Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We tried to build a prosperous Territory, but, Mr. Speaker, as always, some people are left behind and are better off than others. I’m sorry to say that it’s a pattern that is continued to be followed and it even applies to the employees of the Government of the Northwest Territories.
Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories is not respective of the people that we serve in which 50 percent of our population are Aboriginal but only 31 percent of the government employees are Aboriginal. In Yellowknife only 16 percent of the employees are Aboriginal and I wonder to what extent that there are twice as many women as men in government occupations were Aboriginal workforce.
It gets worse, Mr. Speaker. There are only 31 Aboriginal senior managers in this government, which makes up 16 percent of senior managers. If that makes you think that Aboriginal employees are at the bottom of the pay scale, Mr. Speaker, you are right. The average salary of a P1 employee is under $69,000 a year compared to that of a P2 employee which are non-Aboriginal Northerners, the average salary is more than $84,000 a year. Not only is there a huge pay difference, but in most cases Aboriginal employees have their money spread further because 67 percent of them live in small urban communities or regional centres where the cost of living is generally higher than Yellowknife. I ask, Mr. Speaker, how fair is this?
This government brags about true equal opportunities for employers, but is it really? What are we doing as a government to improve this? More importantly, what are we doing to add to the skills and opportunities of Aboriginal employees? How many years of residential schools and government-run schools here in the Northwest Territories have had an opportunity to build on the employment opportunities of the Aboriginal workforce that really reflects the people it serves but not simply having a backseat to everyone else in their homelands? Mr. Speaker, again, I think it is very important to realize that we have high unemployment rates among Aboriginal people here in the Northwest Territories. Even...