Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to let the Minister and his staff know that I will probably be speaking to some of the topics that have already been discussed, so don’t feel obligated to answer them again. I just want to show my support for certain initiatives, as well as my concern in some areas. If you feel obligated that you need to answer again and reiterate some of your points, feel free to, but with respect to time and moving forward, you can just try to move on here.
What I’m glad to see in here is under the 20/20 program that the Minister mentions the recruitment, development and advancement of Aboriginal employees, but it’s not just the Aboriginal employees. What we discussed last time was northern indigenous. It’s people who have lived here in the North and are indigenous to the North, and working to advance them as well.
I didn’t get a chance to go to my second set of questions during question period earlier today, but just to touch on some of the challenges that we do have in the education system that sometimes, as a result, we find some of our people from the Northwest Territories in low-level positions within the government. Some of these people that are in these positions, sometimes are also long-serving employees and we know this because we give out
the awards that are for 20 years, 25 years, yet there hasn’t been any advancement in there for them.
I’m really glad to see that you want to work on the development and advancement of these positions. That goes to on-the-job training, specifically for these long-term employees. How do we do that? How do we take people from administrative roles and start getting them into positions where they can start being programmers, working in programs and services areas, and slowly build them up?
As you know and see through your department, we are also a very transient jurisdiction where we get people coming up two years or three years at a time, get to know and understand the culture, area, demographics of where they’re doing their work, and then they leave. Yet you’re still getting some of these employees who are sticking around and continuing to see people come and go out of the office and those are the employees that I feel we need to target. Mr. Dolynny makes a good point of finding innovative and unique ways to adjust these. This is what we have to do. We have to look at ways we can start building our workforce with people here in the Northwest Territories, especially our long-term residents.
What I was also very glad to see was the work and advancement of the whistleblower legislation. Speaking to people back home, and myself working in the public service area, knowing some of the discrepancies, some of the job acts within government and how things are done, and policy, and how do we make those changes so that we can make people thrive and go and develop not only in the public service sector but in all of the Northwest Territories. There are some restrictions that allow certain Members that work for the department, I know there is the conflict of interest, but because we have such a small population, it does restrict some of our employees from going out and volunteering, being part of an NGO, and we have to learn how we can support those, because we do have a lot of really great individuals in the Northwest Territories who cannot be restricted to their workload and could be doing really good work for people of the Northwest Territories as well as their departments.
Speaking earlier in terms of partnerships and working with departments and hearing some of the stats of all the vacancies that we have throughout the Northwest Territories, that says to me that this department needs to work. I mentioned this earlier during my question period to the Minister of Education. He has a very big responsibility and important role here to start training and educating our youth and fixing the education system so that we can start filling these vacant roles with Northerners, with Aboriginals, and making sure that we have a great representation right across the board. With all the vacancies that the Minister had
mentioned earlier, that just tells me that this department needs to work closely with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to see how we can start training in those areas that we see need positions filled.
I was talking to my colleague over here earlier about the last time we had Human Resources before us. I was just new to the government, about three months in, 15 months, a lot of education, knowledge, listening to what’s needed, listening to the constituents, seeing where the areas need addressing. What I say before you is just possibly some, like I said, innovative and unique ways that we can start getting our people educated and into the jobs. Like I also mentioned earlier, the long-term employees in the low-level jobs, we have to find ways where we can advance them so they can be some of our leaders in the communities and the regions as well. Keeping on going here.
What I was really surprised to see, as well, in just making reference to the budget dialogue that was taken on the road, there wasn’t very much mentioned in terms of human resources or retention and recruitment. I’m not sure if the Minister would like to maybe ask another Minister around the House if that was even a case brought up during these budget dialogues and whether more money needed to be put towards recruitment and retention of either nurses, doctors, educators. That is a possibility, but in the budget dialogue when I reviewed it and read the report, I didn’t see anything in terms of human resources, which just listening today, you heard a lot of concerns.
The Regional Recruitment Strategy, I’m glad to see that is on the horizon. It really needs to be supported. When that strategy comes to the table and to the committee, it needs to be implemented. Dollars need to go so that we can start getting our regional centres and our smaller communities up to par with what some of our bigger centres have. In terms of that, as I mentioned earlier in my Member’s statement where I said if you fail to plan, plan to fail. As a result of that, we have to start looking at our communities. Why are people going into communities?
Early childhood development, we need those programs. We need better education systems in our schools. We need schools. We need nurses. We need policing. We need the core and essential services in our communities to provide people getting into those employment rates.
When I listened to our Beaufort-Delta Leadership Council, there was a lot of really good discussions on how they felt that the government’s departments should work more collaboratively together, working together to come up with the best plans and strategies so that when we need those jobs, we need those services in the communities, they are there and that Human Resources isn’t trying to get
people in the communities when families don’t want to go there because there are no early childhood development services. Those are some challenges, barriers that we are facing. As Cabinet and as the Minister that is responsible for getting people in those positions, those are some things that need to be addressed. How do we do it? It is a tough job. I am sure we will find ways and strategies.
Before I continue, I just want to commend the continued support for members of the public service in all of the benefits and packages and working with UNW to reach those agreements and supporting the people that are in there. As a Member who has worked a very long service in different departments, and seeing some of the areas that need working, and being able to come in here and try to make that change and try to offer my expertise and my knowledge, I think that that offers a lot. I do know that employees within the GNWT system, as well as the managers, superintendents, supervisors, need the support from this House to ensure that we provide the best services and programs and the best packages so that we can retain our staff, and also make sure that our staff is up to par and that our communities are also all thriving. I mentioned a whole bunch of different things there.
If anything, I’d like to see more effort into the advancement and development of our employees, especially the ones that have been in the workforce for a long time and who continue to be in low-level jobs, and also seeing the development of the whistleblower legislation as we move forward, because that is really going to give us insight into what is happening to the departments and within our government system and making our government more effective as we move forward. Thank you, Madam Chair.