Before we begin, I’d like to ask the Minister responsible for Human Resources if he will be bringing in any witnesses.

Yes, I will, Mr. Chair.

Does the committee agree that the Minister bring in his witnesses?

Sergeant-at-Arms, escort the witnesses in.

For the record, Mr. Minister, can you introduce your witnesses, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On my left I have Sharilyn Alexander, acting deputy minister of Human Resources, and on my right I have Shaleen Woodward, director of Human Resource strategy and policy.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Welcome, witnesses. When we left off we were on page 2-79, Employee Relations, Operations Expenditure Summary, information item. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, indeed; when we broke we had been talking about grievances, I believe. The Minister had mentioned there were 242 grievances cases pending. I’m aware that’s being worked on; there’s some progress being made. The union has set aside, apparently, a week per month until 2009.

Obviously this sort of thing is horribly expensive and undoubtedly very hard on people, and I’m wondering what the Minister is doing to really nip this in the bud. This seems like a terrible backlog and not the sort of way we want to do business, and it’s probably quite expensive. It would be best to resolve a lot of those things before it got to that stage. Can the Minister tell us what’s happening to

prevent that situation from being exacerbated in the future?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.

In addition to the regularly scheduled meetings with the union, we were also having monthly caseload meetings so we could review the outstanding caseload with a view to resolving as many as we could without having to go through the complete arbitration route.

That’s good news, and it seems like a good, practical approach. Even better, of course, would be to avoid this situation in the first place. That’s probably somewhat of a policy decision. Again, highlighting the costs that undoubtedly are associated with grievances, both in dollar and people terms, what sort of policies is this department contemplating to avoid the development of ongoing situations like this?

I guess we’re doing a couple of things. I should point out that the right to grievances and arbitration is something that’s embedded in the collective agreement. The current collective agreement ends the end of March 2009, and certainly I guess that would give us an opportunity to discuss it with the union membership or leadership.

In addition, as part of our ongoing human resource planning and strategy, we will be working with departmental managers and facilitating training with regard to human resource management and how to deal with these kinds of situations so we can begin to try to reduce the number of grievances and arbitrations.

I appreciate those remarks. In my short career here I’ve encountered quite a few cases like this, and it has struck me that there is room in the policy area to deal with some of these cases in perhaps a more progressive way and avoid grievances and the cost of grievances. But I’ll just leave it at that.

We see this as an area that, with better planning, coordination and working with the departmental managers, we can certainly improve on.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Just for the Members’ information, there was information requested that’s been handed out. For the record, we have received that information. We are on page 2-79, Employee Relations, Operations Expenditure Summary. Does the committee agree?

Department of Human Resources, Employee

Relations, Operations Expenditure Summary, approved.

Pages 2-80 and 2-81, Employee Relations, Active Positions.

Department of Human Resources, Activity

Summary, Employee Relations, Active Positions, information item, approved.

Page 2-82, Employee Services, Operations Expenditure Summary, active summary: $7.663 million. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m just wondering.... I see a drop in corporate or administration costs as detailed in 2-84; same dollar figures being considered of about $900,000. Sorry, an increase. I’m wondering what that increase is about: that’s almost $1 million there, almost 25 per cent.

Minister of Human Resources, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The increase is mainly due to the rising cost of the Medical Travel Assistance Program and also some adjustments to the budget for compensation and benefits based on expenditures in the 2007–2008 fiscal year.

I see that, in fact, medical transportation has actually dropped a little bit there rather than risen. So perhaps it’s just the compensation and benefits, but when I look at that on page 2-83, I see there’s less than $100,000 in costs as opposed to almost $1 million in costs here.

One reason I raise this is I haven’t seen any backup on this one. So I am interested in what’s behind that $900,000.

There’s an increased cost to the employee benefit, and there’s an increase of $120,000 for overtime throughout the division. There’s also $120,000 for interim funding.

Mr. Chair, if I could just maybe ask him for that information in written form, that would be great.

We can provide that

information to the Member.