I indicated in my previous response that transportation is one of the primary components of this. There are two components. There is transportation, which used to be the VTA, and then there is the cost of living component.

If you go back and look at the history of negotiations over time, when we got rid of the housing allowance in the Government of the Northwest Territories in the ‘90s, that amount was negotiated by way of an increase into the base salaries of all GNWT employees. So housing has already been incorporated in. If you look at the increases that have occurred to the salaries over many years, the increases that have been negotiated exceed CPI by over 10 percent over the last 12 years. That is where that particular thing is negotiated.

We also need to remember that northern allowance is non-pensionable. The union has – and it makes sense – focused on increases to areas that are pensionable as opposed to non-pensionable. This allowance is intended to equalize the communities to Yellowknife rates, and it works and it is a negotiated formula and the union hasn’t sought to renegotiate that formula. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.