Detail? Okay. Turn to page 3-7, department summary. With that, we’ll defer until consideration of detail. Starting on page 3-8, Human Resources, information item, infrastructure investment summary. Any questions?

Moving on to page 3-9, Human Resources, information item, active position summary. Any questions?

Moving on to page 3-11, Human Resources, activity summary, operations expenditure summary, directorate, $590,000. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I could have done this under opening comments, I guess, but I’ll do it under the directorate. Being an MLA, obviously we field a number of calls and complaints, usually from constituents who are government employees or looking at getting positions with the Government of the Northwest Territories. I just wanted to make a comment, Mr. Chairman. In the past year or 16 months, year to 16 months, there’s been a marked improvement by the department, I think, in handling issues that have come up with constituents and I’m not getting the number of calls or complaints that I used to get. I think that’s a testament of the management there at the department, and I just wanted to put that on the record, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that’s largely a function of the hard work of the staff in the department and working very closely with all the staff at all of the different departments of the government. It’s helped quite a bit working with the committees and focusing on improving service delivery. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Any other questions on the directorate? Okay, operations expenditure summary, directorate, activity summary, $590,000. Agreed?

Moving on to page 3-12, Human Resources, information item, active positions, directorate. Any questions? Agreed? Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and excuse my hesitation. I am unsure where to bring this one up, but I’m wondering, with regard to direct appointments, what role does the department have in direct appointments that departments might decide to do? Do we have a policy on that and is it within this department or do we advise other departments on it? Does HR advise other departments? I could use a little help with that. Thank you.

Minister of HR, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There is a directive that lays out the criteria for which would apply to direct appointments, and we do provide assistance to the different departments as to format, and it has to be approved by the responsible Minister, and all direct appointments have to go through Cabinet. Then once a decision is made and if that position is approved, then the

Department of HR is the lead on implementation of the decision. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Bromley.

Thank you. That helps quite a bit, Mr. Chair. The last one is: is the directive a Human Resources directive?

Minister of HR, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you. It’s a directive that is approved by Cabinet and it’s updated from time to time. We do keep track of the number of direct appointments and we do review the criteria to make sure that it’s fulfilling the objectives of what it was intended to do and we do have direct appointments for a number of reasons. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess the last one is: is that a publicly available document or is that an internal?

Minister of HR.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It’s one that’s approved by Cabinet. So it’s a Cabinet document and I’ll check to see whether that’s available or not. I expect that if it is, then we can share it with the committee. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

That’s great, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that offer and that would help me become more informed on that and then the reasons that you can do direct appointments. If the document can’t be made available and that can, that would also help me. I’ll let it go at that. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

We’ll commit to providing that information one way or the other. Thank you.