Madam Chair, I would like to thank the Member for his comments. I agree; we have a lot of work. We have a lot of things we need to think about as we move forward to try and engage both residents to convince them or encourage them to consider the GNWT as an employer. A significant amount of work has been done or needs to be done and is being done.
I have been in the House for five years. In those five years I have talked an awful lot about on-the-job training. When I sat on that side of the House, I must have made several dozen statements about training on the job and the value that it provides. This government has had fantastic success in the past, but as budget cuts have come through our history, some of that training on the job has gone away.
We do have the Assistant Director/Regional Superintendent Program is one of our on-the-job training programs. Some departments have some
specific programs on-the-job training as well. The Department of Justice has our Corrections Training Program, which is an on-the-job training program. Health and Social Services has things like the Community Health Nurse Development Program, which is an on-the-job training program. So they do exist in pockets.
As we move forward with the Regional Recruitment Strategy, we are going to be following two streams. Much of this is going to be informed through the research and analysis which will be done, but also advice from the Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee. We are going to be following two streams, and one is trying to deal with non-regulated professions. What we are looking at here is exactly what you are talking about, which is one year on-the-job training programs and mentorships. We are talking about double filling positions to give individuals an opportunity to learn the skills or consolidate learning that they already have but haven’t been able to put into practice. This is a great opportunity. We have past success in this area and we think that we can make some significant success. That is for non-regulated jobs.
For regulated or trades jobs, we are also looking for on-the-job training, but it would be longer. A trade often takes two, three or four years to complete, so it’s going to have to be longer on-the-job training programs. We are going to have to work closely with Education, Culture and Employment as they are trying to address those. Then we can also look at our Community Health Nurse Development Program as a great program that transitions recent graduates or nurses without community experience, gives them the skills they need to work in a community health setting.
We are excited about the work we are doing on the Regional Recruitment Strategy. I am excited to bring that forward to committee. It’s still a little bit of time off, but it will be in front of committee. We will have discussions prior to business planning process so that the findings and the recommendations can be dealt with through the business planning process. I am happy to hear you say that you would support some money. I don’t know if Minister Miltenberger is looking, but obviously we are going to need some money on that. But we’ll have those discussions later.
---Interjection