Mr. Chair, obviously we don't have that with us today, but we will get that to Ms. Lee shortly.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Ms. Lee.

That is fine. Thank you.

Thank you. Committee, we are on page 2-61, activity summary, management and recruitment services, operations expenditure summary, $7.231 million.

Can we now turn to page 2-64 and 2-65, activity summary, corporate human resources, operations expenditure summary, $8.492 million. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On the corporate human resources, on the activity page number of programs underneath or within Human Resources' watch are listed. Among them is the Graduate Employment Program which, I think, my colleague Ms. Lee may have been discussing and talking about, too. It relates to the promise made by this government, although not in this Assembly but the previous Assembly, that jobs would be offered to all graduates of our nursing and teaching program under the Graduate Employment Program. This was met with great acclaim at the time. I think it has had a fairly good uptake and very much an expression of confidence and support for our northern students and graduates that we value them and we want them to go to work here in the northern homeland and we are ready to step up to the plate and guarantee a job offer in the Northwest Territories, Mr. Chair. One area, though, that this has run into some difficulty and it continues, is where the people who do the hiring are not directly within the realm of the GNWT and especially in the area for teachers. This applies to our school boards and authorities. I know that it has caused disappointment and continues to cause disappointment, Mr. Chair, for some of the graduates of our teaching programs at Aurora College who, when the principal teaching employees are boards and authorities who do not have to follow our policies for whatever reasons, are bypassing or not including the northern graduates on their front line for hiring and, in fact, to the frustration and consternation of some of these graduates, they stand back and see southern employees continue to be hired by our northern school boards. They get bypassed in the face of the promise that our government made. That is the review that I get, Mr. Chair, as an MLA. I am wondering if the Minister has any information or rebuttal to that and discuss just where we can go to enable northern graduates to truly be considered by our boards for hiring, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Braden mentioned teachers and nurses. We also have a

similar promise to social workers. We have the Intern Program which also is an extra 35 grads in other areas of study. So the government does have a fair investment in recent grads in helping them get their first job.

In terms of teachers, there has been a drop over the past three years in the number of teachers who have been coming out of the program and finding employment in the North. The two Yellowknife boards tend to get the most applicants but can't take them all. The commitment we have made, as a government, is that the offer will be made of a position somewhere in the Northwest Territories. What we are finding is that many of our grads are not anxious to return to some of the smaller communities, which is where a large number of the jobs are. The two or three boards in Yellowknife can't take all of the grads that we are getting out of the program. So people are going to have to recognize that the guarantee of a job won't necessarily be in one of the larger communities; it may require working in one of our smaller communities.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. If the Minister could provide, at a later date, any of the statistics that would track graduates, job offers and placements, that would be appreciated. When the Minister says that, specific to the Yellowknife boards, we cannot take all of the people who want to work here in Yellowknife, I don't want to argue that point. I am just wondering if we could sort of fine tune this any more and take that very specific area that where we have a northern graduate, are we able to direct, compel, coerce or convince the Yellowknife authorities or any of the authorities here to actually undertake to hire those northern graduates on a priority basis? Do we have any way of requiring that they do this, Mr. Chair?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't know that we could impose it as a requirement. I don't think I have the right to make that kind of regulation, but I have talked to the chairs of the boards and they tell me that they do want to hire northern residents. It only makes sense. They don't want to have to turn over any more than any other employer does. The continuity of northern residents is much higher, or tends to be much higher, than people who come in from the South for jobs, so the boards are quite anxious to hire northern residents, but they are also in a position of hiring teachers with specialties. So you have to recognize that not every teacher is suited for every teaching job. What you have to find is the right match between the job and the position that's vacant. It would be difficult in any given year to see both of the Yellowknife boards here find that suitable match for all of the applicants out of the program that applied to both those boards.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One other aspect of this that I understand is a barrier or has come up, and this may be a Collective Agreement area and, if so, maybe you can tell me, but where an indeterminate position may be held by a teacher, an individual, yet they may apply for leave, they may be out of the territory or at least not working in that indeterminate position for some time. I understand that this may continue for years, which becomes a barrier for that school authority to hire a full-time person. If they have somebody booked on an indeterminate PY but that person is on leave, and the leave may be an allowed and justified leave, it prohibits the board from replacing that person on a permanent basis. One condition we have, Mr. Chairman, as I understand it, is graduate teachers do get hired; we do put them to work here, but only on a term basis. They do not enjoy the stability of being able to get hired full time because a number of positions are in reserve for other teachers who aren't necessarily on the job. Sorry for that kind of involved explanation here. Mr. Chairman, could the Minister advise whether or not our school authorities have ever encountered this as any kind of a problem? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am not sure if the situation is one that is unique to the Yellowknife boards, but, if it is, we are not party to that Collective Agreement. So I am not sure if that's where this would be coming from.

