I wasn’t asking questions about

BIP. As of what date are these six individuals’ jobs to end?

Six positions are vacant and

will be subject to…whether the budget is approved or not.

No. I understand the six positions

for ’08–09 are vacant. As I’ve indicated before, I’m not too concerned about the elimination of vacant positions.

I am concerned about the elimination of individuals. So when I’m asking about as of what date are their jobs to end, I’m talking about the six individuals who you’ve identified for ’09–10 that are going to be eliminated, although, as I’ve indicated, it seems a little premature, given that we haven’t even done business planning or the budget for ’09–10.

Subject to the 2009–10

budget, subject to decisions being made on a number of proposals…. It would be at whatever time the 2009–10 budget was approved and subject to a number of decisions being made with regard to a number of different policies and programs.

When you notified these six

individuals that their jobs are potentially affected, were they given a potential date that their positions would be eliminated? Were they given any sort of idea or concept as to when their positions would no longer exist and they would have to be either let go or, hopefully, placed somewhere within the system?

Mr. Chair, we have no date.

All we did was advise them that their positions

could potentially be affected. I’ll use the example of BIP again. That’s a position that was mentioned and announced in the budget. So obviously, the people that work in that office would have become aware that we were looking at it. That’s why we felt it was appropriate that we should let them know.

Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to

follow up on my colleague Mr. Abernethy’s line of questioning. I’m just wondering if people have been notified that their positions might be affected. I know that in other government departments individuals who have received those notification letters have in fact been either shuffled out or shuffled to another department or another position. If we’re reaching out there and sending out notification letters that would potentially impact somebody in ’09–10, that, to me, is a bit far-fetched. Is that a practice government-wide? I know there are a number of reduction scenarios that could come into play during the next business planning process in the next budget. Is this standard across the government?

Minister Bob McLeod.

I would have to confirm

whether in fact we are sending notices. As far as I know, we have just notified the staff that this discussion was occurring. If the Member is asking if I specifically sent them a letter with dates and so on, I’d have to confirm that. As far as I know, it was verbal notification, not written. In the case of ITI, they would have received written letters, but I don’t know about other departments.

I’d like to thank the Minister for that.

Perhaps just to add to the conversation that we’re having here this afternoon, maybe, Mr. Chairman, I could ask a question through you to the Premier. Is this a practice government-wide? Are we sending out notification letters to employees that are impacted in the ’09–10 budget, or is ITI special?

I’ll recognize the Premier,

Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The fact that this reduction — and all the departments had to look at their targets that were accepted and put forward in this draft budget — is one that we know the implementation of…. By accepting the target that’s here for this year, we know it will have an impact in future years. So that is why employees are being notified for even ’09–10. They know that the fact is some of these targets will not be fully achieved in the time we have within this budget. But the fact that we have accepted the plan and the reduction target in ’08–09 will also flow

into future years. That’s why it’s being presented in this manner.

I’ve been here for four and a half

years, and it’s confusing to me why we’re doing it this way and how this is happening. I can only imagine how confusing this is for the members of our public service who have got notification letters based on some hypothetical budget of next year. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Nothing’s been approved yet; even this budget hasn’t been approved yet. Mr. Chairman, that concerns me. We’re rushing out doing all of this moving people around, and nothing has been decided yet. There’s something about that, that’s not quite right.

I know the Minister of ITI is referencing positions with the Business Incentive Program or in that office. According to the information I have for the six positions that come up next year, I don’t see anything having to do with BIP or the reference to BIP, so maybe I could get a clarification from the Minister which positions those are.

For 2009–10 there are 6.5

position reductions proposed: a multi-media officer, communications officer, manager of investment, IEA consultant, resource development position, mineral economist and oil and gas specialist. So five of those positions are affected.

Again, I’m not sure if the information

we’ve gotten previously from Human Resources is exactly accurate. There are a number of positions that don’t seem to correlate with what the Minister said. It doesn’t have any reference in what we received previously to the BIP position. Maybe we could just get a commitment from the Minister to get us that list so we can compare it to the previous list that we got and try to make some sense of it.

Mr. Minister, is there a

chance that you can circulate that information so that Members have it at hand and can see exactly what positions we’re talking about?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’ll

provide it as soon as we can make copies.

Active Positions by

Region, information item.

Department of Industry, Tourism and

Investment, Department Summary, Active Positions — By Region, information item, approved.

Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman. I

just want to follow up a little bit more. I hope it doesn’t make things worse to follow up on Mr. Abernethy’s and Mr. Ramsay’s questions, but when talking about the ’09–10 potentially affected

positions, because of the Minister’s reference to the BIP in the same answer, I have to assume that he is suggesting that the ’09–10 positions identified for which employees have been notified are related to the BIP. That’s my question.

Minister Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I

guess in my response I was suggesting: well, how would we deal with a situation like that, where we made public that we are reviewing the BIP — how we would deal with that — and we haven’t written to anybody in the BIP office?

So the Minister was just

using the reference to the BIP as an example to say, “This is potentially targeted, so are six occupied positions potentially targeted for reduction.” So he’s just using that as an example, a comparison. There’s no relationship between the targeted positions and the actual performance of the duties around the Business Incentive Policy.