Merci, Monsieur le President. I raised the issue of the federal wage top-up program offered through GNWT in June last year. The federal funding appears to have ended on August 31st, 2021. At that point, GNWT workers receiving $18 an hour reverted back to their previous wages as low as our miserly minimum wage of $15.20 an hour.
No matter how the Minister of Finance tried to pitch the wage top-up program and who was supposed to benefit from it, the program definitely helped a lot of people impacted by our totally inadequate minimum wage. I was surprised to see that the Department of Finance still has a webpage on the now defunct wage top-up program.
As of July 19th, 2021, the total cost of the program was $4,607,888, including employee wage top-up, employer EI and CPP, and $50 per employee compensation fees; 102 businesses participated; and 3,053 individuals benefitted from the program, or about 12.5 percent of the labour force.
I recently had a small business person who lives in the Frame Lake riding contact me about government assistance as they were hoping for a reinstatement of the wage top-up program. That business understands the need to retain employees and wants to pay their employees a living wage. When I contacted the finance minister, all I got was a brush off that the program had ended and a link to where federal assistance programs could be found.
The response from the Minister did not deal with the fundamental problems outlined by this small business person. There is no shortage of labour, but a wage/benefits shortage where people are no longer looking for work that pays less than a living wage.
There should be a general wage top-up program that is focused on increasing the wages for lower income workers. The GNWT could provide a wage top-up program to applicants to get low income workers up to a living wage and then a staggered withdrawal over time. This would bring up the wages for low income workers and would mitigate the risks for small businesses.
Do we want to support a more vibrant economy and attract employees with better services to the public, Or do we want to continue to have workers living in poverty? I will have questions later today for the Premier. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.