Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Government of the Northwest Territories must do everything it can to recruit and retain qualified employees. Mr. Speaker, I’d say, in many cases, we do just that, which the Department of Human Resources needs to be applauded for. I think that the quality of human resource management contributes to a productive employee and, of course, a government that stays in touch and understands our employees’ needs.

With that, Mr. Speaker, today I’d like to talk about that system and how it works with our employees in relation to payroll, benefits, pension, leave and attendance. Needless to say, with an employee receiving their proper pay and benefits, it’s always something on one’s high priority list. In recent years, the Department of Human Resources has made significant strides in improving their service delivery to their clients such as our public service employees. Employees are now able to post their leave requirements, overtime, sick leave, as well as many other things through this system. Mr. Speaker, this is a system that works well. Employees are able to check their overtime, benefits, leave, and this makes many people

happy. As well, they often get help dealing with superannuation.

However, Mr. Speaker, like in all systems, there are sometimes small glitches. I’ve heard of such cases where files sometimes get stuck in a glitch and they don’t move for three months, six months or sometimes even further. These are often referred to as difficult files. Although it’s not necessarily a question of who’s at fault; the problem is the file meets a dead wall.

Mr. Speaker, it has been my experience so far that quite often the person who’s blamed, of course, is the human resource officer in our HR department. But that’s not always the case, Mr. Speaker. Sometimes it’s two people thinking that someone else is doing a job and sometimes they assume the other person is doing it or should be doing it.

Mr. Speaker, it’s my opinion, as well as many other people I’ve talked to, that the Department of Human Resources should come up with a clear and simple policy that all difficult files have a three-month policy where they review them and double check through a phone call to communicate is there something we need to be doing together, is there something you should be doing or we should be doing. Mr. Speaker, this is simply about communication and working together to make sure these difficult files go through every step needed to make sure that they get off the desks and get out to where they’re supposed to go.

Mr. Speaker, the issue really is about communication and this would put a little more human back into the human resource title and go a long way to make a great and happy workforce work hard. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.