Sergeant-at-Arms, escort the witnesses in.

Mr. McLeod, for the record, could you introduce your witnesses?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my left I have Mr. Tom Williams, deputy minister of Human Resources; to my immediate right, I have Sheila Bassi-Kellett, associate deputy minister; to my far right is Michelle Beard, director of finance and administration.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Welcome, witnesses. Any general comments? Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll be brief in my comments. Again, I mentioned this last year and I’ll mention it again this year. In the time I’ve been here, there have been a number of issues with Human Resources going back five or six years. I believe in the last three years under the guidance of the Minister and the management team in the department, as an MLA we don’t get as many calls or complaints from the public or the public service. I appreciate that. Obviously the public and the public service that you serve appreciate it as well. I think people are getting a much more fair shake when it comes to their dealings with Human Resources. I appreciate that. I’m sure they do too.

Going forward, if I could say one thing, I think, and I’ve mentioned this a number of times, I really think we need to start planning long term and doing some work with how the Aboriginal governments in the Northwest Territories are going to advance, draw down their authorities, and how it is that our public service is going to come together with the needs and requirements of Aboriginal self-governments around the Northwest Territories. We can’t afford to be stepping on one another’s toes down the road. I think the more planning and foresight we have on how that’s all going to work is going to pay dividends down the road.

Comments are brief, I know it’s late. Just a few comments. Thank you.

General comments. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you. I’ll keep my comments very brief too. The positions within the GNWT are growing each year. It seems like we’re adding new positions to our workforce. I’m not too sure what the plan is. Is there a time when I’m going to say we need to cut back on positions or hold it or to put a freeze on it? Also to continue to support the Aboriginal people into the government’s senior management into those type of positions.

I look forward to some of the initiatives that the Minister has embarked on. I think there are some real good ones. Laying out a plan, there are the baby boomers that are going to be retiring, the aging workforce. Of course there’s a new generation of young workers that have a little bit different work ethic sometimes and we have to train them. That’s part of what my upbringing was too. In my generation, we had a job and we kept with the job and learned from our parents. I look forward to some of the challenges that the Minister and staff are going to be coming up with and how to resolve them. I hope that we do well and that we continue to treat our people well within the GNWT. There are a lot of good people working for us; really good people. We continue to support them and

encourage them to bring on other people into our workforce. I do want to say that we have good people working for us. I do want to say that they do a lot for us. I just want to leave it at that.

Thank you. With that, I will allow the Minister to respond to the general comments. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the comments. We put a very concerted effort into reducing our backlog and focusing on our workload and moving to a client service department. We require all of our employees to take client service training. I think we’re starting to see the benefits of that.

Planning long term, we know that 40 percent of our workforce will retire within the next five years so it’s something that we have to plan for.

Aboriginal governments drawing down their authorities, we are very cognizant of that and we have been looking at that, their requirements for successor rights and so on are areas that we have been exploring and we have just started meetings to look at what devolution will entail and so we definitely will be planning for that.

In terms of the increased workforce, we have taken some action, in terms of our staffing, so that we don’t staff as quickly in order to save costs. We are working with our Affirmative Action Advisory Group to look at ways to increase our affirmative action statistics.

In my opening comments I talked about our pilot project on associate directors and superintendents, we think that will help. We also have other ideas and initiatives that we will be undertaking. The cultural awareness will be a big benefit and we always say that our workforces are the most important asset and I think that I agree that we have a lot of good people working for us and we need to keep them and make sure that we also attract new people with fresh ideas. We recognize that the younger generation have a different approach to work ethics and what keeps them staying longer and we are trying to factor that into our recruitment initiatives and efforts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. I don’t see any more general comments. What is the wish of committee? Detail?

So maybe we can refer you to department summary page 3-7. We will move on to page 3-8, information item, infrastructure and investment summary. Agreed?

Agreed. Moving on to page 3-9, information item, revenue summary. Agreed?

Agreed. Moving on to 3-10, information item, active position summary. Agreed?

Agreed. Moving on to 3-13, activity summary, directorate operations expenditure summary, $607,000. Agreed?

Agreed. Moving on to 3-14, information item, directorate, active positions. Agreed?

Agreed. Moving on to 3-17, activity summary, human resource strategy and policy, operations expenditure summary, $6.830 million. Agreed?

Agreed. Mr. Ramsay.