Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to touch on a couple of things that were raised as a result of our Standing Committee on Government Operations. We were quite concerned with affirmative action. We wanted to look at affirmative action targets be included in each departmental business plan. That was something we were in favour of and as well as an adequate portion of the strategic investment for improving GNWT human resources through management through a competency-based on-the-job training program is something we were pursuing. I think in the Minister’s opening statements, he did mention something along that line in terms of improved training and developing opportunities. Maybe at the appropriate time, I would like to hear more about how they plan to do it.

The key thing, Mr. Chair, is for us to develop key targets for creating the representative workforce that we are striving for throughout as a target for all our departments and us as the Government of the

Northwest Territories. It’s quite clear that some departments have no problem achieving those targets and others don’t only because they are specialized or they have a certain hire level skills required. Just the same, that doesn’t mean that we throw up our hand and say we can’t fill these positions. We can do it through internal recruitment and/or, like the Minister said, through improved training. So that’s something we will be looking at.

As well, in our meetings we did mention the accumulated backlogs and it’s still a little bit of an issue out there. That’s something that I would like to let the Minister know that it still concerns us and I know that, in fact, I think we had recommended to see if they can hire some extra staff to help them with their backlog. I don’t know how far the ministry has gotten with that. They have to get some extra help to help them with the backlog, because once we clear these off we can further concentrate on the job of HR which is to provide assistance to all our departments in terms of recruitment and human resource needs. If we are going to be handling old files from one to five years old and spend lots of time on them, then other areas of the department will certainly suffer, Mr. Chair.

I think that just in terms of new hires and recruitment and assisting other departments with their recruitment needs, I think I heard a couple of examples where the departmental managers work with HR and they are able to speed up the hiring process from an average of two months, almost three months to do a hire, because I know people continue to raise that with me about how long it’s taking to hire and recruit. I think some kind of hybrid or if we allow departmental managers, be it Transportation or Health and Social Services or MACA, to be involved with HR, that extra manpower may help us with recruitment. I think that’s something that we should look at instead of trying to let HR do a recruitment in an area where they aren’t really familiar with. Maybe that’s part of the process. Maybe I am speaking of something that I am not aware of. Maybe that is part of the process already. I would certainly encourage more of it, because I know of a couple of examples in my riding where that occurred and people were able to get interviewed a lot quicker and the departmental managers were able to know what people they are interested in hiring. I believe it made it a lot quicker only because part of the process of hiring quickly. In other words, it’s not so much for the departments but for us as service providers to the communities. It’s the communities that require health workers or MACA workers. They are the ones who need these key people in place. If we are going to take three to six months to hire people, then that’s three to six months that the small communities aren’t able to access these services. Well, they can, but probably at great cost. Maybe there is extra travel, maybe

they are constantly dealing with another regional staff. So it’s about consistency and delivery of service to our smaller communities, which is the benefit of us being able to have an expeditious Human Resources department.

With that, Mr. Chair, I will just conclude my statements. I just wanted to share those few comments.

Sorry; maybe I will ask a question with regard to recruitment of aboriginals and our targets. The Minister advises in his opening statement that he has an Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee. Maybe the Minister can expand on that, Mr. Chair.