Thank you, Madam Chair. I welcome the Minister and the delegation here today. In line with my comments from the Member of Hay River North, I too want to congratulate the department on a job well done being named one of the top 100 employers in Canada. That’s quite an accolade and sometimes I think we forget to say some good things about what’s happening in government, so congratulations.

Keeping in line with what was said, and you might hear a common theme here a little bit, but we know we are faced with a lot of net out-migration of employees. This is nothing new. We have, at times, a lot of complexity in our public service jobs, and as indicated by the Minister, we have a retiring population to deal with. All three of those pillars, I think, are putting a strain on our current system to fill positions now.

We’ve heard various numbers of vacancies currently, and I know this is always a moving target, Madam Chair, but I believe the number – correct me if I’m wrong – about 360 job openings today in the NWT. That tells me, and I think it tells many people in this Assembly, that our NWT labour market really cannot meet the demand to fill the positions we have. So when we add more positions in a budget like we have before us, I think we may be adding more insult to injury moving forward.

I know there was some ITI funded initiatives about Come Make Your Mark to promote the NWT. The Minister may want to talk a bit about whether this was a successful endeavour, but more so what did it cost taxpayers. Again, these are issues that we need to look at.

Following that, we’ve talked about all these types of initiatives to bring people to the Northwest Territories. A lot of those are referred to targeted scholarships, bursary programs, specific placement programs, remissable loans, return of bursaries and return of service agreements. These are all catch phrases, but these are also very unique tools. I am curious as to what amount of tool use is being used by the department to fill the current vacancies that we have before us. So I would appreciate the Minister talking about that.

Although I indicated that I was congratulating the department for a job well done being top 100 employees, if one has to look at the recent employee engagement satisfaction survey by our

service sector, it was interesting to see some of the trends in that employee survey. What I mean by trends is I look at top box score. These are your top percent responses in terms of completely being satisfied. When one looks at the results, Madam Chair, it’s very clear that although we are doing relatively well, those numbers or top box scores have now been slipping from one year to the next. In the eyes of an employer, whether it’s in government or in industry, these would be areas you would want to drive some concern in terms of what you are using to mitigate the perception out there.

I would be remiss if I didn’t talk a little bit about safety. The Minister is very much aware that I have been somewhat critical in our safety programs and the fact that this government has been fined and double fined in the last two years to the tune of about almost $750,000 in fines and double fines. I have some grave concerns about what we are doing to improve the safety profile. Again, there is only one mention here in the opening address that indicates rigorous occupational health and safety strategies continue to be critical in order to minimize the risk of our staff being injured on the job. Given the fact that this department has been bestowed with such a large penalty, I am curious and very dismayed that it only had one line entry in the opening comments and very little to show in the budget as to what they are truly doing for occupational health and safety in order to get on the positive side of WSCC so that our claims growth, our injuries, as well as our penalties are much more in line.

I know the Minister has made comments in the House about the injuries per 100 being at a value, I believe, of 1.8 of a value and the average in the Territories is 2.4. However, I crunch these numbers, and although this seems to be the hallmark or benchmark for health and safety for the department, I’m still very perplexed as to how these numbers are being calculated because my math does not add up to this 1.8. I may want to ask the Minister to comment on that as well.

I do have a lot more specifics that I’d like to do when we get into detail, so I will leave that for now. I did put a couple of questions on there for the Minister.