Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. First of all I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t express gratitude for the acknowledgement for the Top Diversity Employer. We’ve been very thrilled about that, as well, to be acknowledged overall as a government.
We’re very, very aware that what we need to do is really do a lot more work to encourage students and youth into the public service. The public service has a lot of exciting work, despite what my kids may think, and there are a lot of really exciting things that are available and opportunities out there. What we know right now, through our Student and Youth Strategy, is that we need to be really encouraging students and youth, people who have their credentials who return home, to really look at opportunities in the public service.
We have internships right now and what we’ve found is that a one-year internship is a fantastic opportunity for a smart, young person to get in and learn some things, and they share their wisdom and enthusiasm with the departments they work for, but one year often isn’t enough of an experience to put on a resume that will get you in the door for a subsequent interview. So what we’re doing with the Student and Youth Strategy is aggressively looking at expanding internships so that when someone comes back home with their education and their credentials, that we can bring them on for a longer period of time and it’s really going to pave the way for them to really see a lot of great experience about being in the public service, build up their resume and enable them. If they don’t stay in that internship or in that particular area, they’ve built up some good credentials to be able to apply elsewhere, hopefully in the public service and we’ll keep them north.
A big part of our Student and Youth Strategy, as well, includes getting in to young people who are in the high schools. Minister Beaulieu has worked with his colleague, the Minister of Education, around looking at ensuring that we can get in with ECE into schools, into high schools, so that we can show the students the interesting and diverse array of opportunities and job opportunities that exist within the public service, and lay the groundwork for students then to really be aware what courses they need to take to graduate high school, have those courses behind them to get into post-secondary to
be able to come back and take advantage of those job opportunities.
We think it’s quite exciting to be able to get young people excited about the opportunities out there. Sometimes people aren’t even aware of what goes on in government and to know that there’s nursing and teaching and wildlife biologists and heavy equipment operators, a huge diversity of things, not just sitting in an office. I think that’s a very important message that we need to deliver a lot more to the young people, so part of our Student and Youth Strategy is collaborating with ECE to make sure we get out and get into the schools to deliver that message about the exciting opportunities that can come.
We see a lot of importance, as well, as we look at not just recruiting into the public service but retaining people. The point that the Member raised about training and developing our existing workforce is something we hold very near and dear. We do know that we have a lot of talent in the GNWT right now. I think Members are quite familiar with our statistic that we do have 32 percent representation of Aboriginal employees within the public service. Frankly, given the competing interests that are out there that there are so many different opportunities for a lot of our smart young people right now, we’re quite pleased to have kept that 32 percent, if I can be a little bit flippant about it. I’m sorry; I don’t mean to be flip on that.
What we do find is there are ways to really want to retain and advance people into the public sector. We know that training and development is a very key part of that, so we’re embarking right now on our leadership development training that we’ve done for a long time, which gives people the generic leadership skills that they need to develop, whether they are in the public sector or elsewhere.
We’re also working on the management series, which is very GNWT-focused, the things that somebody needs to know to be a manager and a senior manager within our government. Really very, very fundamental tips and tools, including managing people, working with the financial system we have, our budgeting system, how to write policy papers, et cetera, et cetera, some very hands-on information that’s very important for our people to have.
We know that right now we do have some good statistics in terms of where we’ve gone as a public service and our growth and our maintenance of a representative public service. We’ve made great strides. We clearly have much more work to do and we’re really working on that.
We know that over the past decade, for example, if we’ve stayed at 32 percent Aboriginal employment overall, we’re very proud to be able to note that the number of Aboriginal employees has increased. So the overall public service has gone up, but we’re
employing, over the past 10 years, we can say an increase of almost 330 more Aboriginal people in the GNWT than there were 10 years ago.
We know, as well, that there have been six straight years of increases in the number and percent of senior managers who are Aboriginal in our government, to go from 15 percent six years ago to 20 percent now. That’s the kind of momentum that we really want to try to continue. We know it’s very important to do. As the Minister pointed out, issues and strategies like the Aboriginal Management Development Program are really key on that. As the Minister pointed out, we’ve expanded that beyond the director/superintendent level to also include managers now. We have a lot of work that we’re doing with our Aboriginal Employee Advisory Committee in partnership with them. They give us great advice on things that we need to be doing to make sure that we are able to continue to strive in a number of different ways to ensure that we’re a representative public service. Thank you.