Ms. Thompson

I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. Can the Member please clarify her question or give me an example? Thank you.

Mrs. Groenewegen, your supplementary again.

Ms. Thompson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank the Member for the clarification. We do, under our mandate with the municipal councils in the communities, monitoring and evaluations. When we suggest a plan of action to a community, we get a very positive response by a lot of communities. With some communities, it is more difficult. I do not have all of the reports of all the communities across the territories. This is not unusual. We do monitoring and evaluation from time to time with the communities. Thank you.

Oral questions. Supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Ms. Thompson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Actually, that was the only option I had up to the time I made the decision because of all the assistance we provided to the community over the last ten years in providing assistance to the community in workshops and other administrative duties that we did with the community. That was my only option at the end of the inspection. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Oral questions. Final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Ms. Thompson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will consider it, but at this time, I am not thinking about it. The administrator that is in place has been in place just for a short time, and we have a lot of work to do in the community with workshops and other educational public education that will be available to the residents through the administrator. At this time, I am not thinking about it, but I will consider it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Oral questions. Mr. Erasmus.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are in the area of the Hay Job Evaluation System. I had intended to ask whether the Minister of Finance would be willing to go back to the bargaining table. He has already agreed to do that, so I would like to thank him for that. As I say, my questions are in the area of the Hay Job Evaluation System. There seems to be an indication that perhaps the new Hay Job Evaluation is not gender neutral. Has the union indicated, at any time, that the Hay Job Evaluation System itself is gender neutral?

Minister of Finance, Mr. Todd.

My understanding is that there was considerable discussion with the UNW that actually goes back to 1996 or 1997, both with the President, Ms. Jackie Simpson and some others, where they indicated that they were prepared to work with us on the Hay Plan Job Evaluation System which, by the way, we have used in the territories for close to 20 years in our management team and is used right across Canada in a variety of both municipal, provincial and private sector areas. I would not want to say unequivocally today that they put it in writing or did they say they agreed or disagreed whether it was gender neutral, et cetera. I do not think that would be fair to them until I double check with my staff. Certainly, there was a willingness, from what I have seen, in the notes and the discussion that we have undertaken, to work with us on the Hay Plan Job Evaluation System and was, up until sometime in late 1998, I think, when the PSAC people came into the picture. I believe I did indicate in my speech earlier today that the PSAC had said they were not prepared to negotiate this deal. In fairness to the UNW and to its leadership, I should check and see whether or not they have actually agreed or disagreed that the Hay Plan, which I believe and we believe, is gender neutral, but in fact they concurred with that. I would prefer to take it that way. Thank you.

Thank you. Oral questions. Supplementary, Mr. Erasmus.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One of the concerns that has been expressed to me is the fact that the Hay Job consultants were not aware that they were supposed to be implementing a gender neutral evaluation system. Would the Minister indicate to us whether the terms of reference included implementing a gender neutral evaluated system? Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Todd.

This is why we brought the Hay Plan Associates group in to re-evaluate all the job evaluations to reach a bias-free gender neutral position. As I have said, I think we have achieved that in the majority of cases. There may be the odd isolated case where there are still some concerns, and we have already indicated we are prepared to work with the union in trying to resolve some of these isolated cases when they bring them forward. I think there has been a concerted effort on our part to try and reach an appropriate agreement on this evaluation system and on the fact that we have a gender free workplace now, with some of its glitches. There is no question about that. I am prepared to admit that. We need to work toward resolving, as I said, the few isolated cases where there are some concerns and get on with putting some money into the hands of our employees and having a workplace that is reasonably content and moving on.

Thank you. Oral questions. Supplementary, Mr. Erasmus.