, behind market value.
Mr. Speaker, we need to look at how we treat our NGOs in relation to what we do, in fact, in our own government. We have just completed a very successful collective bargaining agreement with our own staff. We continue to allow these increments. We are going to be passing some major increments for our own staff, but, Mr. Speaker, where is our consideration of the non-government organizations and the very valuable service that they and their staff put into our communities? Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause