Mr. Speaker, I have a return to a written question from the Honourable Robert McLeod, Premier, to a question asked by Mr. Hawkins on March 12, 2014, regarding direct appointments. Mr. Hawkins asked for a list of all direct appointments made by the Cabinet of the 17th Assembly, noting the employee’s name, position, community, date of appointment and employing departments.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to advise this House that the Cabinet of the 17th Assembly has recommended 250 individual direct appointments from the beginning of this term to the date of the Member’s question.

Of the 250 recommended appointees, 89 percent of the candidates qualified as affirmative action candidates under the Affirmative Action Policy.

Twenty-one of the direct appointments are term appointments to positions in the Ministers’ offices which will expire after the next general election. Ten of the 250 appointments were to deputy minister of associate deputy minister positions and six were to administrative positions supporting specific deputy ministers.

Mr. Speaker, later today, at the appropriate time, I will table information on the remaining 213 appointments. Information on these appointments is organized by department and indicates the factors considered, as per the publicly released Executive Council Guidelines for Submissions Recommending Direct Appointments for each appointment. However, Mr. Speaker, the information will not identify the appointees by name, position or community. The government has determined that disclosing the names of individuals recommended for appointment, or information that could easily be used to identify those individuals would constitute unreasonable invasion to privacy under our Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

Thank you.