I do not believe that these were direct appointments. Usually we fill direct appointments for a few reasons, one being that it’s a development opportunity for a person that has a priority 1 status in the government. We also offer those types of development opportunities to individuals that have priority 2 status in the Northwest Territories.

When we direct appoint somebody that has a priority 3 status, which I would assume all of these five people have, then it would be a position that we were unable to fill. Perhaps a scenario could be that the job was advertised two or three times without success. So if we’re able to find someone that fits the credentials from the South, it is possible that the individual could go through a direct appointment. That’s possible, but I believe that these individuals went through our job bank and the talent pool, applied on jobs that they saw were available at the time and got those through a competitive process.