Thank you, Madam Speaker. The total costs so far of the COVID-19 pandemic is $175 million. The COVID secretariat is just one part of that. We have already received more than half of that, over $92.5 million from the federal government. The federal government has been a good partner with this fight. Every province and territory is fighting this fight. The COVID secretariat is just one -- I'd say, it's quite a small part of what we're doing, Madam Speaker.
Whether we call it a secretariat or whether you call it a task force or whether you call it the COVID umbrella, it really doesn't matter. What matters is the work that they're doing. Right now, Madam Speaker, it is the primary response message that we have to implement the orders of the Chief Public Health Officer. The Chief Public Health Officer is the person in this territory who is best placed to model, to understand, to figure out the evolving nature of a disease that is sweeping across the world. She is the one that's at the front end at the front line of figuring out how to respond to something that no one has ever been asked to respond to before. The COVID secretariat is one small thing that we are doing here to help implement the orders that she's bringing out in the best interests of the health and safety of all the residents of the Northwest Territories.
Back in March, when it was a crisis, an emergency that everyone was having to respond to, that is when the work began. Madam Speaker, at that time, developed the response that included the isolation centres because we didn't want anyone coming back from away and elsewhere in Canada or internationally, even at the time, coming back and going into a small community where there aren't health centres, where there is overcrowding, where people have low health indicators. Those are all risk factors for COVID-19. No one is not alive to that. We're extremely alive to that, and that is exactly why we have the isolation centres; why we have the border restrictions; why we have the border patrols; why we have the patrols at the airports because we can't let this disease get into small communities or out into regions where it would potentially have devastating consequences.
And initially, as my colleague has just mentioned, Madam Speaker, it was individually department by department, staff person by staff person being asked to do things outside of what their job descriptions were in order to be able to be on the front lines in an urgent situation. That is not sustainable, Madam Speaker. Figuring out who was doing what, putting it all together, gathering it up, the Department of Finance did bring together the actual amounts that were spent in the first few months when all of this work, all of this same work was already happening as part of our response when we were keeping COVID-19 out of the territory. For a large part, we have had very few cases, Madam Speaker.
We put all of that together. We looked at those actual numbers, and those are the numbers that inform the cost of the COVID secretariat. The projections that we have here are based on the actual costs spread across all of the departments, only now, they are being brought together. Now, we can put it out on the Department of Finance website. Now, it is transparent. Now, I can, month by month, report exactly on what the costs are because it's all been brought together. Now, we don't have to take people away from the front-line work that they're doing in other departments because they have somewhere else where they are coordinated to do that work, where we figured out which positions needed to be filled that couldn't be double filled or filled by redeployments who were then off of their other jobs. We figured that out in a coordinated way, and that is what's happening under this COVID secretariat.
Is it a best practice? Well, Madam Speaker, I don't know that anyone knows the best practice just yet. That is exactly the challenge of governing is to figure out the best practice as quickly as possible in an urgent situation to make sure that people are safe. Madam Speaker, CBC noted that, on November 3rd, in Canada, there were 71 deaths from COVID-19, yesterday. When we were debating this, there were 71 deaths in Canada from COVID-19. A week ago, there were 362 cases in Indigenous communities in Canada. This week, it's at 500. Again, reported on CBC. Madam Speaker, I am sad for my Canadian colleagues and friends and neighbours, but I am also thankful that we are not facing that level of pandemic here in the territories. Let's be honest, Madam Speaker. Some of that's just luck, but some of it is due to the response that we've had since day one, and it's a response that we want to continue.
Madam Speaker, $8.7 million is a number that's been put out there. What that is is the projected cost of just under $32 million to the end of the fiscal year, taking away what right now is the amount of federal funding that we've received that we're able to put towards a secretariat, leaves just over $8 million which would be GNWT funded. That money is not exclusively for employees. That money is meant to perform all of these different functions from border patrols to airport monitoring to the isolation centres to various contacting functions, NWT protect, as well as the communications and some policy development because we are not done in evolving our response. Just as the disease is evolving, of course, the response has to evolve.
As was made plain very much yesterday, there must be things that we do all the time to make the response better, to make it more tailored, and hopefully to reduce the costs that we're seeing here, to change the way that people are being asked to respond, to change the communities where people might be able to self-isolate, to look at the different options for self-isolation, to look at the costs of it. We can't do that on the sides of our desk. We need someone to look at that and actually try to come up with a best practice. That's part of what's included in that $8 million, Madam Speaker. Will we go out and try to get more money from the federal government? of course. How many times we've answered questions on every one of our departments that we are constantly engaging. COVID-19 has been an opportunity. There have been weekly calls between many of the departments and federal ministers and FPT. The federal provincial territorial ministers across Canada are all getting together to share our ideas, to share our best practices because everyone is trying to figure out what to do.
I can't see into the future, Madam Speaker. If I could, I would know when and where the disease might arrive, but I can't. I would know, perhaps, how the pandemic would unfold, but I don't. Madam Speaker, what we can do is continue to bring about the implementation of the orders that our Chief Public Health Officer is working constantly, along with her colleagues from all of Canada, to help us reduce the risk of this disease here within the territory. We're going to continue to do that, Madam Speaker. We're going to continue to do that in a way that is responsible. We're going to continue to do it in a way that is transparent. We're going to continue to report on those costs. We're going to continue to report when there can be a change, if we can, in fact, save money because of an evolution in the way we are responding.
Madam Speaker, the materials that are before you today in this supplementary that include that COVID secretariat includes so many other things. While we might want to parse out and say, "It's the COVID secretariat that's at issue," the simple fact is that, at this point, it's not just the COVID secretariat. We have to respond to the economic crisis that's been created as a result. We have to respond to the educational crisis that's been created as a result. Those things are also in the supplementary appropriation. The safe restart for the school funding, some of that is here, Madam Speaker; school contributions, contributions to student financial assistance is here; airline supports are in here for the GRIT program for ITI is here; regional relief for local businesses, that's all here, Madam Speaker. Sports organizations for youth, that is here, too. It is more than just the COVID secretariat. It is about now becoming a social, economic response that we have to have in addition to the health response that we've had to have.
Madam Speaker, I will also be voting, not surprisingly, in support of this supplementary because I know, Madam Speaker, that these numbers have been costed out carefully. I know that we are going to do our best, as I've said, to continue to be transparent about them, to do even better with our communications of them. While not everybody might support the measures, and they are hard and they are not easy for anyone to follow, it's not pleasant. The pandemic is causing tremendous strain on everyone.
Madam Speaker, as we've gone out, engaged and explained, explained what the secretariat thing is, the work that it's doing that it is actually the work that is implemented in the orders that have kept us safe, support has grown. Support has grown among Indigenous governments and communities and businesses. Not everyone will support it, Madam Speaker, but that is not the job of governing. The job of governing is to try to do your best; to try to do your best to maintain the health and the safety of the people of the Northwest Territories; to ensure the stability of the Northwest Territories; to ensure the stability, as much as possible, of our response to COVID-19, so that we can do our best to continue to keep it at bay. Thank you, Madam Speaker.