Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about the public service and the employees of the Government of the Northwest Territories and some of the uncertainties that they have had to cope with over the past two years. Our Minister of Finance has referred to our staff today as one of our most valuable resources. First, there will be amendments to the Public Service Act, which most MLAs agreed, although a bitter pill, had to be concurred with in order to meet our deficit reduction targets. This resulted in an across the board wage roll-back of 6.5 percent and the loss of other benefits.
While dealing with this, there was also the compounded effect of reductions in funds for operating most departments and the associated layoffs, as a further cost-saving measure. Some of our employees in the larger departments also had to live with the uncertainty of layoffs resulting from amalgamation of departments and the proposed amalgamations, which ultimately did not proceed. In the midst of this uncertainty there were casualties as would be expected. Since people generally do not like to work and live for too long in an environment of declining morale associated with lack of job security, many good and long-term employees of our government sought other employment opportunities, early retirement, et cetera.
I do not know if we will ever know for sure the cumulative effect on our public service of roll-backs, layoffs, transfers, increased workloads and uncertainty, but in the midst of all this another uncertainty has arisen. The government, partly in response to the problems acknowledged, related to pay equity questions, has undertaken to re-evaluate all government positions. This process should have been completed on January 15th, just one week ago. The, as yet, unanswered question which this evaluation process raises is, what is going to be done with the information that is collected when it is completed? Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned about the negative impact that uncertainty has on our public workforce, and I will be questioning the appropriate Minister about this today in question period. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.