Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There has been a lot of discussion in this House about GNWT jobs as of late. How many are being created through devolution? Are they being decentralized? Are small communities getting their fair share? Certainly we’ve heard a fair bit about the advertisement about these mystery jobs out there. How many are truly vacant and certainly where is the money going?

I recognize, as do all my colleagues recognize, how important jobs are to Northerners. I wish this government would wake up and smell the coffee and stop hiding all of those jobs. On that particular point, we often talk about how important jobs are and not keeping them hidden from the public. Now I’m going to specifically use my Member’s statement today to talk about direct appointments.

As a Cabinet, we all know they have the prerogative, and they certainly reserve the right from time to time, to appoint someone to a particular position without running a competition. We all know a competition typically is based on merit, but Cabinet occasionally uses that in their favour of vaulting a particular anointed candidate to a particular job position.

I don’t take issue with the occasional prerogative of using that authority, it’s how often they do it and how often we don’t know they do it where I have greater concern. When we wonder about these situations of who jumped into and has been vaulted into these coveted GNWT posts, we really have no idea.

How do we hold this government accountable when they operate under the cloak of secrecy, the shroud of Cabinet? I say it’s time to pull back the curtain of these direct appointments and allow us to do an accountable job by keeping scrutiny high and intense on this McLeod government. They’re making decisions behind the scenes, as we all know it, but how do we know they’re making them? We just don’t know.

What I’m saying here is, on average, in some years the government appoints 100 direct appointments. We just don’t know how many they make. We have to ask them to table it. We don’t know who they appoint.

It is time that we start publicizing some of these direct appointments, if not every single one of them. Don’t hide behind oh, it’s a small territory. Be proud we have the confidence to appoint these people without competition. Show some courage.

It would be good to know that these people weren’t appointed because of who they were related to or certainly who they know. It would be great to know that they were appointed because of what they knew and what they could do. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.