At one time we were set up where we had a human resource planner for every department. What happened was that we expected the departments to take the lead on developing human resource plans, because unless management develops their plans, there is no ownership.

So as such, we work with departments — generally, departments that have staffing problems that need to address specific issues. We work with them on planning with regard to comprehensive human resource planning where we would have a specific plan to deal with employees from recruitment to retirement. This is something we provide advice on,

but we don’t have specific comprehensive plans for every department.

I don’t have much time left, so I’ll be more, I guess, to the point with this question. Human resource planning: is there an across-the-board standard the department provides to other departments — including such things as an affirmative action plan or policy inside the human resource plan, any sort of cross-cultural training that may be required for southern recruits and so on — like you said, from the time they start their career until their career is over?

That’s good. That’s, I guess, some career-pathing. I guess my question is: does Human Resources have a standard or a framework that each of the departments can follow when they develop their human resource plans?

Mr. Chair, I want to point out that when it comes to human resource planning, it’s a shared responsibility between the departments and Human Resources. We work with the departments, generally at their request. So we work with a number of departments.

We don’t have any specific standards, because generally we deal with developing plans to address some specific human resource situations.

Mr. Chair, I have another line. First of all, just before I close off on the human resource planning, I think it’s essential that all departments that develop human resource plans are operating with the same system. If one department has a comprehensive section in how affirmative action is applied and how they apply affirmative action, then all departments should do it. If one department has a requirement to cross-culturally train their employees who come from the south, who are hired from the south, then every department should have it. Okay? That’s enough said on human resource planning.

Some more cost-cutting measures I would like to propose — that is most likely, again, in the overall human resource section — are awards. I don’t agree with all the awards: the Premier’s award, the deputy ministers’ awards — all those awards.

I find those awards create more of a problem at the employee level than is beneficial. I don’t really believe that employees in the GNWT strive to win the Premier’s award every year. However, somebody gets selected to win that award. So that means that in a department where you have 50 people, one guy gets a Premier’s award, is blessed with the Premier’s award, and everybody else gets nothing.

I think that if there’s any cost at all to the awards, deputy ministers’ awards…. Any of that, I think, should be completely taken out, because it causes

more problems than not. I think the GNWT people would be just as happy to see those things gone.

I guess in Human Resources it’s understood that employee recognition is one of the biggest motivators in a workforce. Most employees would prefer that their work is recognized rather than get an increase in wages or monetary rewards. So on that basis, I think the Employee Recognition Program we have is relatively cheap for the amount we gain by it. The employee recognition programs are reviewed on a regular basis, and certainly we’ll take the Member’s recommendations into consideration.

We do know that whenever employee recognition comes up, there’s always the discussion that some employees are recognized and others aren’t. I guess another way of looking at it is maybe to restrict it to generic employee recognition, but that’s something we’ll look at the next time we review the program.

Next I have Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to just follow up on the last question from my colleague to my right. I fully support employee recognition programs. I think there’s a lot of value in them. But there are many ways of recognizing employees, and I have to agree with Mr. Beaulieu; I don’t think the Premier’s awards are sought after. I don’t think they’re high on many employees’ lists of coveted awards. So I would agree that probably ought to be dropped, and if necessary, if you want to keep the money, put it into other methods of recognizing employees.

There are a couple of things I’d like to ask. It’s been mentioned; we’ve talked about human resource planning, and I sense the department doesn’t orchestrate human resource planning, but it does indicate they support human resource planning for various departments. I’d like to ask some questions about the costs that are involved in hiring local nurses. I think it’s well recognized — it’s been mentioned by other Members — that we pay, it seems, an exorbitant amount of money to provide enough nurses in our health centres, in our hospitals. Many of them are not hired on a permanent basis. They fly in; they fly out. We pay their costs in pretty much every area. I’d like to know whether or not the department has worked with the health boards, the various health authorities, to try and increase the pool of float nurses and what sorts of efforts the department has put into trying to reduce the costs for locum nurses at all health authorities.

Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is an area in which the department has been working very closely with Health and Social Services and Stanton to not only reduce the rapidly growing costs

but also to develop our own northern workforce. I think that over the past three years or so this program has been in place we’ve been very successful. Agency nursing fees are down 70 per cent. Projected costs have decreased by about $1.5 million. We do have 422 nurses in the casual nurse float pool. These are further broken out into two categories: a pool to cover the community health nurses and also hospital nurses. I think one of the biggest successes has been the Aurora College nursing program, which generates about 20 fully trained nurses on an annual basis.

I applaud the department for reducing the agency fees and the efforts they have put in to try to reduce these expenses in the last few years.

To the comment about Aurora College nurses, I have heard via the grapevine and anecdotal information, I guess, that although the nurses are graduating from Aurora College, they are not necessarily being employed. So there is a bit of a negative to the fact that these kids are graduating.

