I thank the Member for that question, because it does allow us to get to some of the overall large details. The total number of affected positions through this exercise — the
reductions that we spoke of — came out to just over 200. I believe it was 235, or I might be one or two off — 237, possibly. And out of them, over 80 positions were vacant. That reduced the number, in departments, of those that are potentially affected, and highlights other opportunities where vacant positions that were out there could be filled. The work is ongoing, and this is in flux every day, as we deal with potentially affected staff that indicate they want to look at other areas. We’re down to about 104 potentially affected staff. There are also staff members who are out there who have not engaged in discussing any other opportunities until they see the result of this budget exercise.
Outside of that, we had, through the strategic initiative side, an additional 14.5 jobs added, and those are to be filled once the budget gets passed.
The other bigger piece of the equation is that every year the government deals with a number of factors when we do our budget exercising. We look at forced growth, which is whether program delivery has increased because of demand — for example, the PTR ratio or Health and Social Services, when it comes to the actual delivery and we have to hire more people. Through a number of factors, each department has that forced growth piece. Then there are — in the old budgeting exercise it used to be called new initiatives — initiatives that departments would add from time to time.
The total package right now, and these are yet to…. Once approved, if everything makes it through, we’re adding another potential 124 positions for the GNWT. So between the new initiatives, forced growth and the other factors, we could be looking in the area of close to 140 more positions within the government of the Northwest Territories.