Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This last weekend, everyone in the territory got the benefit of two holidays giving us two four-day workweeks. And I had a number of people ask, you know, I'd really like to always have a four-day workweek. And well, Mr. Speaker, we could always have a four-day workweek if us in this House wanted to.

I've spoke of the benefits of a four-day workweek before, Mr. Speaker, but today I want to present my plan of how we could actually accomplish this.

First, I think you have to reframe it as a recruitment and retention exercise. The Northwest Territories presently has the highest employment rate in Canada. That can be seen as a good thing but we also know it comes with a labour shortage, and many businesses are having a hard time finding people to work and keeping people working. Certainly a four-day workweek would be a good incentive for that.

Firstly, Mr. Speaker, I must say that, you know, this has to be an employer driven. So if you're working -- if you're listening to this, you know, maybe contact your employer; see if you can change your work schedule. If you're in a union, maybe contact your union. But from our side, I think the first step would have to be to bringing this to negotiations, Mr. Speaker.

Now, I don't know if we could necessarily do a full reduction of a one day, but perhaps if we add an extra one hour a day four days a week, we're actually only asking for a three-and-a-half hour reduction over the whole week for our union. And I know that union's going to be asking for some record pay increases given inflation. So perhaps we can use a reduction in hours to see some ones or zeros in that collective bargaining agreement.

And then, Mr. Speaker, if we did this for the GNWT, you know what's going to happen? Everyone in the private sector's going to lose it. They're going to say oh, just another GNWT workers getting more time off to do less work. So, Mr. Speaker, I think we need to get some private businesses on board, small and large. This is what they recently did in Iceland to implement a four-day workweek. They got a number of companies to sign on to a number of incentives. Presently we charge small businesses in this territory 2 percent tax rate. Perhaps we could offer them zero percent tax if they want to adopt a four-day workweek. I think we'd get quite a few to sign on with that incentive, because no one likes paying taxes, Mr. Speaker.

And then, Mr. Speaker, after a few years of incentives, you could maybe introduce the stick, which is the Employment Standards Act, and require lowering the number of hours required in a workweek before overtime is required. And Mr. Speaker, I think if you did this with dedication, we could be one of the most attractive jurisdictions to work in the country and get people to come to the North and stay in the North because it would always be a long weekend here, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.