You mentioned casual nurses, and I need to know if those are casuals employed by GNWT, or if locum nurses or agency nurses — whatever you want to call them — are considered casual or not. I’d like to know how many nurses we are currently flying in, flying out and paying all of their expenses. I’ll leave it at that.

Mr. Chair, at my constituency meeting, when we talked about nurses graduating from Aurora College, I was subjected to the same comments that all of them were going south because they weren’t being offered appropriate jobs within the health care system. When I checked into it, I found out there were maybe two or three that hadn’t accepted jobs within the NWT, and two or three were going south for different reasons.

As to the number of agency nurses, there used to be 13 or 14 on an average day, and now there are maybe three or four coming in from the south.

Three or four a day is still an awful lot.

I’d like to ask the Minister about questions raised earlier about Donnie Days and pay for Donnie Days. I have a specific question with regard to affected employees. If an affected employee happens to be terminated — if this budget is passed and an employee happens to be terminated in October, or whatever the date is…. This employee has been having their salary reduced from, let’s say, the first of January to the first of October. If they are terminated as of the end of September, they will presumably be due funds for a portion of the Donnie Days they are not going to be using — sorry; all of the Donnie days, but it’s a portion of their salary. I’d like to ask the Minister whether or not that’s been considered by the department and what recourse the employee has.

We do have the benefit of previous arbitrations that have ruled that when an employee terminates, they are not entitled to those funds that are attributed to Donnie Days.

Okay. Thank you for the information. That surprises me. I expect you might get one or two more grievances.

Lastly, I’d like to ask the Minister…. It was mentioned yesterday — it has been mentioned again several times today — that there is evidence of a report called the Hackett Report. I’d like to know from the Minister whether or not that is a document that is available to the public.

Mr. Chair, we’ll check into whether that report was released publicly. It appears that some of the Members may have seen it. Certainly, I would want to share it with the Member. I just have to confirm whether there are any restrictions on the circulation of it. I don’t see why there would be, but I’ll just confirm that and let the Member know and give her a copy of it.

I guess if it hasn’t been released as a public document, I would request of the Minister that he consider releasing it to me and other Members as a confidential document, for our eyes only.

Mr. Chair, I’d be pleased to do that. I’d just give advance warning that the document is about ten inches thick.

We’re on page 2-63, Management and Recruitment Services, Operations Expenditure Summary: $7.341 million. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Other Members have started into areas I’d like to pick up on where I had questions as well. Maybe I’ll just work backwards. It sounds like we had the same organization showing up all at our similar constituency meetings. They showed up at mine last night, by the way, in force. Just for clarity, I think the Minister had mentioned, to some degree, there was a reduction in locum nurses and the funding being allocated for that program.

Now, I thought he said something to the effect that there’s been a $1.5 million reduction. If that’s correct, what is the total budget that is being allocated for the locum nurses program? Furthermore, could he be a little more clear on what “three to four per day” means, how that breaks out regionally — whether Stanton has three out of the four or whatnot? Can he give us a further breakdown on that?

Minister McLeod.

Mr. Chair, when I was referring to a reduction of $1.5 million, I was referring to expenditures. Because we weren’t

utilizing as many high-priced agency nurses, we were saving $1.5 million.

With regard to the graduates from Aurora College, 15 of 18 eligible northern registered nurse graduates applied for graduate placement in 2008: 11 Aurora College degree graduates, two Aurora College diploma graduates and two southern educational institution degree graduates. Ten graduates accepted their offer of employment, all in acute-care facilities: one in Inuvik, seven at Stanton and two in Fort Smith. Five graduates declined their offer of employment: one in Inuvik, two at Stanton and two in Hay River. Of the graduates who accepted employment through the program, two were P1 candidates and five were P2 candidates. That is some of the information with regard to employment.

With regard to agency nurses, “three or four” would be across the system. I suspect most of them would be in the more remote communities.

I appreciate the Minister using my time to answer Ms. Bisaro’s question. That said, maybe I could ask the Minister to answer my question, if he doesn’t mind. Mr. Chairman, my question was: how much is the budget for locum nurses?

We don’t have a budget for locum nurses in Human Resources.

Mr. Chairman, I’ve said at least a couple of times that I haven’t been getting a lot of sleep, but I’m really curious on the creative accounting: how you could reduce $1.5 million from a non-existing budget. I’m not that tired.

Maybe we could work with it this way: with the historical figure that we’ve been spending for this locum budget over the last two years — because you would have had to take $1.5 million from somewhere, and how can you tell me that’s a reduction…? So you must have some estimate or be able to frame it up as an eligible cost you’ve been budgeting toward.