Northern job opportunities continue to be denied to the everyday Northerner. Hardworking Northerners want these opportunities, so again I’m saying this not because I am frustrated but I can tell you that they’re frustrated. They’re frustrated because they hear about this job fair in Ottawa, but they are saying to me, why didn’t they do the whistle stops all throughout the Northwest Territories first? Does it mean we can’t go to Ottawa to look for special skills, certain types of hard areas to hire? Absolutely not. It doesn’t mean that. We should show Northerners we care about them first. What it does demonstrate is we think about them second or maybe even third.

In the Northwest Territories we’re now at an 8.2 percent unemployment rate. That isn’t just a 10-year high, that is a 13-year high. We have something to celebrate there I am sure.

I would like to point out the fact that yesterday we heard that there are 1,150 vacancies on the books with the Government of the Northwest Territories, yes, for various reasons, but that still represents 20 percent of our public service workforce. Am I worried? Yes. Is the public concerned? Absolutely. What it does is show people and certainly causes them to wonder: how does the government operate, missing 20 percent of their workforce?

We hear that the government is doing everything they can to fill the 571 vacancies. I can tell you the public is doing everything they can to find those 571 job postings. If you go to the website, as I said yesterday, all you see is about 100. So where are the rest, almost 470-some jobs? Are they being saved for the who’s who, the friend’s friends? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Nothing is telling me that these jobs are open for Northerners to apply on. One hundred sixty-one dormant jobs, as pointed out by the Minister. Dormant what? Where? When? How long? Where has this money been going?

We just know that approximately $57 million of human resource money is sitting there, slushing around, waiting for opportunity. Not even the mention of the missing gap of the 400 jobs when you add all of these things together, and they say, well, don’t worry, they are transfer assignments, they are holding, et cetera, et cetera.

Long story short is, is this confusing? Absolutely. Is the government doing anything to get to the bottom of this? Apparently very little. When we hear that departments leave certain jobs vacant to meet their

goals, what about the Legislative Assembly goals? They are being forgotten. Thank you very much.