Thank you, Madam Chair. My comments are going to be general and we’ll go through them in the detail. I do want to acknowledge the hard work by the Department of Human Resources to achieve the level of recognition across Canada for the second year in a row. I know there is lots of creativity from the staff members at the department and their efforts are certainly demonstrated by being recognized as an employer to be reckoned with across Canada, even though it’s a small jurisdiction. I want to offer my congratulations for the hard work of the people in that department.
Now, while I am saying that here, I am going to the budget. I have wanted to follow up with some of the comments of my colleagues on this side here in regards to the department.
The communities in the Sahtu, just doing some research here in all levels of education, because that is where this department needs to be somewhat focused on in our small communities. The Minister is making comment to having maximized our northern workforce and filling them with the choice of employer, which would be the government in our small communities. Just seeing the Aurora College 2013-2014 enrollments by campus, community and programs in the Sahtu from Adult Literacy Basic Education to Underground Mining to Observer Communication Training Programs, Heavy Equipment, Bachelor of Education, Business Administration, Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Community Health Representative, Personal Support Workers, a whole bunch. The point is, we have in this year 81 people who have enrolled in one of these programs at one of our three campuses. I wanted to state very clearly and strongly that the department not only go into the Thebacha Campus, the Aurora Campus, the Yellowknife Campus, our regional Aurora College learning centres and present a dynamic presentation to our students as a choice of an employer.
We need to look more strongly at pointing to our campuses and Aurora College and offering the same type of presentations that were done in Ottawa and bring them into our communities and encourage students to get their education, to look at the number of opportunities.
We spoke earlier about the number of vacancies that need to be filled within our government, but also to talk about the uniqueness of recruiting potential employees, recruiting our own people, giving them the first opportunity. That should be our priority: putting our people to work, number one, from our communities.
Earlier this week I talked about the potential graduations just in my region, not the Northwest Territories, just what I have here. Potentially we could be graduating 47 students this year. What are the department’s plans to go into the high schools and look at long-term employment or career opportunities for our graduates? According to the numbers from Education, Culture and Employment, next year we will have 50 potential graduates and the year after, all things going well, we’ll have 59 graduates. Even with a three-year plan, what are we doing – this is just the Sahtu, I’m not talking about other regions – to look at tracking these students? Looking at going into the schools, what vacancies that are hard to fill, give the students an opportunity to say I could become an employee of the Government of the Northwest Territories. More
importantly, have the department work with them to improve their potential to get those jobs in the government, encourage them. Work with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to start tracking them. Start tracking the Grade 12s right now. Are they going to the Norman Wells Learning Centre? Are they going to Inuvik? Are they going to Yellowknife? Start tracking them. There are a lot of kids in our small communities.
A few years ago in Colville Lake, I went with one of the board of governors and did a tour with Aurora College. Even in Colville Lake, there’s a young person there in Grade 7 or 8 who wanted to be a nurse or a doctor. We’ve got to use this opportunity and the initiatives I have heard from the Minister. How do we give hope to a young person in Colville Lake and say, yes, you can be a nurse, here’s your opportunity and this is what we can do for you. Start tracking them.
We must inspire and give support to the young people in our communities all across the North and believe in our students.
I need to make mention that there are some unique challenges in our small communities and our large centres that we need to be aware of. The advertisement about using the modern means of communication, sometimes that doesn’t really work. Even in Tulita, the News/North comes out here on Monday. In Tulita, we get it on Thursday or Friday if we’re lucky. So it doesn’t quite jibe. For us, we’re getting the message late.
In Fort Good Hope, only 38 percent of homes have Internet access. That was in 2008. I’m not too sure if that’s been improved. Not everybody can afford Internet access. We have to be somewhat flexible in our communities.
Like my colleague Ms. Bisaro, there are some details I could go into but I will save that for another day. I do want to say that the opportunity for us is now in that the excitement I see around the Aboriginal recruitment senior managers in our regions and communities needs to be strengthened by seeing some results. What is the goal of the department?
In my region, we have the workforce represent the people it’s working for. I want to see that increased. What’s it now in the Sahtu region? What’s the opportunity for some of our managers who now can be offered an opportunity to take on-the-job training to become directors, superintendents, even assistant and deputy ministers? We have to look at that.
There are students in Fort Smith right now who want to do more than just administrative work or fieldwork and we need to encourage our health boards and educational boards to start moving in that direction, provide the opportunities. I’d like to see what type of opportunities. Given the numbers
I’ve given you just on enrolment of students in these various post-secondary institutions and our high schools, we need to be very creative and forceful. Thank you, Mr. Chair.