Thank you, Ms. Bassi-Kellett. Moving on with questions we have Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a number of issues and comments in no particular order. The first one has to do with, and I think it’s referenced in the Minister’s opening remarks, and that’s the number of senior managers that are nearing retirement. This was something I think we talked about last year during business plans. I’d like to know from the Minister where the department is in assisting other departments in planning for the loss of our senior managers and that corporate knowledge that is going with them. I’m curious to know what percentage of our senior managers is going to be lost to us through retirement over the next five years.

With regard to persons with disabilities in the workforce, there was a survey done. The Minister didn’t really reference it, but I guess I would like to know whether or not we are improving in our percentage of PWDs who we have in our GNWT workforce or if we’re staying static. I’m hoping that we’re not going down.

I’m pleased to see that the Service Partnership Agreement has at least been completed with Health and Social Services and that we’ve got a pilot going on there. I’d like to know from the Minister when we’re going to expand beyond the pilot, how long this pilot will go on and when we will move on to other departments where service partnership agreements are required.

I don’t think it’s referenced in the Minister’s opening remarks, but I believe I heard somewhere that there will be a number of policy reviews within the department over this next year, and I’d like to know whether that policy review will include a review of the Affirmative Action Policy.

One of the things that we discussed, I think some time ago, was that each department is developing their own human resources plan. I presume that’s falling under the auspices of the Department of Human Resources to assist them and help them with that. I’d like to know from the Minister if he can advise us what departments have yet to complete their HR plan. If he has that information, that would be helpful. I think we were, maybe, halfway through the last time we talked about this.

One of the concerns that I think Members have and that I have certainly, grievances are a fact of life for the Human Resources department, but we have quite a few at any one time, from what I understand. I’d like to know from the Minister whether or not we are reducing the number of grievances that we have to deal with at any one time or whether that’s going up and if there is

anything that the department is working on, if there is a plan that the department has to try and reduce the number of grievances. I know we can never get to zero but I would hope that there’s a concerted effort and there’s a focus to try and reduce the number of grievances that we have to deal with.

I’m really pleased to see that there are two regional duty to accommodate officer positions that are going to be instituted in this next budget year. I think that’s great. This is kind of a bit of a new focus, I think, for the department, so I would appreciate a comment from the Minister on whether or not the one officer that we have had has had an impact on the work that we need to do to accommodate people back into the workforce. Has it been a positive thing or do you see that it’s too early to make any kind of a judgment?

Lastly, I’m really happy to see that the Safe Disclosure Agreement with UNW has been finalized and I look forward to seeing that sort of be tested out. The Minister may have said, and I may have missed it, but I’m just wondering, in terms of legislation, what kind of a time frame there is on safe disclosure legislation. When will we expect that this legislation will come before the House?

That’s all I have.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t have statistics on the number of senior managers we expect are approaching retirement. I’m not actually sure if we have a concrete figure on that, but I will have the department go back and look and provide committee with anything that we might have. We do know, anecdotally, that we have a number of senior managers approaching retirement, which is one of the reasons the Associate Director/Regional Superintendent Program is a positive program that’s helping us develop people who are on the right path but maybe need a little bit more opportunity or experience before they would be able to enter those senior roles. Like I said before, we have six at any one time in that program, three complete and three go in on a rotating basis. We usually have six going at any one time. We think it’s a good program. I think we’ve seen some results. If you look at the deputies that we have today, some of them have, clearly, gone through the program and, I think, are performing quite well. They’re showing they have the skill and ability to perform at a senior level, including that of deputy head.

Persons with disabilities, the survey that went out we had 1,800 respondents; 6.4 percent indicated they are persons living with disabilities and are employees within the public service. That is a significant jump in the numbers that existed before. We think it’s fairly representative. We do still have

work to be done to accommodate individuals where appropriate.

We have the duty to accommodate officer and I’m happy that you mentioned that duty to accommodate officer. This is an incredibly valuable position. It’s one of the reasons that we feel we need more duty to accommodate individuals to help us outside of Yellowknife and in the regional centres of Fort Smith and Inuvik. In 2011 and 2012, the individual helped to accommodate 20 permanent accommodations, 20 permanent placements. Fifteen are currently in process that the individual is working on. We have 50 employees on long-term disability requiring placements. A lot of work needs to be done. There are 106 cases requiring frequent follow ups. Just even when a person is accommodated it doesn’t end. There’s follow-up on-going, review, monitor. This is important and goes to some of the safe advantage stuff that we were talking about before. Sometimes the claim costs tend to be high because we haven’t been able to get them back into the workforce in a timely manner. These positions are making a huge difference for us and we’re very excited about the work they’ve done, we’re very excited about the possibilities, and we’re very excited about moving forward and getting these positions into the regional centres so that they can have a more timely response out there.

