Thank you, Mr. Chair. Prior to becoming an MLA I worked in Human Resources within the Government of the Northwest Territories for almost 13 years and in that time I participated in many staffing actions. I was the lead staffing officer on many staffing actions. I worked on many, many labour relations issues and I worked on a number of duty to accommodate issues.

This legislation that is before you is dealing with individuals where we have a duty and a legal obligation to accommodate employees who have either been laid off or have medical issues, that we have to work with them to find a way to keep them in the public service.

This clause, this change is very troubling, because when we’re trying to accommodate individuals, when we have a legal obligation to work with our employees to find them meaningful employment in these situations, we have to have all options available to us as a government, absolutely.

When I worked on duty to accommodate – and I know this is true today – the obvious first step is to look at vacant positions that the individual might be suitable for. You want those individuals to go into those because we want to employ them as much as possible. Sometimes there aren’t direct or obvious lineups, so we have to look at all options.

In certain situations, individuals give us much heads-up that they are planning to retire. I’ve had individuals approach me when I was a staffing officer and say, hey, I’m 55, I want out of here. But we need to work with somebody to make sure that we help them get the skills they need or do some succession planning to bring them in place.

In these situations where we’re talking about putting someone in a position that’s filled, what we’re talking about is individuals have almost always identified themselves, almost always have indicated that they’re leaving and are hoping to be involved in the succession planning or development of individuals. This gives us a tool to work with our employees, work with our bargaining unit, the UNW, work with all parties to find reasonable and appropriate means to move people around in the public service when we have a duty to accommodate.

If you take out the word “vacant” or, rather, insert the word “vacant,” it means our ability to accommodate is going to be significantly reduced. We are going to lose our ability to work with those employees. We’re going to lose the ability to find meaningful employment for some of our employees.

I understand the desire. I have to say this is going to significantly limit our ability to work with the employees that I have heard people say they want to protect. We want to work with our employees; we

need to work with our employees and there must be options. Removing this or inserting this is taking away reasonable options that have worked, and will continue to work, in good faith with our bargaining unit, our employees and our professionals. So I will be voting against this and I will be happy to stand up and oppose this.