Thanks, Madam Chair. Yes, this is, I guess, another one that I am passionate about. I've raised this issue with my colleague, the Minister of Finance, several times about the wage top-up program and want to commend her again. I think Cabinet did the right thing in extending this wage top-up to all low wage income earners in the Northwest Territories. It's not focused just on essential service workers.

I can support this but the real answer here is to increase our minimum wage, and that's what needs to happen. It's not just maybe into $18 an hour. It needs to be closer to a living wage that we can lift people out of poverty. We heard, I think yesterday from the Minister of Finance, that 293 workers are taking advantage of this program. They have to do it through their employers. I guess I'm going to quote from the Premier. I think it would be a sin to roll back these people's wages after the pandemic. It's just unconscionable that we would actually take money away from people.

Now, whether GNWT should be doing this through a wage top-up, that's a different issue, and I think, as I said, we need to just look at increasing the minimum wage. I've had some members of the public raise with me the issue that with a wage top-up, what we're actually doing for some employers is subsidizing, like maybe big box stores, franchises where some of those workers may not get much more than a minimum wage. As I said, I think the real solution here is to increase the minimum wage, and I look forward to that being done in our term. I am prepared to support this motion. It gets us part-way there, but the real answer is increasing the minimum wage. Thanks, Madam Chair.