Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can't make everybody whole. The Government of the Northwest Territories can't make everybody whole. I think more -- several of my colleagues have already spoken about how heartbreaking this is, to hear on late Sunday night that this community was being evacuated yet again. Mr. Speaker, my first thoughts were to children who were being woken up in the middle of the night to have to leave their houses again. So, you know, it's not for lack of awareness of how tremendously difficult this must be to the extent that someone who is not experiencing it can even pretend to actually be able to say that we know someone feels when we're not in those shoes.
So, Mr. Speaker, no relief program that we ever come out with is likely going to be one that is completely satisfactory, that makes anyone whole and that totally fixes every single need that anyone has. I know that. I'm aware of it. If we're going to compare ourselves to Alberta, Alberta has some billion-dollar surplus; we do not have a surplus, we continue to run a deficit. We have an operating surplus that offsets some of the debt we take on for our capital plan. So that said, we're trying to find gaps. I know the United Way right now has over $500,000. They've been trying to get that money out the door. We're looking at ways that we can better support them going forward so that process can be made more easy, that that process could be more accessible. It's a nonprofit, I certainly don't want to put a burden on them but there's a lot of money there that we want to be able to support them going forward. So we're having that conversation. And now we're looking at what other gaps we can fill.
We've looked at the number of employees who are under income assistance, they received their income assistance emergency funds and continue to receive income assistance, looked at who -- what the employment demographics are, who are GNWT public servants, again emphasizing they are on emergency leave, they don't have to draw down their banks. So trying to make do with the resources that we have, with the public dollars that we have available to us to try to fill some gaps, and that's how we landed on the program that we have here to try to fill up for anyone that is seeing an income disruption that they can have a top-up, take a bit of the pressure off for them, and that has been the goal that we've tried to achieve. We landed on the $750 looking at what the emergency funds that are provided to income assistance clients, so we're trying to be fair across the board to the different types of programs available. That's how we landed on that one, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.