Thanks, Madam Chair. I want to thank the social development committee for allowing me to sit in on some of their discussions. I support these changes that the Department of Education, Culture and Employment made, and I want to commend the Minister and his department for these creative changes made during the pandemic. We have to make sure that they actually stay in place. That's the purpose of this motion.

We had the release of the integrated case management program recently the Minister tabled a report in the House. It's a very good report that says a lot of good things about integrated case management. What I took away from that is that we need to find a way to transition our system from, as I think it's been characterized, the punitive nature of Income Assistance to much more of an enabling, empowering system. That's what integrated case management actually does. We need to expand that outside Yellowknife. We need to expand it across the NWT and the way to do that is to transition our Income Assistance program to providing a guaranteed basic income. Integrated case management makes the case for doing it in that way. If we're able to get Income Assistance workers and transition them into guaranteed basic income pathfinders and pathfinders through integrated case management, we're almost there.

With the federal government supports offered through CERB, we're almost there at a guaranteed basic income. I'm happy to support this, but what we really need is a precise roadmap from where we are to where we need to be in terms of universal basic income. That's a challenge to my colleagues on the Cabinet side and perhaps the colleagues on this side with social development. We need that roadmap. Step by step, how are we going to a guaranteed basic income so that we enable all of our residents to become full citizens in our economy and exercise all their rights and meet their potential. That's what we really need is a guaranteed basic income. This is a step in the right direction, so I'm happy to support it. Thanks, Madam Chair.