Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to complicate things, when we move forward with the union on what was often referred to as whistleblower legislation or whistleblower policy, through discussions with the UNW and how we were moving forward, it’s changed its name. It’s now a Safe Disclosure Policy. It will be safe disclosure legislation. When I’m referring to Safe Disclosure Policy and legislation, it’s really the evolution of the whistleblower discussions that we’ve been having.
As I’ve indicated, I’m really excited to bring this good work that the union and department have done in collaboration, and both groups are very happy with the product. I’m looking forward to bringing that to committee for some discussion and implementing that on April 1
st . Like I said, we’re
going to let that run for a little while to see how it works, to see what the challenges are, to see what parts are good and what parts might need a little bit of tweaking before we move forward with the legislation, but I and my Ministerial colleagues are committed to getting this legislation done during the life of this government and I will continue to push that through.
Succession planning, there are experts within the Department of Human Resources who can provide advice and recommendations to individual departments, as well as individuals who are looking at moving through the public service, but one thing does need to happen from that. We need individual
HR plans from individual departments, boards and agencies. They need to look at their operations and figure out what they’re going to do. Most departments, if not all departments, are currently working on human resource plans and most human resource plans actually include some succession planning information. Hopefully, we’ll see more human resource plans individualized to departments come as we move forward.
As far as changing the statistics, it’s the planning and recognition of the challenges that we face that’s going to help us change the statistics over time. The Regional Recruitment Strategy is going to help us address some of our shortfalls in the communities.
I was clearly listening to MLA Moses, as I’m sure my colleagues were, and I’m pretty sure I said it, as well, that I agree with pretty much everything the Member was saying. We have a lot of work to do and it’s not going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination. I look forward to the partnership with the Social Envelope Committee, with Government Operations committee, with EDI committee as we move forward trying to recognize and identify and find solutions to some of the challenges that we face.
Greening the workplace, the Member is not wrong. ENR is taking the lead charge on this and we are working with departments to facilitate creation of a green committee, but for more detail I am going to go to the deputy to talk about some of the specifics that are out there. ENR is taking the lead with government staff on many of those initiatives.