Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, have a number of comments, and answers can come later on. I may ask further questions when we get to detail, but I just have some observations and some comments that I’d like make comparing last year to this year and so on.
I’d like to comment, first of all, about the Workforce Planning Strategy. I’m really glad that we have that and that it’s still being worked on. One of the things that we noticed, particularly in the last budget or the
budget before that, was the number of retirees. I shouldn’t say number of retirees. The number of employees we have who are close to becoming retirees. We have a large number of very senior employees who are going to be retiring in the next 10 years. I believe that was two years ago. I’d like to know, at some point, from the department on how the Workforce Planning Strategy is dealing with that particular problem. Are we succeeding or do we still have a fairly large bulge of knowledgeable, competent and senior people that we’re going to be losing in the next 10 to 15 or 5 to 15 years?
The accommodating people who are returning to work, I know that the department is working on that. I also know that there are difficulties sometimes with certain individuals when they wish to return to work and for whatever reason a particular department can’t accommodate them or won’t accommodate them. There’s obviously differing opinions between the employee and the department in some cases. I’d like to know how the Department of Human Resources assists another department in accommodating somebody who is returning to work. I think we have an officer who’s doing that, and I’d like to know whether or not that is successful at this point or if the department feels that there needs to be some change made there.
There’s been some comment already about the career fair in Ottawa and the open houses that are being held here in the North, and I guess my question is more to what is the content of the open houses. What are we trying to accomplish with an open house that we maybe could better accomplish with a career fair? I stopped into the career fair because I happened to be in Ottawa and it was really well attended and I think it was an extremely well visited venue, but why are we doing open houses in the South? Should we not also be doing career fairs here? I’d appreciate hearing what the department thinks about that.
One of the things that struck me when I took a quick look at yesterday’s federal budget address and some of the elements of that budget is that there’s going to be a fairly large impact on federal employees’ benefits and benefits of retirees. The public service, I’ve lost the name of the organization that provides us with our benefits, but retirees, for instance, are going to be paying double for their benefits than they are currently. NWT employees are under the same plan, so I would like to know if the department knows at this point or maybe they need to find out, but how are GNWT employees under the same plan as the federal employees and retirees under the same plan as federal employees, how are they going to be affected by these announcements in the federal budget.
WSCC costs were a really big issue a year ago when we discussed the budget, and I would be
interested in knowing whether or not we have seen a decrease in our WSCC costs. I know initially there was. We were advised by the previous Minister that there was some decrease in our WSCC costs, but has that continued to go down or have we gone down and we’re now at a plateau.
I’m pleased that we a have a Youth Strategy that the department is working on. I think this was raised in the House within the last few days, but one of the issues that young people have in trying to get hired is they have knowledge in a particular field. They graduate from school but they have no experience, and they’re in a catch-22 because they don’t get hired because they don’t have experience, and if they don’t get hired then they can’t ever get the experience. My question to the department is whether or not you would consider hiring someone with no experience but with the qualifications that you’re looking for and give them a year, six months, a year, two years under, say, a mentorship system or program to gain the experience that is necessary to move them from the very junior position that they’re in up to where the position that we actually have advertised for and need them for.
When people leave our public service, I think we do exit interviews. I would appreciate that being confirmed if we do exit interviews, and if we do, do we have any data on why people are leaving the public service and how is that data used.
There has been a lot of talk about increasing the number of people in the NWT. It was certainly a part of the budget address and there is a plan which the government is going to put forward. I mentioned the other day that there seems to be a disconnect or something, but there seems to be a problem with us hiring some Northerners back. We have Northerners who want to come home, who have the education, who have the skills, and for whatever reason the hiring process seems to get delayed. They give up and they take a job in the south as opposed to coming back here. I don’t know if it’s something that the Department of HR can do something about or if it is something that HR can in some way educate other departments, because I realize generally these things are being done through other departments and HR doesn’t actually do all the hiring. Whatever HR can do to make changes across our system to ensure that when we’ve got a Northerner who’s coming back that we actually smooth the way to hire them as opposed to putting obstacles in place.
Lastly, I must comment on the change that we use in advertising our positions in GNWT. There’s been quite a bit of comment about it in the media and so on, but I am concerned that we’re not reaching the people we need to reach by only advertising on-line or only putting our jobs out on-line. We are advertising in the paper. I appreciate that. But when the ads are in the paper there are no jobs listed. It
simply says come and work for the GNWT and references you to a website. That’s fine for people who are computer savvy who are in a jurisdiction where they’ve got easy access to the Internet and fast speeds, but I would think that it’s probably going to affect our residents to a certain extent, certainly in the smaller communities, and some people in the larger centres who are living in a poverty situation and can’t afford Internet. That’s a concern for me. I am concerned that that strategy is going to have a negative impact on our hiring. I think it’s going to affect a small number of people, but I think any time we negatively affect people who might want to come and work for us or we restrict the number of people who might apply for jobs, I think that’s a bad thing.
That’s it. I just have comments, and if answers can come later, I’m all for that. Thank you.