Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to start off, as well, by commending the department on their award for Canada’s Best Diversity Employer for the second year in a row. Good job on that.

With that being said, there are a lot of initiatives that have been happening since the onset of this government and one I’m pretty interested in hearing more information about – maybe we can get into detail or have further briefing notes – on the initiative for the Regional Recruitment Plan. I refer to it as the 80/20 plan, 80 percent salary and 20 percent training for any of our residents of the Northwest Territories that want to get into the public service. I want to know how that’s rolling out, how that’s been brought forward to the general public of the Northwest Territories and whether or not that was something that was discussed at the career fair in Ottawa or discussed in the regional open houses with Human Resources.

Other things that the Minister and his staff are well aware of are some of the things that have been brought up in this House this past week and last week. One in particular was job descriptions. Time and time again I have heard from constituents who have applied on jobs and didn’t get an interview, then seeing the job being posted again and wondering how come it wasn’t filled. There is an employee who wants a job but seeing some of these job postings being time and again without any filling of those positions. They want to know what’s the write-up in terms of standardized job descriptions, how they’re written. Mainly when we talk to post-secondary students trying to get into the job system, a lot of these job descriptions are asking for years of experience when we know full well that our post-secondary students are making the commitment to go to school. When they’re finished, they are caught in a catch-22 situation where they can’t get a job because we’re asking for years of experience in the field that they specialize in and got educated in. I think that needs to be addressed moving forward.

Getting into the vacant positions, news to me – and the Minister made comment to this yesterday in the House – that some jobs are deliberately left vacant. We can get into that in detail, but I want to put it down here for the record that that is concerning because if we have jobs that are averaging about $100,000 a year, that is money that we approved in this House and those are being left vacant.

Another program I wanted to touch base on was the PeopleSoft program, a good program to work with all our public service employees within the government system. I would like an update on some of the trends, some of the things we are seeing with PeopleSoft and even though we did get the award, how can we still better the system, working with our employees throughout the Northwest Territories.

Some concerns that are very common within my region and the communities is the ROE, record of employment, that some people are seeking. In some cases, I’ve heard six months for something to

get done. I know there has been some concern from some constituents in our regional office that the staff in our regional office might be understaffed or overworked, one or the other. It does need to be fixed because people are having a hard time getting their records of employment when leaving their department. In that case, just leaving the department itself, there has to be a one point entry system when an employee from the GNWT wants to leave and get everything straightened out so they can move on to their next job or their next career. In some cases, whether it’s moving from sick leave or just a leave of absence or a transfer of some type, sometimes the paperwork and the working between the headquarters and the regional offices can be confusing for the individual and actually can even lead to prolonged stress leave as well. There have been some cases that I’ve heard within Inuvik.

The direct appointments, as a GNWT employee in a previous career, I did see some shuffling of direct appointments within some departments that were a cause of concern not only with me but people that were in the departments throughout the NWT as well. So making sure that any direct appointments are communicated with the department, with committee members, with the individuals that are in the ridings so that people don’t come to us, as MLAs, wanting explanations why a certain person got a direct appointment when there are other people that are qualified for the position in the community.

Also, I wanted to talk about the Safe Disclosure Policy. I think in our last update we heard that there weren’t any updates in the Safe Disclosure Policy. So how that’s rolling out and if we’re continuing to move forward on how we’re going to continue to implement that program and how we can get that information out a little bit more.

Those are just some general comments that I wanted to bring forth with the department, but I know it’s a challenge trying to manage all the vacant jobs, trying to get individuals into the positions that we’d like them to have. I’ve seen it working in the departments that I’ve worked with in the past and seen that this level brings a whole new insight. I appreciate the hard work that’s going on within the departments, but obviously there are still some concerns and, really, I do support the initiative of the and really want to see how that works out. I think that’s a great opportunity to make some changes and look at job descriptions that will make it easier for our northern residents to enter the public service system if we want to put in this Regional Recruitment Plan, but we’re still kind of not allowing our guys to get in there. So what’s the use of having it when we’re still writing job descriptions for years of experience when it’s not there? It’s kind of a holdback of trying to get our people into the system.

So just some general comments. I know these questions can be brought forth further through briefings or when we get into detail or brought into the House, but I’ll leave it up to the Minister if he wants to answer now. Thank you, Madam Chair.