Safe disclosure legislation. I didn’t give a date specifically. We will have it done in the life of this Assembly. Right now, if I was to speculate, I imagine late in 2013-2014 we would be coming forward with an LP, but I ask for a little bit of patience because we really want to make sure that what we have done as far as the Safe Disclosure Policy is working and we’re going to work closely with the UNW on the implementation of the policy for UNW employees, and monitor it closely so that we can identify what parts might need tweaking, what parts may not need tweaking, what changes we have to make. We would like to make those changes in the legislation as we move forward. We don’t want to rush ahead and write legislation based on the policy and then find out later there are problems with the policy. We think this is a great opportunity to make sure we have legislation that is really good. So possibly late in 2013-14, definitely within the life of this government, but we would ask for a little bit of patience as we implement it. There is bound to be some growing pains; there often is. This is a new policy.

To date, there are four HR plans done. There are five underway, which means there are a number that aren’t been started at this point. With respect to grievances, I would like to go to the deputy minister for some specifics on grievances.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. We will go to Ms. Bassi-Kellett.

Thank you, Ms. Bassi-Kellett. Ms. Bisaro.

Mr. Chair, that’s all I have.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. We are moving on with questions, I have Mr. Nadli.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, would like to commend the department for being recognized as the top 100 employers, here in the Northwest Territories. That is quite the achievement.

I understand that staff or human resources is just one part of a system of the organization of the GNWT that we operate. I think staff and the workforce play a key role in the sole machine that operates here in the North.

I have a couple of comments. I would like to focus on a few specific questions. For the most part, in my mind, in terms of decentralization, in terms of seeing some of the shift from headquarters to regions and then down to communities. I am very interested in at least trying to understand, on behalf of my constituents, in terms of ensuring that it is done fairly timely, and, at the same time, very transparent, so we understand the process and we can have at least some input in those discussions and trying to realize some opportunities at least for some of the small communities.

What I am strongly concerned about is just the ratio of First Nation employees for northern indigenous people that live up here in the Northwest Territories. I understand that there are some policies to try and enhance the recruitment exercise of being able to hire more First Nations employees so that we have the workforce fairly reflective of the population that we have in the NWT. I understand there is the Affirmative Action Policy. I think there are a couple of incentive policies that are in place, including the Bilingual Policy in terms of trying to promote people

to be bilingual in the official languages. I understand that, perhaps, there could be some placement on the importance of cultural need, things of this nature that have been done.

What immediate steps is the department considering to ensure that the workforce of the GNWT is reflective of the population?

In another instance, I am obviously concerned that despite having the bridge completed, operating for the next 50 years, we have an ice bridge work crew plus the ferry crew that have been laid off or they have been shifted. I would like to have an understanding of how the department has played or is playing a role in terms of providing support and counsel to these employees or past employees, whether there has been some discussion of reassignment, whether there’s been discussions with them in terms of severance pay, whether there has been at least some discussions in terms of, perhaps, repositioning or reclassifying some of the positions so that they can continue to work in their home communities and, at the same time, be productive in the workforce. That is my other question.

The other question is has there been some emphasis or initiatives in trying to enhance or at least have employees be more conscious of safety guidelines of trying to curb accidents and mishaps in the workplace. I would like to know whether the department is playing a hand in trying to enhance the fire department’s training. I know that fire departments, for the most part in small communities, are on a volunteer basis, but yet, at the same time, the focus seems to be right now to have them play a defensive role in terms of defensive tactics of working within communities and, at the same time, on building structures. There are some instances where there have been some fires along the highway. Whether HR has played a hand in terms of trying to enhance the training and preparing for the eventual reality that we come across an instance like that and they will be better prepared.

