Thank you, Mr. Braden. I would like to ask Minister Roland if he would like to bring in witnesses.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Does committee agree that we entertain witnesses?

Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort in the witnesses. Thank you.

Mr. Minister, I was wondering if you could introduce your witnesses for the record. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I have with me today the director of legislation, Mark Aitken; to my immediate right is Mr. Lew Voytilla, secretary to FMB; and, to my immediate left is Ms. Lynn Elkin, assistant deputy minister of corporate human resources. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Welcome to our proceedings this afternoon. I will now move on to general comments on Bill 21 by Members. General comments. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My comments will be brief and very supportive of this bill. I have had at least one fairly extensive encounter with a constituent who had a number of difficulties in some staffing appeals and it was quite apparent that the difficulties were within the regulations and the steps that either the appeal process is required to follow or not required to follow and sometimes the interpretation of those really caused some issues. So this is very welcome, certainly from the people who work for us and I would also like to think among the people who are responsible and accountable for the workforce, so we can get a better rulebook in place here. This is very progressive.

As the report indicated, the Minister was quite willing to accept union input into the recommendations that he will make on who the staffing appeals officers will be and to allow access to the process of designing and writing the regulations, which is where much of the success or the complication will be in those regs.

Mr. Chairman, I really had one question to put to the Minister and his staff. That is just how extensively are these appeals processes applied? Certainly there is our main workforce, but then there are boards, agencies, authorities committees, commissions, et cetera. To what extent are these in place for those arm's length organizations? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, this would apply to all government staff. So all public servants, whether they are on education boards or health boards, the only group that would not apply to is the Power Corporation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That really satisfies my curiosity on this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will be speaking in favour of this and in these adjustments. As I see it, we are now opening up the appeal process to show transparency by making reports available to the appellant. I think those are good things for the people who do appeal to the process, whereas a decision in the old days up until, of course, the date that this gets changed, is either a yea or nay. It is upheld, and folks will sort of feel left out of the system and try to understand why their appeal wasn't upheld. I appreciate and I also applaud the efforts to include that transparency.

The other thing that I would also like to express my heartfelt appreciation towards is the fact that this does enable other people to appeal more of a management side of the equation which, previously, they were excluded. As I understand it, this now still excludes ADMs and DMs. However, it does open it up to a broader perspective and allow more people to appeal positions that they feel rightly they should have been selected, or at least had a more serious shot at. That being said, I applaud the move forward in transparency, and I look forward to less phone calls in this area as the system is showing that it is truly being responsive to the needs of the communities. Thank you very much. That is all. I have no question.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Are there further general comments to Bill 21? Mr. Villeneuve.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to applaud the Minister of Finance for embarking on this amendment, because I think that it is long overdue and it is something that the public will definitely embrace and probably use the staffing appeal officers quite regularly, I guess. Like my friend was saying, it might lessen the amount of phone calls that we are receiving every day with regard to employment opportunities in the government.

In his briefing here, there are three positions for staffing review officers that are going to be considered, based on their experience with the workload and reviewing the number of appellants in each region, they will kind of move around the workload a little bit. I was just wondering with those positions, are those positions all going to be located here in Yellowknife, or are they going to be in the regional offices?

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the three positions will not all be located in Yellowknife. One of them will be in the north and one will be in the south part of the territory. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Villeneuve.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That is good to know that people will not have to phone or write Yellowknife in order to get their appeal heard or considered for review. Earlier, we were talking about some of the inquiries we get with respect to hiring practices by the government...you know, aboriginal people that are applying for government positions are being screened because the affirmative action policy is something that is kind of not strictly adhered to nowadays. Is an appeal legitimate, based on a concern by an employee who is not given an opportunity for a position, because of the lack of consideration for the affirmative action policy? Is that going to be included in staffing review guidelines for employment consideration? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, as anybody who would apply on a government position would be aware, through the form to apply, they would make the selection if they were an aboriginal person in the Northwest Territories and therefore considered P1. So if they felt they weren't considered a P1 or a P2 in the existing categories in place, then any policy we have could be appealed if they felt that it wasn't adhered to. It is pretty straightforward on that section of it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Villeneuve.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess my concern is if a P1 appeals to a review officer and the review officer doesn't...It is clearly stated that they are not in a position to authorize the appointment of any individuals to any positions, but I am just curious. If you have a P1 that is qualified in his eyes, and he applies to the staffing review officer to review his lack of an appointment to the position because of...If they followed all the rules and did the process according to what is stipulated in the competition and whatnot, how much consideration would...because the final decision rests in the hand of the employer. It is stated right there for any staffing appeals process. So how much weight would the affirmative action policy carry in having an appeal revisited?