Thank you. Minister.

Well, that is a disadvantage for us because our vacancy rate is growing in small communities, and we are at risk of losing staff, particularly in the health care field. So I just wanted to ask the Minister can the Minister tell the House how the health care recruitment plan will support our small communities in attracting and retaining health care professionals?

Thank you. Member for Monfwi.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, certainly I would note for -- at this moment, there is a junior officer, I think a human resources officer and an assistant in the Tlicho -- based in the Tlicho region. I certainly can appreciate, you know, feedback from the Member. It is difficult to necessarily draw a conclusion about the state of hiring or vacancy rates in a context right now given the labour market shortages across sectors and across Canada and whether or not that is related to a shift in how human resources was structured many years ago as compared to the circumstances we're facing today. There is no immediate plan to reorganize fundamentally how human resources is operating. Thank you.

Thank you. Minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I know, this is further to what my colleague just said. In the past, in our region, TCSA and other GNWT departments, had power to work through human resources process to support our residents in the communities and now these functions have been centralized to Yellowknife office and our region do not have the flexibility to recruit and attract, you know, outside -- especially with the health department, to recruit more health nurses, you know. We have a lot of vacancy just like Minister Green said, that there's 40 percent vacancy. We have problems recruiting nurses, speech pathologists, CYCC and all that. But in the past when the department were doing it, the agency and other GNWT were -- when they had their own human resources office, I don't think there was as much problems or there was any -- a huge vacancy rate at that time. So I'm just wondering, will the Minister decentralize some of the human -- or the human resources power back to the regions to small communities to do their own hiring as we have done in the past?

Thank you. Are there any further questions under the Finance human resources? Member for Monfwi.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We certainly do track the timeliness of hiring processes across departments. I don't have that data in front of me, and it hasn't appeared in my eyes as I'm sitting here. So I will commit to get back to the Member with that.

Thank you. Minister.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I guess I don't fully quite understand it. One of the complaints I know we have heard is that a manager over at the health authority will identify a candidate and want to hire them and then they have to quick it over to, I assume someone in HR -- I don't know if it's actually specifically the recruitment unit -- and then there's this turnaround time. And I believe, you know, we've actually been improving it so perhaps that is the question. Can someone just tell me how quickly HR is now processing, especially for health -- and I know there's multiple different timelines, you know, from advertising to -- maybe even to actual contract. But whatever data we have available of us, has this been sped up and we're making some progress on this area? I think it's usually post-interview to contracting and -- thank you, Madam Chair

Thank you. Member for Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, so there is a joint initiative between the Department of Health and Social Services and the Department of Finance. And I will speak specifically to the health area though, really, Madam Chair, at this point the department of health mirrors more closely what happens in other departments in that there are still management roles for the department's staff that then work with a human resources officer or client services officer who can support the work that goes on to hire someone into an individual department or division.

The health recruitment unit, though, is a little bit different. So understanding that this may be the focus here, this is really meant to address, firstly, the mandate item that we have to increase specifically health professionals in the Northwest Territories but also arising and focusing on the challenges of recruitment of health professionals right now specifically given labour market shortages across Canada. So this began under -- again under the mandate item and has really been refocused and given even more attention in light of what's going on.

So there are some -- with the specialized efforts to support the Department of Health and Social Services, the health recruitment unit can undertake extra and added work to focus on what's going on in the health services labour market to initialize specific campaign drives to try to recruit nurses to spend extra efforts to, you know -- for instance, attending focused conferences. And perhaps I'll stop there, Madam Chair, and make sure I've answered the question adequately. Thank you.

Thank you. Minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can someone just try to explain to me whether there -- how this unit has changed over time with health hiring? My understanding is prior to the amalgamation, the health authorities were doing all of their hiring themselves and they had their own HR officers. That's no longer the case. And I think now we have -- we still have a bit of a hybrid model where there are some hiring being done in health with the assistance of this unit? Can someone just try to explain it to me. Thank you.