Mr. Chair, the Department of Human Resources’ proposed budget for 2009-2010 is $35.079 million. This represents an increase of $2.8 million or just over 8 percent from 2008-2009. This increase is due to a combination of new funding for strategic initiatives, forced growth funding to address cost pressures, and one-time supplementary funding for collective bargaining.

The Department of Human Resources is a service agency. We provide services directly to employees, and we provide services to management in Government of the Northwest Territories departments and agencies. It is important to emphasize that responsibility for decision making on human resource issues still rests with departments and agencies. In dealing

with departmental managers, our role is to provide advice on the requirements imposed by legislation, policy and the Collective Agreement, and to outline options to support managers in their decision making. We also take the lead on government-wide policy development, and initiatives designed to advance and support human resource management.

The 2009-2010 fiscal year will be the fifth year of operations since human resource services were centralized, and the fourth year since Human Resources became a department. Since amalgamation, there has been progress made on stabilizing services and improving service delivery, but there is still a need for improvement.

I would like to touch briefly on some of our priorities for the 2009-2010 fiscal year.

In order to guide our actions over the next few years, the department has undertaken the development of a Corporate Human Resource Strategic Plan for the NWT public service. This plan will be based on the results of consultation with employees, with managers, with unions, and with Members of the Legislative Assembly, in order to identify our collective priorities and develop a shared vision of how we want to move forward over the next decade. Through the month of January all these stakeholders were given an opportunity to provide feedback, through a survey questionnaire, focus groups and individual interviews. I am pleased to report that response by our employees to the on-line survey was tremendous, with almost 900 employees responding on-line and many more filling out the survey in hard copy. This demonstrates that there is a high level of interest in the development of the strategic plan and the guidance it can provide to our department and our government. I look forward to providing Members of the Assembly with a completed plan before the end of the fiscal year.

Mr. Chairman, the strategic plan will be supported by a short-term action plan, which will provide a road map of the key priorities we need to work on over the next three years, and a framework for measuring progress. In the longer term, the strategic plan will set the stage for partnerships with other levels of government in the Northwest Territories.

Through the Refocusing Government Strategic Initiative, the department has been allocated $2.3 million in new funding, to improve human resource management, with a focus on recruitment and retention efforts, both in the Government of the Northwest Territories and for community governments.

For the government’s public service, this funding will be used to address the priorities identified within the Human Resource Strategic Plan. For community governments, priorities will be identified under the leadership of the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, in partnership with the NWT Association of Communities and the Local Government Administrators of the Northwest Territories. We believe there are areas where we can work in collaboration with community and aboriginal governments to improve public service capacity at all levels of government.

However, we are not waiting for the strategic plan to be complete to take action on some key priorities. We know that we need to improve and stabilize our service delivery. Employees are waiting too long for clearances and responses to inquiries on benefits. Managers are waiting too long for competitions to be completed.

The department has already taken action in a number of areas to address these issues:

• First, we are reviewing the allocation of

resources within the department to ensure the top priorities are being addressed;

• Second, we are implementing an aggressive training program to improve the customer service focus of our staff;

• Third, we are developing a staff training plan to ensure that our staff have the skills they need to do their jobs well; and

• Fourth, we are reviewing work processes to identify areas where we can work smarter. By way of example, this year we set a record for early issuance of T-4 slips, due to a process improvement that was put in place a few months ago.

Mr. Chairman, another priority that can’t wait is to look at how we can be more effective in recruitment and retention of aboriginal people into the public service. There have been many reviews of the Affirmative Action Program in the past, but none of those reviews has resulted in a concrete implementation plan. We expect that the strategic plan will contain recommendations in this regard, but as a first step, we had a meeting of the newly created Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee. This group will report back through the Deputy Ministers’ Human Resource Committee, and provide advice based on their own experience about what needs to be done.

Another concern, which we expect will be addressed in the strategic plan, is the need to improve training and development opportunities for all our employees. Over years of fiscal restraint and budget tightening, most departments have eliminated dedicated resources to ensure that their staff has access to training and development

opportunities. This need is critical in the regions where there are not often as many training opportunities available to staff, which is why we are proposing that part of the new strategic initiatives funding be used to support two regional positions.

Finally, I should note that the Department of Human Resources has a key role to play in supporting strategic initiatives of this government. There is $100,000 included in the budget to provide dedicated support to the development of the Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority’s consolidated primary care clinics.

I will be pleased to answer any questions that Members have regarding the budget.