My last question is in terms of the effort towards decentralization eventually. What is most important is I understand that we are trying to enhance the workforce to be more reflective of the population of the NWT. This is really a critical question in terms of trying to prepare small communities. What is the department doing to make working in small communities attractive for existing local candidates but, at the same time, potential candidates that might want to move to small communities? What is HR doing to basically help the small communities to keep a workforce but, at the same time, make it attractive for people that perhaps might want to move from Toronto or Montreal to take up a position in the North, especially for small communities? I understand that there is no housing

incentive and that housing is a high cost factor in small communities. Those are my questions that I had. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Safety in the workplace, I already talked a bit about that and our duty to accommodate officers and working with WSCC, occupational health and safety committees in departments that are being put in. HR is helping by providing advice and guidance to each of the individual departments of the types of things that are needed to be done by occupational health and safety committees. We are trying to work with departments to create some flexibility around those, because we sometimes have buildings where there are multiple departments in it, and having them work together for building support and things like that. There are a lot of things being done around that front. There is training that we offer. We partner with WSCC, who provides a lot of training for us to help people recognize some of the challenges of safe workplaces.

Like I said before, we’ve had a bad claims history, but I think, for 2012, we will all be happy to see a significant reduction in our claims history. I don’t know what that means by way of fines. I am still pretty confident there will be a fine. I just hope, given our significant reduction in claims, we will see a smaller fine, but that will come from the WSCC. We will see how that pans out.

With respect to decentralization and devolution, the Department of Human Resources is providing technical and administrative support to departments that are working on decentralization and helping them address their affected employees, by way of an example. The lead on that is the Department of Executive on decentralization. They are out trying to figure out capacity in communities, where houses are, where office space exists, where we can flow some positions sooner rather than later, and what we’re going to have to do long term. HR is providing technical advice with respect to job descriptions, organizational design, job evaluation and how to address affected employees, and there’s a range of affected employees. There are GNWT employees who might be in Yellowknife and their job is decentralized. They become affected and we have to work with the employing department to address them.

We’ve also got a number of federal employees who will be coming over to the GNWT public service, and we have to make sure that that transition is fair and reasonable, and that those employees are protected as well. So we’re providing technical advice and administrative support on that.

You talked about fire department training and fire training for fires on the road. It’s my understanding that is actually the responsibility of ENR and is

done by MACA. I don’t have any information on that, so you might want to ask ENR and MACA on that.

With respect to things that we’re doing to increase representation of Northerners in the workforce, particularly in small communities, I’ve talked about our regional recruitment plan. As I’ve indicated, that is going to be informed and helped along by the Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee who is going to provide us some advice on how to break down some of the barriers, like Mr. Menicoche was talking about earlier. We will have that in front of committee prior to the next round of business planning so that it can inform the business planning process.

There are a number of things that we’re doing, and we’re looking forward to working with committee on taking some of those initiatives forward and getting advice and some input from committee as we move forward.

Has there been discussion? I know right now we’re under fiscal restraint in terms of ensuring we control our revenues, but at the same time we control our expenditures. We’re trying to do more with less, so we’re at such a point it will probably make it necessary for us to cooperate and work together. There's more than likely cross-departmental initiatives to try to advance some major initiatives and do it so that it’s effective but at the same time it’s strategic.

One of the key things that I mentioned is just trying to ensure that we have a fairly reflective ratio of First Nation or northern indigenous workforce. Has the department considered working in partnership with regional governments to try to reach that reality and, at the same time, look at some long-range human resource strategies in terms of trying to acknowledge some of the existing initiatives that are out there with the federal government? Trying to at least work in partnership and trying to develop some concrete strategies. Mahsi.

A couple of things. We’ve put together some Aboriginal cultural awareness training programs that are available to new staff as they come into the GNWT. Also – and I’ve talked about this every opportunity I’ve had to get outside of Yellowknife and into the regional settings – we have a program where we’re willing to facilitate secondments either way with Aboriginal community governments. Where individuals who are working in the Aboriginal community government could come on to the GNWT, give them an opportunity to have some cross-training and learn a little bit more about different areas, but we can also send our employees there to some of the Aboriginal governments or the community governments. It’s an opportunity for them to learn a little bit more about different organizations and different perspectives. We are starting to see some

uptake on that. I’m really happy to finally see that some people are approaching us and wanting to do these secondments.

We also are absolutely willing to advertise positions for Aboriginal governments across the Northwest Territories. Unfortunately, we haven’t had very much uptake on that. I keep referencing it and sending letters out to the different groups, letting them know that we’re willing to do that for them. We haven’t had as much uptake.

