Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the Minister's response, but again we do not, as a government, as an entity in and of ourselves, we do not have a comprehensive human resources plan for the future, and without one, I don't know how we deal with the self-government entities to try to talk about which

positions might be devolved there, whatever the authority is they are drawing down, as you mentioned, Madam Chair, that's going to happen differently in every area. That's a given. What I think we need is to develop a plan.

Madam Chair, when you get elected to this Legislature and there are 19 of us here, I think what really should happen when the 16th Assembly is elected, we walk through the doors and we tell the departments get an HR plan and get it ready right now. Hopefully somebody is listening out there. To those departments that don't have an HR plan, get one. You know what? We are going to have to use that and develop a comprehensive HR plan and then, this is the other thing, Madam Chair, the Members of this House are going to tell the bureaucracy what the priorities are. The bureaucracy is not going to tell the Members of this House what the priorities are. I think sometimes it goes backwards and we don't always get the priorities we want. If the priority is to get jobs in the small communities, build capacity in the small communities, that's what we are going to do. We all have to be on the same page on that. Those priorities have to be arrived at when the new government comes in here in six months' time. I would suggest, as some of my colleagues have mentioned, we get that plan and develop it because you are going to need it six months from now. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Department of Human Resources is ready to assist departments to develop their plans immediately. We have the framework ready to go and I would agree that it wouldn't take a lot of effort to get the departmental versions done. But this body itself has to wrap its head around some of the other issues before we can develop the government-wide plan. That's the other step that has to be taken.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Ramsay.

That's good, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Thank you. We are on page 2-57, activity summary, human resource strategy and policy, operations expenditure summary, $4.837 million. Next on the list I have Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't want to go over ground if it's already been covered. I had a couple of inquiries I wanted to make about affirmative action, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair, one of the expectations that the government has given the Legislative Assembly is that when the new HR department is essentially rolled out and on its own and making its way, that it would not consider action or revisions or reviews of the affirmative action until such time...The HR shop has now been up and running for a couple of years now and I wanted to ask what is the government's intention as far as addressing this longstanding requirement to review and modernize our affirmative action policy, Madam Chair?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just one point, the Department of HR was established on April 1, 2006. So it's less than a year old at this point. In terms of the government response to affirmative action or the review of affirmative action, the government was interested in examining whether or not we should move from affirmative action, which is a reactive policy; you wait for people who have the qualifications to apply for jobs, to employment equity, which is a way that allows you to use targeted actions to improve the representative population that you have working for the government. There hasn't been a lot of buy into that switch. So we are still in the process of having some discussion about whether to move forward with employment equity or to revise the Affirmative Action Program. At this point, we aren't looking to revising the affirmative action. We are still continuing the consultation process on employment equity.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a big piece of work and requires care and attention in rolling it out. I am interested in finding out where, to the employment equity initiative, would the levels of support report and what is the nature of the resistance to taking that direction as opposed to affirmative action, Madam Chair?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. A number of Members of this Assembly have expressed some concern about that change. I guess we are in the process of examining how we can respond to those concerns and whether or not we can address them to the satisfaction of Members of the Assembly before we go much further.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Braden.

Could the Minister be any more specific about what the circumstances are or the conditions that we are looking at amending?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. In terms of the program, the real difference is in approach. As I said earlier, an Affirmative Action Program is one where you run a job competition and then when people who meet the qualification level and also have priority status, then they are offered the job ahead of those who don't have priority status. But in that process, you just wait until that happens. With an employment equity program, you are in a better position to target, to undertake training initiatives, special identification and mentoring initiatives, targeted hiring. There are a number of different mechanisms you can use that are then brought into play to improve the government's ability to hire persons with priority.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Since the affirmative action policy was brought in -- and quite some time after it was brought in we introduced the new Human Rights Act in the NWT which further defines some of the circumstances under which advantage or discrimination an be undertaken -- do the conditions, other terms of the Human Rights Act, come into play in this, or to what extent do they? I am wondering if we are compelled to make any changes because of the human rights legislation, and is this something that causes us to undertake this on a priority basis? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Any time you look at this kind of policy, we have to keep in mind legislation like human rights legislation and we would have to be very careful that if we were proposing a change, that we either were able to find some way to be outside it if we saw that as necessary, or demonstrate why there was a requirement to have a policy and priority, which is allowed under the Human Rights Act. We just have to make sure that we are keeping in mind that act as we make changes to our current policy.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One last question. What is our next step or what does the Minister anticipate the next step will be in addressing this situation?