In terms of GNWT employees who are teachers, it would be very unusual to find a teacher who was off for more than a year. Checking with the deputy minister, she doesn't believe we have any in the Northwest Territories. So this may be an issue that's unique to Yellowknife but that's not something I have heard of before.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Next I have Ms. Lee. Thank you. Next I have Mr. Villeneuve.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have a question and it's probably along the same lines as what Mr. Braden was talking about, but more in reference to tradespeople in the NWT. I know that many of our tradespeople that get certified and out of the trades here in the NWT are a result of not the government pushing them through the trades schools, but more private companies or maybe they are LHOs who devote a lot of time and energy and don't receive any government funding even on the LHO level to do any sort of training initiatives for even administration, let alone apprentices. Only to have the government recruit them after they have reached their certification and then they go and work for the government after they are done, for a better wage than what a private company or even an LHO or local board can afford with the budgets that they have.

I am not sure how to address through Human Resources, but that kind of a retention issue to me is serious at the local level, because I have LHOs now that really don't want to devote any time and energy into hiring apprentices and pushing them through the four years in school all the time. It's a lot of work to keep track of their hours and filing it with Human Resources Canada. This alleviates a lot of time for the Government of the NWT. At the end of the day when they recruit them, they have saved all that recruitment time and money and it leaves the LHOs just hanging there with nobody to handle the trades or the businesses that are just left empty handed with no compensation package or training remuneration package. I am not sure how to address that kind of human resource strategy, but to me it doesn't seem like it is the

way it should be going. We should encourage, definitely, local businesses and private industry to train and take on apprentices in the trades area, but we can't just turn around and recruit them for the government's use, or under use is what I like to call it.

I just want to ask the Minister if the Human Resources department with this labour relations department, I guess or maybe the organizational development department would have any models or any consideration for how they can provide training dollars to local businesses either through a remuneration package or compensation package or a training package. Even at the LHO level, there is not one nickel of training you can get out of the government for apprentices. Have they put any thought into how they can...I don't want to downplay the whole issue of training and apprentices. I know it's a big initiative now with the GNWT again, but how can they work with local boards and agencies, even DEAs, to maybe devolve some resources, money, human resource expertise into how they can try to retain those people that they train? How can we share those resources? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There is such a shortage of skilled tradespeople that everybody is struggling to keep them. Between the oil industry in Alberta and diamond mines here in the Northwest Territories, it's very difficult for even the government to hang onto skilled tradespeople. They can make better money outside of government than they can even working for government. So it's a challenge for everybody to keep tradespeople. One of the solutions, obviously, is to train more.

As we went through the budget earlier in the Department of Transportation, this Assembly talked about, and the Minister brought forward, a proposal to put money in his budget to bring some tradespeople on stream and to start to train more tradespeople. Our government needs to get more involved in training tradespeople. That is one of the areas we are hoping to expand into over the next few years. The Department of Transportation was first off the mark with some funding in this budget. We are hoping to be able to see more over the course of the next year.

Switching hats from Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, I can tell you that private employers are eligible for wage subsidies that they have in training programs for apprenticeship programs. So that support is there. In terms of when the LHOs might see some support, that would be when the Housing Corporation is able to flow some money for supporting tradespeople. I hope that we will see that in the not-too-distant future. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Villeneuve.

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. Mr. Dent.