Thank you very much. I just wanted to get right into the financial shared services and amalgamating people into the financial shared services. I’ve been trying to find some documentation on this from the last time the committee had an update on it. I think it was just before our election in 2011, so I don’t know if P and P have had an update on where financial shared services is going.

The original intent, of course, was the logical thing to do was when we split the Department of ITI and ENR and there were some similar functions so we just kept shared services. I’ve spoken earlier in the House about how a seemingly innocuous group of government employees started gaining momentum and now we’ve got almost like this fairly significant group of people in our government. I don’t know if they’re going on their own mandate or they’re prepared to give committee an update on where financial shared services are going.

Talking with some people, this is how we used to do things about three governments ago, 12 years ago or even more, then we’ve done other things and now we’re amalgamating back to the old Department of Finance way of doing things. People are saying we’re going backwards by creating this again, so I want to get the Minister’s thoughts on that.

As well, the reason that came to my attention is because employees were telling me that when they were considering this two years ago – because it’s been in the works since we got re-elected in 2011 – is they went out to all the departments and said, look, we’re amalgamating our services – if that’s the word they’re using – no employees will be impacted, yet in Fort Simpson I’ve got two employees potentially losing their jobs.

As well, when they created these new positions in shared services, once again they’re doing the same thing to employees that they’re doing to our public, is over-qualifying those positions and giving no regard to years of service. So we might potentially lose two long-term service employees in Fort Simpson, not to mention the other areas because I understand there are other impacted employees and frustrated employees. They’re Aboriginal and they’re long-term Northerners and they’re frustrated internally as well. My fight was always trying to get people in there, but when they’re in there, these are opportunities for growth, these positions, they got sold to the employees as opportunities for growth, yet one of my constituents has been asked to go backwards. The person had 10 years of services in the same type of job, offered the same position in shared services at a retraining level, which means

after six months they’re not even sure they have that job, and it’s kind of like a blow. Somebody who’s growing in government, trying hard, there every day, knows the system, yet when there’s an opportunity for growth – and this person is Aboriginal – they make them go backwards. I don’t think we should be doing that to our own employees, Mr. Chair. Thank you.