Mr. Speaker, I can definitely find out the actual detail of who they’ve talked with across the Northwest Territories. My

understanding is that they’ve initiated discussion with educators in the Northwest Territories and those communities with or without the daycare or the preschool, because we needed to hear their perspective as well. But I can provide more detailed information to the Members. Mahsi.

Mr. Speaker, I’d like to ask the Minister if there are any early indications that the attendance at preschool is helping the students as they enter into primary school, secondary and high school. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, part of the research that we’ve done does reflect on that where a child learns at the early stages and does well and is successful as they grow into secondary and postsecondary studies. Those are areas that we’ve highlighted and captured into our ASAI, Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative, and also the framework that I’ve referred to. Those are the important pieces of work that have been discussed and have been captured within the agreement as well. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Your final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Minister ensure that all early childhood development studies or reports or anything that pertains to preschool and the positive impacts of preschool are placed in the transitional documents for the next government? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Definitely, that’s one of the priorities that we have with the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative. That’s a first priority as early childhood development and also child care development. Definitely, this is an area that has been the prime focus in the childhood discussion among the forums in the Northwest Territories among the regions. We’ll keep the Members posted as we move forward. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, Mr. Speaker, this is regarding services provided by the health centres in the small and remote communities. Mr. Speaker, has the government addressed any medical services professional staff shortages all across the Northwest Territories, not just in Nunakput, in the Beaufort-Delta, and what solutions are being implemented to try to fix the problem? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is an ongoing search and recruitment for doctors and nurses especially to provide service outside of Yellowknife. The challenge is, of course, filling the positions, finding the staff that is trained. There is work being done in terms of trying to better coordinate and centralize the decision-making so that we can look at the coverage with doctors.

We’ve invested millions of dollars in training northern nurses. The issue is to get them trained up enough to work in the small communities so that they can provide the services and that we don’t have this issue of gaps in services because there is no available staff. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, exactly how many positions in the Northwest Territories that are related to medical services, especially in the small and remote communities, are vacant? Committing and expanding the staff, pumping more resources is one thing, but hiring is another, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

The issue is not so much, in my opinion, the need for additional resources. It’s to try to fill the positions that are already there to avoid the circumstances, that the Member talked about in his statement, where there’s lack of services. The small communities tend to not get the services that they’re expecting on a regular basis, which is a gap that we try to avoid. Thank you.

The Minister said it himself that we’re not getting the services. Mr. Speaker, the policies when dealing with medical conditions and regular checkups are so vulnerable for our elders and our youth, especially for dental and elders for checkups, you know, causing cancer. In cases such as doctor and other staff shortages, the regular procedures should not apply. What is the government doing?

We are making, as I indicated, constant and significant efforts on the recruitment side. We are recruiting from a number of different sources, from the various Internet sources that are available, by word of mouth, looking with ads, we go to fairs, and we continue to train up nurses, as I indicated. But we continue to struggle, as does every jurisdiction in the country, with adequacy, especially when it comes to services in small communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Your final supplementary, Mr. Jacobson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know that the communities bear the brunt of all shortages across the territory when it comes to doctor shortages and nursing. What are the government plans? Is it possible to hire nurses in

the communities for long term, and the second part of this is, the checkups are a big thing because they’re sending too many, like Mr. Menicoche said, we’re sending too many people home with just aspirin and they’re not being properly assessed. That scares a lot of people, Mr. Speaker. It’s not, first of all, but it should be taken care of. Is the Minister willing to try to implement to the nursing staff that in the small communities that proper checkups should be done and not just sent home with aspirin or Tylenol? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I indicated to the Member for Nahendeh, I will raise this issue not only with the deputy minister but I’ll be talking to the board chairs about the concern and who, in turn, can talk to the senior staff to deal with the issues and pass on the concern and ensure that every effort is made to provide all the services necessary and that we avoid these types of circumstances. But recognizing, as I said earlier, that over the course of any given day thousands of Northerners successfully go through the doors of health centres. We have to be concerned about those situations that the Member has mentioned and we will take those steps. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I cited a number of concerns with the summer student hiring process. The process is more than just how many students we’ve hired; it’s about how we hire them and, of course, what type of promise and opportunity we provide them. I think it’s quite understood that we have an obligation to ensure that our future workforce is certainly prepared for the opportunities before them, and I think it’s an important role.

Mr. Speaker, HR at present doesn’t have the official coordination powers and authority to, in my view, fully manage the summer student problems. So in other words, they’re the gatekeeper. They get a big pile of resumes and it’s almost like they reach in the bucket, grab 10 and give them to the department. I think that better coordination and management of these types of resumes needs to be done.

Before I get into the lengthy types of questions that I’d like to get some really good detail on from the Minister, the first question I’d really like to ask is how is the Minister going to assess this year’s hiring process of summer students, and is the Department of Human Resources working towards true authority about hiring summer students with that type of authority and coordination. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s our intention to review the Summer Student Program the way we do every year. We’ve discontinued the hiring of students as of August 15th . We’ll review our practices. We will review the

exit interviews that were done with summer students and we’ll assess how successful we have been. We think we’ve been successful this year, considering our fiscal situation. We’ve increased the hiring of the number of summer students from last year. We’re not aware of any significant staffing issues when it came to the hiring of summer students and we will incorporate that into next year’s Summer Student Hiring Program. Thank you.

I want to thank the Minister for that particular answer. Mr. Speaker, quite often I’ve heard, as well as I know other MLAs have heard, the hiring practice is quite often based on who you know, and as I’ve cited in my statement and I certainly want to cite here, is that HR provides probably the most friendly experience for these summer students ever to apply at any job, going forward that is, because, I mean, it’s quite competitive out there. So what is Human Resources doing to have the students apply for jobs in a normal fashion where they’re posted, where they actually tailor a resume and cover letter to directly show relevant experience, and ensure that we’re actually hiring students with the appropriate background and maybe even a little bit of experience and study areas, that they’re being hired in the appropriate areas as opposed to what I’ve heard on a few occasions that students are being hired, again, just because of who they’re known by? Thank you.

As I’ve said many times, our staffing in the Government of the Northwest Territories is based on merit. If the Member has any incidences where he’s seen hiring done because of who you know, well, we certainly want to be made aware of it so that we can investigate.

In every instance we try to follow the merit principle. As far as hiring of summer students, if he wants to hire only the most experienced summer students, only summer students that are in the fourth year of their programs... We try to make sure that we have a mix of summer students and we try to make sure that we hire as many summer students as we can. Thank you.

I want to thank the Minister for that particular lead in to my next question because he’s right in the context of how do we balance that fairly. We’re well aware of students being hired by the same departments year after year, not giving a break to new students. Some never even get opportunities at territorial government jobs and

we’re all well aware of students being hired in February and March, even before the summer student application process begins. So in other words, they’re all scooped up, the old returnees continue to return to the same jobs and I’m concerned about fairness.

Will the Minister of Human Resources, in his exit interview and sort of 360 positions where they examine the whole process from start to finish if that’s going to be the detail they do as a wrap-up, will they be investigating on how this works? I think it ties rightly back to the authority issue; departments will do what they will do. So, Mr. Speaker, will the Minister address those types of concerns I’m raising? Departments will just keep hiring the same people they just want to.