We want to work with our partners. We want to find solutions. The Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee is going to provide us with some sound advice on some of the challenges that we may have created within our system outside of Yellowknife in some of the smaller communities. Things like Mr. Menicoche mentioned previously.

So we’re trying to work on these issues. I take your point and I’m looking forward to working with committee on trying to address some of these issues. Any input that any Members have, we’re open to anything to help us find some solutions.

Right now, representation changes as employees come and go, but I think we’re about 37 percent Aboriginal; I think we’re… Sorry. Thirty-two percent Aboriginal, about… Yes, about 32, 33, 34 percent Aboriginal in the public service right now, which is significantly lower than the population. Interestingly enough, it’s pretty close to the workforce.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Next on my list is Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Department of Human Resources is going to come into a lot of challenges. Most that I’m looking at is when the Devolution Agreement is signed and we start of our implementation of the devolution chapters and the focus on the decentralization of the government.

I want to ask the Minister of Human Resources with regard to the potential number of people coming in from the federal government to the GNWT, and the number of employees that we would have now because of the Devolution Agreement, and the big picture plan when they come to the North and how are we going to look at the numbers coming possibly into the North to the headquarters and then to the region and then to the communities. Is there a plan with his other colleagues to prepare for those potential employees, and what type of plans for human resources? We need to let the people know that these are some of the challenges we’re going to have. That’s the first one for me.

Is the Minister working on an overall, grandiose decentralization plan coupled with the devolution issues? How are we going to prepare the Sahtu or any other regions for the potential of moving positions into our regions and our communities? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The lead on dealing with the devolution is the Executive. There is a committee of deputy heads working with the lead deputy in the Executive to figure out what the organization is going to look like in the future, and what departments may exist, what departments may not exist, the roles and responsibilities of the individual departments. HR is providing technical advice on job description writing, organizational design structure, but it is being led by the Executive. We are providing solid HR advice and recommendations in that area.

When it comes to the number of positions, I think it’s over 300 positions that will be coming to the Northwest Territories. Speculation on how many individual people that might be, I’ve heard numbers as high as 170, but I think it’s a little premature to say for sure exactly how many employees will be coming over, because we don’t know who’s going to say yea and who’s going to say nay. But we need to be ready to bring employees in.

The Department of Human Resources has dealt with decentralized federal positions before. There are processes we have to go through, and through the devolution negotiations we’ve committed to protecting the employees that come over, to make sure that they’re not adversely affected by becoming employees of the Government of the Northwest Territories.

So once the Devolution Agreement is signed off and concluded, we’ll kick into high gear and try and process the individuals coming over. We have done a lot of initial research on steps that will need to be taken to protect those employees, without creating any undue or unfair systems within the Government of the Northwest Territories. We are providing technical expertise and we are facilitating the transfer of individuals. The design is being facilitated by the Executive on what the government is going to look for, and we are a partner in that.

I look forward to more discussions in that area and how we’re going to have a well laid out plan as to some of the issues with regard to the decentralization and devolution. I want to say to the Minister and staff of Human Resources, along with the Government of the Northwest Territories, being one of the recipients of one of the top 100 employers in Canada, you are in very good company with a good quality of other groups that receive this award. My hats off to the Human Resources staff to make that happen.

Mr. Minister, I want to talk to you about the Aboriginal Employees Strategy and the numbers that we are seeing within the GNWT with regard to Aboriginal people working within the Government of the Northwest Territories. I also support this strategy to see not only the issues that we have to

deal with in our communities and our regions, but how the strategy will support the community of Tulita or the Sahtu. They had 33 graduates last year from Grade 12. It would be good if we had a strong strategy that would say take these 33 future leaders and we’re going to move them, if we have advertising that would want these students or a percentage of these students moving to the GNWT workforce. We are competing with oil companies, Aboriginal governments and other private sectors that will take a percentage of these students who are graduating from Grade 12 in the Sahtu and say, we’re going to move you into our workforce. I’m hoping the Aboriginal strategy will take a grounding approach and start working with these students. That’s the risk. Sometimes we train our people so well that oil companies or Aboriginal governments will take them away. That’s the reality in the small communities. We can count on our hands how many positions the government has. That’s a reality. There’s only so much to go around.

