With that, I’d like to thank the Minister and the witnesses. Sergeant-at-Arms, could you escort the witnesses out.

With that, we’ll take a short break and come back and deal with Human Resources.

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I’ll call Committee of the Whole back to order. Prior to the break, we agreed that we would begin with the Department of Human Resources. With that, I’d like to ask the Minister responsible for Human Resources if he has any opening comments.

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.

With that, I’d like to ask the Minister responsible for Human Resources if he’d like to bring in his witnesses. Mr. Robert McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do.

Does committee agree he brings in his witnesses?

Agreed. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses in.

For the record, Mr. Minister, can you introduce your witnesses, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On my right I have Debbie DeLancey, deputy minister; on my immediate left, Mr. Tom Williams, associate deputy minister; and, my far left, Charlene Woodward, director of human resource strategy and policy.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Welcome, witnesses. At this time, I will ask if there are any general comments in regards to the Department of Human Resources. General comments. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the presentation by the Minister in terms of their operations with Human Resources, it seems as if the Minister is making some movements which I am very pleased to see, read and hear what you are doing. I am certainly looking forward to the corporate strategic plan for the Northwest Territories in terms of how this is rolling out in a framework that is going to be implemented through the HR system here and the discussions we are going to have in terms of improving. We are always improving our staff who work with our people to improve services to our people in the communities. I look forward to seeing ways that this department is going to work within our government for

efficiencies and the effectiveness of delivering programs.

I am very happy that the Minister indicated in his presentation of a huge on-line response in terms of the feedback you are getting. That gives me a signal. There are a lot of people out there that want to do things. If you get a good response, that means the apathy isn’t there. These people in your department or within the government, I believe, Mr. Minister, they have enough trust, confidence, that when you ask for an on-line survey it means you are going to make good on it in terms of what they are going to offer and their suggestions. I take that as a good signal when you get a good response. These people in the GNWT want to see if they can make a difference by offering some of their suggestions. In that sense, I take it as a really good suggestion.

Mr. Chair, the department has outlined a number of initiatives and two caught my selective listening. The two that really caught my ear were the Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee. I think that’s something that is long overdue and not knowing too much about the committee, the structure of the members, I think this committee could provide some solid recommendations, advice, to HR within itself to increase the percentage of senior management within government. Some departments are doing really good, some are improving, some are not doing too good in terms of increasing the level of senior management of aboriginal candidates into the system. I am hoping, not knowing what this whole committee is about, that this committee could certainly…Actually, I wouldn’t mind a copy of the structure of this committee, records, to help with the HR in the government.

I look forward to seeing the goals that are set in terms of increasing the aboriginal senior management in some of the departments any way you could help to increase it, providing that they are qualified, they earn the title to get there and there are some others that certainly need extra support to be there. So there are some employees that are in the position for a long, long time and some of them, I think, should be given some of the opportunities to move up. I am not saying it’s not been done, but just the way I look at things sometimes. The Minister can correct me if he wants to, but I just want to look at those types of issues that I think that this department is moving a long way. I look forward to some of the other issues as we discussed in the Minister’s budget proposal, Mr. Chair.

Those are some of the issues that have caught my ear. One that really stood out to me, again, because of my selective listening, is the $100,000 going towards the Yellowknife Health and Social

Services Authority for the consolidation of primary care clinics. For me, that goes against what I have been saying just with the Health Minister in terms of what we want in our small communities. We are putting $100,000 towards a consolidated health care clinic in the capital here and we just finished the budget with the Minister of Health and Social Services and HR is putting this kind of money. I am going to have to question you later on, Minister, because I am just reading what I have been presented. For me, it’s like gee whiz. It’s a crying shame here that this kind of money gets into projects like this. So, again, Mr. Chair, this is just what stands out for me and the Minister does provide some answers that it might be just a shame, you know, with this kind of money.

Anyhow, overall, I am pretty satisfied with what the Minister presented. It’s the one hiccup and I wouldn’t mind some answers later on. But when we get to detail, Mr. Chair, I am looking forward to seeing some improvements in the overall GNWT in terms of northern and aboriginal senior management getting into positions where hopefully they will make a difference in our communities. I think they will and I believe they will, providing we give them support, encouragement and opportunities. I think they will do good jobs. There are lots of good people in the region, the communities, who I can name off the top of my hat right now in terms of where they could excel in the government. I just want to make those comments to the Minister right now, Mr. Chair, in terms of his presentation. These are just comments. I can wait for feedback later on.

General comments. Mr. Menicoche.

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.

Are there any other general comments? If not, I will allow the Minister to respond to the general comments so far.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Very briefly, with regard to the response to the consultation with the Corporate Human Resource Strategy, we were pleasantly surprised with the response from the employees and certainly it will help us have a much better HR strategy. We also held a number of focus groups to make sure that we had input from all the different categories of employees. As well, we’re expecting significant response from the hard copies of the survey that we mailed out. I think we mailed out about 1,800 hard copies.

With regard to increasing the aboriginal representation of senior management, this is an area that we recognize is very important and is something that we feel should be representative of the public service. Currently, the percentage of aboriginals in senior management is at 16 percent. As part of our human resource strategy we will be taking steps to improve on that.

As far as the Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee, this is very preliminary. We held an initial meeting. It was chaired by the deputy minister of ENR and the associate deputy minister of HR. We had two aboriginal employees from each of the regions and I was very struck by how committed and seriously the participants took this responsibility. As soon as we finalize the terms of reference, we’ll be sharing that with all of the Members.

With regard to the $100,000 for the YK clinic, that’s one-time funding so that we can hire a human resource officer to help with writing job descriptions, dealing with the changes in the UNW Collective Agreement and to help with the competitions to fill these positions.

On the affirmative action targets included in each department, this is something we’ve asked our consultants on the human resource strategic plans

to give us some best practices and guidelines and to help us develop government-wide targets.

With the backlog, we were pleased to get some direction to seek some additional resources through the supplementary funding process, so we hope to deal with the backlog once and for all.

In terms of new hires and recruitment, right now it takes us 10 weeks to staff a position. Our target is eight weeks and again we’ll be looking at best practices or e-recruit or we could even look at the Ontario model where the managers have been given the responsibility to hire. I think we need some checks and balances on that if we are going to meet some of our priorities. Certainly, that’s an area that we’ll be looking at; letting the managers manage. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Page 3-9, active position summary, information item.

Moving on to page 3-10, 3-11, directorate, operations expenditure summary, activity summary, $464,000. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a question under other expenses, the details. There is no TSC chargebacks for the directorate for this next year. Are they all moved to another part of the department or there just aren’t any? Thank you.

Minister of Human Resources, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’ve taken that and consolidated it into the corporate human resources category. We’ve put them all into one section. Thank you.