Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to go back to the position of competency officer. I’m not understanding how we are saving $100,000 if the position has been deactivated and removed from the list, which I think were the words of the Minister. If it’s no longer part of the department staffing list, how are we saving $100,000?

The budget has been reduced by $100,000.

I understand that, Mr. Minister, but I don’t understand…. You’re reducing the budget by $100,000, which presumably you don’t have because the position is already gone. I fail to understand the explanation, Mr. Chair.

Well, that’s why we have funded positions. If you have 100 positions and you have a million dollars — each position’s worth $10,000 or whatever — if you reduce by one position on the PY side, you reduce the money side by an appropriate amount. You eliminate one PY on the one side. So if the competency officer costs $100,000 or his salary is $100,000, then you would reduce the salary dollars by $100,000.

I guess I need to ask if I can see a list of funded positions for the Human Resources Department for ’07-08.

We can do that on the same basis as we provided this list.

Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you. I think I see where Wendy’s going with this question. I want to try and re-ask the question in a slightly different way.

You’ve identified a competency officer to be eliminated. The budget hasn’t been approved. We’re in the process of reviewing the budget. Yet you’ve already taken the steps to eliminate it from your organization, which suggests to me that you have already cut the position. Given that the budget isn’t approved, why are you eliminating the position from your system already?

Minister McLeod.

Because it was a vacant position. To me it’s a moot point, but if it’s important that it be activated, we can reactivate it.

I think it’s less important that it’s activated. I think it’s more interesting that you’ve taken the steps to move beyond the budget process and begin implementing things that haven’t been approved by this House. Just a comment, but I

think it might have been a bit premature and approaching the inappropriate.

I appreciate that from the Member. I agree it was probably inappropriate, and we’ll reactivate it and get it back to the list.

Corporate Human

Resources, Operations Expenditure Summary: $7.689 million.

Department of Human Resources, Corporate

Human Resources, Operations Expenditure Summary: $7.689 million, approved.

Information item,

Corporate Human Resources, Program Delivery Details. Agreed?

Department of Human Resources, Corporate

Human Resources, Program Delivery Details, approved.

Page 2-70. Corporate Human Resources, Active Positions, information item.

Department of Human Resources, Corporate

Human Resources, Active Positions, information item, (page 2-70) approved.

Corporate Human

Resources, Active Positions, information item.

Department of Human Resources, Corporate

Human Resources, Active Positions, information item, (page 2-71) approved.

Client Services,

Operations Expenditure Summary, information item.

Department of Human Resources, Client

Services, Operations Expenditure Summary information item, approved.

Client Services, Program Delivery Details, information item.

Department of Human Resources, Client

Services, Program Delivery Details, information item, approved.

Page 2-76, Client

Services, Active Positions,

information item, page

2-77.

Department of Human Resources, Client

Services, Active Positions, information item, approved.

Page 2-78, Employee Relations, information item. Mr. Ramsay.

Mr. Chairman, I’m just wondering if the department’s done any analysis on what I would consider a growing problem, and that is stress leave and extended medical leave by employees, and whether you can trace some of this stress

leave or extended medical leave back to departments. If we can correlate the use of stress leave and medical leave back to some departments, I think we need to examine the root causes of employees needing extended periods of time away from work.

I find this type of leave being more and more necessary, and employees having to go to doctors and get doctors’ certificates for extended periods of absences from work. I’m just wondering if the department’s done any kind of analysis on where the stress leave is happening and the extended medical leave so fingers can be pointed at the departments that are guilty of their employees needing to take time away from work like that. I can think of one department specifically, and that’s Justice. We’ll have the Minister of Justice here before too long, but maybe the Minister can answer that.

Minister McLeod.

Mr. Chair, we do keep track of employee leave, and we do use it as a management tool to, in some cases, detect problem employees. Also, I don’t think we’ve done an analysis of stress leave, but we could do that. We do have a review of people who are on stress leave for extended periods to determine whether they need a change in venue or whether we’ll have a medical doctor review their situation. But in terms of doing an analysis of the areas or departments that have the most stress, I don’t think we’ve necessarily done that yet.

Mr. Chairman, just because an employee accesses stress leave or other leave doesn’t necessarily make them a bad employee, and I wouldn’t want anybody to think that. I think in many cases it’s bad management, and it’s the employee feeling victimized in the workplace or harassed or intimidated or whatever you want. There are many reasons employees seek stress leave and extended medical leave.

I also wanted to ask the Minister…. If that type of analysis hasn’t been done, I think that’d be something worth providing to Members of this House — which departments have more employees who have accessed stress leave and medical leave — and break it down and show us, as a percentage, which departments are getting more employees requesting stress leave and medical leave. I think that’s important for us to know as legislators. This side of the House acts as the oversight accountability committee, and we really need to have this type of information so we can start directing questions at the Ministers who are managing the departments to try to figure out what’s going on.