I’m happy to provide some opening comments under the Department of Human Resources. I welcome the Minister and his staff here with us this afternoon.
I do want to ask a number of questions when we get to the detail. One of the things I’m interested in knowing was what advice the Department of Human Resources gave to the government when we were dealing with the notification letters that went out to employees. I’d be very interested to know what the corporate take from HR was on whether or not those notification letters should have gone out in the manner that they did. Some of the blame, I guess, has been deflected back at the department for those letters going out, so I’d like to try to get to the bottom of that, if I could, at some point in time, Mr. Chairman.
The other thing I’m interested in is — and we had some discussions with the Premier and the Minister back in February when the reduction exercise was in play — what was the government doing in terms of hiring employees? Why was it taking so long for people who applied for positions to hear back from the department or hear back from anybody? In some cases, months would go by and they wouldn’t hear anything. The Premier said in February that we’re on a case-by-case basis; we’re hiring on a case-by-case basis; we weren’t hiring in certain areas. So these things are all a great concern to me and the people out there applying for jobs, obviously. I’ve got a number of questions in that area, Mr. Chairman.
I think we should look at more of a user-friendly approach to job competitions, Internet-based. I mean, most people have a computer nowadays, and we should go Internet-based so that people who apply for jobs have the ability to go online and check the competition status. They do this with the Government of Alberta. They have a system set up so that if you’re an applicant, you know exactly where that competition is at in the process every step of the way. It makes it much more, as I said, user-friendly to folks applying on positions with the government.
I’m not too sure exactly what role the department plays. In my Member’s statement earlier today I
mentioned the fact that there don’t seem to be nursing positions available at Stanton, yet there are agency nurses there. I’m trying to figure out why we aren’t increasing our indeterminate pool of float nurses instead of hiring agency nurses. I’m not sure where the department is on that and how they’re working with Stanton or the Department of Health and Social Services on that.
A couple of other comments — and the committee spoke of it in their committee report — on affirmative action and not enough aboriginal people in senior management. That’s a concern, I think, if you look government-wide. It’s there, and we’re not doing enough, in my mind, to groom the aboriginal people that we have working for us for senior management. It’s obvious. This is a good example. If you look at the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, there’s not one aboriginal person in senior management there. If you look at their intergovernmental relations section, there’s not one aboriginal person there, and that’s shameful that the GNWT Department of Aboriginal Affairs wouldn’t have one aboriginal person working in senior management or intergovernmental relations. It’s ridiculous, really. So I think we need to address those areas.
To the department itself, what I see looking through the phone listings — again, I’ve said this before — there seem to be managers managing nobody. There are a number of managers with hardly any staff or no staff, and I don’t know why that’s allowed to happen. If you’re a manager, you should be managing something, and that would have a staff component with it as well. Specifically the client service managers: who are those managers managing? Themselves? That’s not to poke fun at them or say that they’re not doing anything. I’m sure that they provide a valuable service, but why are they managers, and why have we got six managers in that client services area with six staff?
Those are some pretty fundamental questions, Mr. Chairman. I’ve got a number of those as we get through the detail. I’ll certainly be asking a number of questions. Thank you.