Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up to my colleague, Mr. Hawkins from Yellowknife Centre, his questions to the Premier today on direct appointments. Recently I put in a request to research asking for a department-by-department count of recent, in the last year, direct appointments. We talk about the loss of the population in the Northwest Territories, about our students who are born and raised, educated in and after they’ve lived here, going south. We have medical doctors who have gone from the Northwest Territories, been trained, and could not beat their way through the bureaucratic red tape to get a job in the public service in the Northwest Territories. I can tell you of case after case after case.
I think we should be using the direct appointment tool more. I think that if there are priority 1 and priority 2 hire candidates that are looking at getting to work in our public service, they get vetted by this Cabinet. If we don’t trust this Cabinet to vet those direct appointments, we’ve got a bigger problem than direct appointments.
I am sick and tired of hearing of the children and the people who have come here and who have been born and raised here, who have invested their life in building the North, and their kids cannot get jobs in the public service of this government.
I’d like to ask the Premier if he will expand on the direct appointment policy, which is decided on by this elite group here across the floor, and make sure that more of our Northerners get to work in our public service and they do not go south so our population continues to decline.