Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have a couple of questions with regards to the funding for community governments mentioned by the Minister in his opening remarks. I am really

pleased to hear that that is an initiative that is being taken on by the department. I have mentioned quite a number of times that capacity for community governments is certainly an issue, so it is good to see that the Department of HR is going to be assisting community governments with some of their difficulties.

I did have a question, though. I am a little confused in sort of terminology I guess. In various places, we are advised that we have a strategic initiative of $2.3 million for recruitment and retention strategies for GNWT and community government but then on page 3-23 I see Maximizing Northern Employment and somewhere in the last month or two I was given to understand that Maximizing Northern Employment program didn’t exist anymore. If I can get an explanation of that contradiction, that would help me out. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister McLeod.

The $2.3 million is funding that has been provided through the strategic initiatives process and the Maximizing Northern Employment is an ongoing program within the Department of Human Resources which provides for graduate employment, graduate internships, summer student employment, promotion, recruitment and planning and GNWT-wide initiatives such as developing a new recruitment program and cross-departmental training for engineers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thanks for the answer. With regards to the strategic initiative and the funding for community governments, I wonder if I could get an explanation of what sorts of activities are going to be put forward with regards to community governments. How are those funds going to be used for that particular purpose? Thank you.

We are working with the working group with regards to the allocation of this funding. This working group is made up of representatives from LGAT, NWT Association of Communities, MACA and the Department of Human Resources. We haven’t made any decisions yet, but some of our initial thinking is that the funding would be used to implement a number of different programs. For example, the development of a municipal internship program, a marketing and recruitment initiative to attract young people to work in municipal government, support to LGAT to extend their capacity building initiatives and also to look at our communities for pooling of human resource-related functions amongst communities. For those of you that don’t know what LGAT is, it is Local Government Administrators of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for the explanation. Those are great objectives. I look forward to getting more information on how this working group determines specifics. Thank you.

Thank you. We are on page 3-23, corporate human resources, operations expenditure summary, $10.207 million. Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Chairman, the question I have for the Minister is on page 3-22, on GNWT orientations. Is that in your orientations? Do the senior managers who have responsibility for a region like my own have some specific cultural related orientation package for them? Some of the senior management that do have responsibility for our region may know the geographical area, the description, the profile, but they don’t really know the people or the culture. They rely a lot on the senior managers at the community and regional level. But they who have the authority to make decisions sometimes make it in the best interests of the corporate world but they don’t really have the cultural community sense of the regions. Is that something that Human Resources looks at in terms of GNWT orientation, having some of these people who are in a position to make a difference in our lives, are they somewhat involved in a regional orientation setting in terms of their language, knowing the people, knowing their culture or is it mostly in books that they read and they just check off this and that in terms of what they know about the Sahtu people? I don’t get a sense of how they are orientated into our region.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member brings out a good point. This is something that we feel is very important and something we need to be doing a better job in this regard. I don’t think we have one cultural awareness program or one size fits all for the government, but I know that different departments probably do different things. Right now, our focus has been to try to make sure that every new employee of the government gets provided with an orientation. I think we are starting to look at what different governments or different regions are doing with regard to cultural awareness and this is something that we are going to have to put more importance on and try to develop something that we can use much more broadly. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I certainly look forward to the day that the Minister presents a cultural orientation package for the House. I know he’s going to try hard in terms of what package that would be suitable as a government as a whole. He also makes some good

points that our region is different in the Sahtu. There are cultural beliefs and values that need to be implemented for that specific senior management employee. It may be different for Gwich’in, Inuvialuit and that’s good because you are going to have those people do the training with those people, which is good. So that’s what I am looking at is when the Minister can present us with a paper saying this is how we’d like to go forward. I am not sure how long it will take. Like he says it’s a huge department. As a pilot, maybe you could start with your own department. It would be good to have senior management come on the land with us as people. Then they get to understand what we are talking about with our programs and services. It’s good for them to learn our language. It’s good for them to know our culture. So sometimes they have some sensitivity with decisions that need to be made.

Our region could learn a lot from them also. So I think that’s something we want to look forward to. I hope there is a day within this government that senior management can be on the land for a week; deputy ministers, assistant deputy ministers, directors from down south who come here and they can live on the land with us for a week. Then you’ve got a strong government. I think you should be pushing strong for that orientation. Survival of the fittest. Our people will teach you, as you will teach the people. You have to learn that way.

I think I’ve done enough in my statements, Mr. Chair, so I’ll see what the Minister has to say.

Part of the $1.3 million identified for training, we saw using some of that to help develop cultural awareness programs. As well, we were looking at using aboriginal governments who already help us with providing cultural awareness to health workers, and nurses, and teachers, and I see our Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee would also help us in that regard with regard to what kind of cultural awareness would be useful and helpful for our employees. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We are on page 3-23, corporate human resources, operations expenditure summary, $10.207 million.

Activity summary, grants and contributions, corporate human resources. Any questions on that page?

Agreed. Moving on to page 3-25, active positions, information item.

Moving on to page 3-26, 3-27, employee services, operations expenditure summary, $11.643 million. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My last set of questions, I promise, for everyone who is groaning. I wanted to reference the reference by the Minister to backlog pay and benefits issues. I understand that they’re making some good progress and that’s a good thing, but I also wanted to visit two issues that have come to my office, both of which are the same and it’s a recall, an invoice for holidays used over and above the allocation for people who have left the employ of the Territories.

I understand that the department is trying to make sure that people have not been overpaid for holidays that they took and hadn’t earned, but I am concerned that these notices are coming 18 or more months after the person has left the employ of the GNWT. So I guess I’m trying to understand from a department perspective how an individual would be given their final pay, given their record of employment, basically signed off and yet a year or more later would be given an invoice for holidays taken that weren’t earned. So if I could get an explanation from the Minister as to why a final pay notice or a final pay is given and why a record of employment notice is given to somebody who has left our employ when the audit on what’s owing and what’s due has not been done. Thank you.

Minister of Human Resources, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will just make a couple of comments to set the scene, I guess. One, right now, with the Financial Administration Act, we really have no choice. If we find an error and there is a need to collect from an employee, current employee or retired employee, we have to go and collect and part of the problems with some of the recent events has been with some functions that went wrong with PeopleSoft in the past. Also in doing the T4s, some of the problems come to light, and so we’re looking at the issue and we are trying to find ways.

Obviously we feel we can do a lot better when we contact the individuals that have arrears. We can do a better job of explaining and also we are looking at what our requirements are. We think we should be able, in certain cases, where we’ve gone through the audit and everybody signed off on it, that where the mistake is not the fault of the employee, that we want to find ways of maybe writing it off. This is something we will have to work out with the Minister of Finance, but we are looking at that and we agree with the Member that we need to do a better job of dealing with this. Also, we will be making changes to PeopleSoft effective April 1st that will put in some checks, balances and

safeguards so that we should be able to catch most of these kinds of issues. Thank you.

I want to thank the Minister for that answer. I guess I would just reiterate I don’t understand when a final pay is being calculated and worked through that these amounts owing for lieu time or holidays aren’t discovered. If it’s human error, that’s fine, I understand, but I am having great difficulty in understanding why they aren’t caught when final pay is determined. Thank you.

Well, in the most recent examples that were brought to our attention, it was staff error. When we did an audit for T-4s, it was caught, so with existing procedures and systems, we have to go back and recover. Thank you.