Mr. Minister, would you be able to provide that type of solid, regional type of training plan that we can proudly say to our graduates we, as a government, have a plan for you? If you choose to come and work for us, we will take care of you, just like the former Premier of the Northwest Territories spoke at the Teacher Education Program. He said, if you graduate from the Teacher Education Program, we’re going to have a job in one of our schools in our communities; or the Nursing Program, students who go to the Aurora College Nursing Program. We’re going to put you in one of our communities, if you choose to, or work at Stanton Hospital. I’m looking forward to that type of result from this Minister and his staff in the life of this government, so I can go back to the Sahtu, speak at the graduation ceremony and say that we prepared that and we have a strategy that will work. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I hear the Member loud and clear. The Regional Recruitment Strategy is one of the things that we have been talking about to start addressing these particular challenges. We are talking about on-the-job training and other opportunities for youth, but not just youth, people who are interested in becoming employees of the Government of the Northwest Territories.

For students, there is a significant amount out there and I think Education, Culture and Employment does provide some fantastic student loans that will help individuals fund their way through college or university. But when individuals come back, we’ve already had internship programs to put youth/returning students in jobs to give them an opportunity to consolidate their learning on the job, which will give them the skills they need to apply on any job they wish to apply on in the future. We’ve had some pretty good successes with the

Internship Program. We want to continue to run the Internship Program.

We’ve also been very, very proactive and working really hard to hire summer students when they come back. This past year was the highest number of students we ever hired. I say that with caution, obviously, because we can’t guarantee that we’ll always be able to get the same number of students. Money and work does play a factor and it’s going to get tougher and tougher to increase those numbers, but we’ll work as hard as we can to employ as many students as we can reasonably hire. That’s a great opportunity for students to consolidate some of their learning, develop some skills that will be useful when they are applying for jobs in the future.

I talked already about the Regional Recruitment Strategy and some of the on-the-job training programs that are there for both non-statutory as well as statutory jobs. These are all things that I think can really help individuals who may lack an education but have the ability to do work and specific work. I’ll give you an example. Many, many years ago, one of my first jobs in the Government of the Northwest Territories was an on-the-job training program, an affirmative action on-the-job training program. By developing profiles and strict training plans and double filling positions with Aboriginal candidates, we were graduating 30, 34 Aboriginal candidates into meaningful high-end jobs on an annual basis. We had an 84 percent success rate. We know it will work. I think it’s time for us to look at that model again.

I want to ask the Minister to look at the overall recruitment in the boards and agencies and, again, look at our region as the efforts. We need to put strong directive efforts to our boards and regions to hire the people who are qualified, who can go through this program and go through some programs so that our people in the region, vis-à-vis Aboriginal people, can be in program manager positions or higher, other than just being a front desk receptionist or administrative assistant. That is not good with me in my region.

We need to have people who can do the job and who are qualified or can be, like you said, trained on the job. That’s a complaint from me for my region. Too many boards pass over a lot of people for whatever reason. We need to be somewhat flexible to say this is a good candidate, maybe like a diamond in the rough. We have to polish some things. That’s the challenge we have and I think the Minister is aware of that.

So for us to be prepared for devolution and other issues we need to work on in the Sahtu, we really need to…(inaudible)…

…(inaudible)…with strategy, it will include all the health authorities and the education authorities. I hear the Member’s comment that we don’t want to just target people for some entry-level jobs, but I don’t think we should forget those jobs as well. Some individuals can get into some of these entry-level jobs, and through hard work, perseverance and taking opportunities as they come, they can advance up through an organization to fairly high levels. Succession planning is important, and sometimes starting at an entry level and working your way up is reality, but we do have to recognize that there are people out there who are probably ready for some more senior jobs or middle-level jobs that aren’t getting those opportunities and we have to find ways to create those opportunities.

Like I said, I’m looking forward to the information we’re going to get from the Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee. I’m looking forward to some of the work that’s being done on the Regional Recruitment Strategy. I’m looking forward to taking that to committee and having some discussions on that and how we can move forward. As I indicated, we’re going to be moving forward and bringing that to committee prior to business planning so it can help inform the next round of business planning. I’m looking forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the House.

Thank you for the comments and I look forward to working with you as we try to address this situation over the coming years.

Madam Chair, can we take a five-minute break?

I believe we’ve almost completed general comments, so if I can just confirm that we can take a break. Nobody further on my list. Are there any further general comments? Are we agreed that we are concluded general comments?