This is page numbers 3557 – 3584 of the Hansard for the 17th Assembly, 5th Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was fund.

Topics

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There’s a reason I keep saying traditional and discovery math and I’ll leave that up for the Cabinet to figure out. So we work with the number provided by the Minister, which is 1,150, we minus the 571 they call it actively pursuing jobs, we also minus the 161 jobs that the Minister says, well, they’re vacant or dormant, we don’t know what’s happening with them, that still leaves us 418 jobs on the table. We

have 20 percent of our government unstaffed and certainly funded.

So where are those human resource dollars going? Who is spending them and who is providing the direction on how that money is being spent? If it’s not through the Legislature itself, it must be the bureaucracy deciding where human resources are being spent, overriding the will of the Legislature. Can the Minister answer that? Thank you.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

The departments manage their own human resources. They do it using the vacant positions. Sometimes they maintain a home position for an employee that may be under an assignment. So that home position would be considered vacant. They may need other priorities that need to be met by not just by the Assembly but also the department priorities and they use the position by filling some casual positions to meet the mandate. They support other positions that are required, other priorities that are required and also sometimes if the department had some vacant positions, they may keep the positions vacant if they felt that if they’re filling the positions immediately could create a cost overrun in the budget. Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.

Frederick Blake Jr.

Frederick Blake Jr. Mackenzie Delta

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s been just over three months since we’ve had a commitment to have RCMP overnighting in Tsiigehtchic. So I’d like to ask the Minister, how many times have the RCMP overnighted in the community of Tsiigehtchic since our last session? Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Blake. The Minister of Justice, Mr. Ramsay.

David Ramsay

David Ramsay Kam Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The detachment commander in Fort McPherson has met with the band council and the SAO in Tsiigehtchic twice in December. We continue to work out arrangements for RCMP officers to overnight in the community of Tsiigehtchic and our hope is that they would be there eight days a month. We continue to work out the logistics on exactly how that’s going to happen. We’ve identified accommodations, I believe. So the details are just being worked out today.

Frederick Blake Jr.

Frederick Blake Jr. Mackenzie Delta

I’d just like to ask the Minister, when can the community expect to have the RCMP overnighting in that community? Thank you.

David Ramsay

David Ramsay Kam Lake

If the details can be worked out, it should happen. Hopefully by March we can have RCMP officers overnighting in the community of Tsiigehtchic. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Frederick Blake Jr.

Frederick Blake Jr. Mackenzie Delta

Many of the community residents in the community of Tsiigehtchic would like to see more of a presence from the RCMP, so I’d like to ask the Minister, will he ensure more of a presence in the community of Tsiigehtchic? Thank you.

David Ramsay

David Ramsay Kam Lake

In addition to looking at having RCMP officers overnight in the community of Tsiigehtchic, we’re also looking at the establishment of a contact location in the community of Tsiigehtchic so that community members are aware when the RCMP are on patrol in the community and they have a place where they can meet and bring any concerns that they might have to the RCMP that are on patrol in the community of Tsiigehtchic. We do look forward to the success of that. We’ve identified policing priorities for last year. We’re looking right now to establish the policing priorities for the community of Tsiigehtchic for the upcoming year.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.

Alfred Moses

Alfred Moses Inuvik Boot Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to follow up with questions to the Minister of Human Resources here. It’s been brought up many times with the vacancies that we have within our government system. I talked to people back home and some of the concerns they bring up is they constantly see a job posting but it never gets a hiring.

I’d like to ask the Minister, for all the GNWT jobs that we have in the Northwest Territories, who writes the job descriptions? Because we’ve also heard with the college students that a lot of these job descriptions ask for two, three, four, five years’ experience. That already takes them out of the equation and doesn’t help them out when we’re trying to get our own northern workforce in.

I’d like to ask the Minister, who writes these job descriptions that go out into the public?

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Beaulieu.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The job descriptions are written by the department that will be employing that specific person once the person is hired.

Alfred Moses

Alfred Moses Inuvik Boot Lake

Going off some of my colleagues’ questions here, because we have all these job descriptions out there and we also have job postings that aren’t being met. You look on the website and there’s, I don’t know how many there are, but I know they’re not all being filled. We talk about the main estimates and the budget process where we approve these funded jobs for the government and the departments but they’re not being filled.

I’d like to ask the Minister, and he already alluded to this earlier, but what happens to these dollars that we approve for these job positions? What happens to the dollars within the departments that we go to the positions and they’re not being filled?

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

As I indicated earlier, there are various uses for the money that goes in with the positions. The departments still have the mandate to perform the tasks that are assigned to them as a department, so sometimes when they’re unable to fill a job and after a job description is completed, and the job is advertised over the period and they are, for some reason or another, unable to fill a job, then some of that money would go to a term position perhaps. It could be going to a casual and also has been used for relief workers. Sometimes when you don’t have all of the positions filled then there’s a requirement to pay overtime, so sometimes there is overtime paid, and sometimes the departments also go through a process, I guess, well, all departments go through a process or passive restraint and sometimes the management of the human resources is part of the passive restraint.

Alfred Moses

Alfred Moses Inuvik Boot Lake

The Minister mentioned that for different reasons jobs are vacant and the money is used for other areas.

With some of the challenges that we have within our departments possibly filling the position, would the Minister agree or would the Minister allude to our positions within some of our departments deliberately left vacant so dollars could be used for other areas. Can the Minister please confirm or allude to that question?

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Yes, I can confirm that that does occur to meet other priorities, to support other positions that are required and also to take pressure off budget to avoid over-expenditures.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.

Alfred Moses

Alfred Moses Inuvik Boot Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. He did confirm that some positions are deliberately left vacant to offset some of the O and M operations stuff, so why don’t we see those operations in the budget process right from the start and not put these positions out that we agree to? It’s ridiculous how we approve this budget here.

My last question is: Based on the job descriptions that departments write, how does the Minister or what is his goal or his strategy to get our educated students that have no job experience into the job system and into public service knowing that the job descriptions ask for two years’ experience plus?

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

With the students that are trying to gain experience, the Government of the Northwest Territories uses a couple of methods to give the students experience. One is the Summer Student Program. We try to track some of the

students that are going to school down south and we try to employ them during the summer giving them some experience each year. Also, at the end of that, when some of the students are finished school and want to get into a job to gain some experience, we use the Internship Program to bring students into the GNWT.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.

Daryl Dolynny

Daryl Dolynny Range Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement today. When you do a search result on our GNWT website under Fiscal Responsibility Policy, you’re whisked away to a two-page pamphlet with the good looking Mr. Floyd Roland’s picture on it. Now, I like simplicity in design as it makes the complex more palatable to work with; however, with our current debt wall and with this guiding policy consistently being used to prop up our financial future, I must ask, where is the meat on this bone? My questions today are for the Minister of Finance.

It appears that the fate of our financial future lies in a two-page document which appears to be a bit dated. Can the Minister indicate to the House here what recognized authority or professional body approved the parameters of the Fiscal Responsibility Policy?

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.

Michael Miltenberger

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The very experienced and capable staff in the Department of Finance, vetted through the appropriate processes and signed off by FMB.