Thank you very much. General comments. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My comments are going to be general and we’ll go through them in the detail. I do want to acknowledge the hard work by the Department of Human Resources to achieve the level of recognition across Canada for the second year in a row. I know there is lots of creativity from the staff members at the department and their efforts are certainly demonstrated by being recognized as an employer to be reckoned with across Canada, even though it’s a small jurisdiction. I want to offer my congratulations for the hard work of the people in that department.

Now, while I am saying that here, I am going to the budget. I have wanted to follow up with some of the comments of my colleagues on this side here in regards to the department.

The communities in the Sahtu, just doing some research here in all levels of education, because that is where this department needs to be somewhat focused on in our small communities. The Minister is making comment to having maximized our northern workforce and filling them with the choice of employer, which would be the government in our small communities. Just seeing the Aurora College 2013-2014 enrollments by campus, community and programs in the Sahtu from Adult Literacy Basic Education to Underground Mining to Observer Communication Training Programs, Heavy Equipment, Bachelor of Education, Business Administration, Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Community Health Representative, Personal Support Workers, a whole bunch. The point is, we have in this year 81 people who have enrolled in one of these programs at one of our three campuses. I wanted to state very clearly and strongly that the department not only go into the Thebacha Campus, the Aurora Campus, the Yellowknife Campus, our regional Aurora College learning centres and present a dynamic presentation to our students as a choice of an employer.

We need to look more strongly at pointing to our campuses and Aurora College and offering the same type of presentations that were done in Ottawa and bring them into our communities and encourage students to get their education, to look at the number of opportunities.

We spoke earlier about the number of vacancies that need to be filled within our government, but also to talk about the uniqueness of recruiting potential employees, recruiting our own people, giving them the first opportunity. That should be our priority: putting our people to work, number one, from our communities.

Earlier this week I talked about the potential graduations just in my region, not the Northwest Territories, just what I have here. Potentially we could be graduating 47 students this year. What are the department’s plans to go into the high schools and look at long-term employment or career opportunities for our graduates? According to the numbers from Education, Culture and Employment, next year we will have 50 potential graduates and the year after, all things going well, we’ll have 59 graduates. Even with a three-year plan, what are we doing – this is just the Sahtu, I’m not talking about other regions – to look at tracking these students? Looking at going into the schools, what vacancies that are hard to fill, give the students an opportunity to say I could become an employee of the Government of the Northwest Territories. More

importantly, have the department work with them to improve their potential to get those jobs in the government, encourage them. Work with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to start tracking them. Start tracking the Grade 12s right now. Are they going to the Norman Wells Learning Centre? Are they going to Inuvik? Are they going to Yellowknife? Start tracking them. There are a lot of kids in our small communities.

A few years ago in Colville Lake, I went with one of the board of governors and did a tour with Aurora College. Even in Colville Lake, there’s a young person there in Grade 7 or 8 who wanted to be a nurse or a doctor. We’ve got to use this opportunity and the initiatives I have heard from the Minister. How do we give hope to a young person in Colville Lake and say, yes, you can be a nurse, here’s your opportunity and this is what we can do for you. Start tracking them.

We must inspire and give support to the young people in our communities all across the North and believe in our students.

I need to make mention that there are some unique challenges in our small communities and our large centres that we need to be aware of. The advertisement about using the modern means of communication, sometimes that doesn’t really work. Even in Tulita, the News/North comes out here on Monday. In Tulita, we get it on Thursday or Friday if we’re lucky. So it doesn’t quite jibe. For us, we’re getting the message late.

In Fort Good Hope, only 38 percent of homes have Internet access. That was in 2008. I’m not too sure if that’s been improved. Not everybody can afford Internet access. We have to be somewhat flexible in our communities.

Like my colleague Ms. Bisaro, there are some details I could go into but I will save that for another day. I do want to say that the opportunity for us is now in that the excitement I see around the Aboriginal recruitment senior managers in our regions and communities needs to be strengthened by seeing some results. What is the goal of the department?

In my region, we have the workforce represent the people it’s working for. I want to see that increased. What’s it now in the Sahtu region? What’s the opportunity for some of our managers who now can be offered an opportunity to take on-the-job training to become directors, superintendents, even assistant and deputy ministers? We have to look at that.

There are students in Fort Smith right now who want to do more than just administrative work or fieldwork and we need to encourage our health boards and educational boards to start moving in that direction, provide the opportunities. I’d like to see what type of opportunities. Given the numbers

I’ve given you just on enrolment of students in these various post-secondary institutions and our high schools, we need to be very creative and forceful. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. With that we’ll go to Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to speak on a couple of these items brought forward by the Member, then I’m going to ask the deputy to speak on some specific details. I will ask that she speak specific details on the Youth and Student Strategy and also more elaboration on the career fair.

We do attend other career fairs within the territory, but they are hosted by others. The Department of Education will host career fairs and often when those career fairs are occurring, then Human Resources would come in and piggyback onto their career fair and we would have people there from Human Resources. We’ve attended one in Inuvik and the next one is in Hay River that Education is putting on. We will be attending that as well.

The Member speaks about the group of kids that are in high school and looking at what they wish to do for their careers. I guess just overall the department wants to achieve the same type of things that the Member speaks of, that we’re interested in having Aboriginal people in senior management positions as well.

We have the Aboriginal Management Development Program which was known for the last couple of years as the Superintendent/Associate Director Program. Now we’re looking at the Aboriginal Management Development Program at the management level, so management level, director level, superintendent level. I would say that at some point moving forward, we would probably look at some development at the ADM level and even the DM level in the future.

So this is something that, as Minister, I will be pursuing and making sure that we stay on task to be able to bring Aboriginal senior managers into the fold.

In the Sahtu we have decent numbers for the positions in these communities. The GNWT has about 280 positions in the Sahtu, recognizing that 60 of them are vacant, not 60 of those ones but of the 280 filled positions and 60 vacant positions, about half of those, so about 30 of those positions we are recruiting for. About 15 of those positions, we will be activating. We consider them positions that are inactive and we will look at deleting those from the books so it doesn’t look like there’s a tremendous amount of vacancies sitting there.

In the Sahtu, the numbers look really good. We are really encouraged by the fact that when we fill the positions… Although it’s very difficult. We can fill these positions and then there will be people

leaving, leaving the various departments in the Sahtu as they are right across the territory. This is a number that we work with but we are constantly in the mode of trying to fill positions as a department as we work with the other departments.

With that, Mr. Chairman, with your indulgence, I’d like to ask if the deputy minister could provide a little more detail to the Member.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. We’ll go to Ms. Bassi-Kellett.

Thank you, Ms. Bassi-Kellett. Moving on with general comments, I have Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. After the last response from Ms. Bassi-Kellett, actually she touched on almost everything that I was thinking about talking about. Hmmm, I don’t have any general comments anymore.

I wasn’t aware of some of the work that she’s referred to that was actually going on in the department. As an MLA, I guess on the front lines of dealing with constituents, you do get a lot of concerns raised by people who think that the system doesn’t work for them in terms of getting into the public service. You get concerns from people who are priority 1 hires, who think that the Affirmative Action Policy did not serve their interests in getting hired for a job. You hear concerns from indigenous non-Aboriginal Northerners who feel like the hiring policies didn’t serve their interests. It seems like what we hear, it sounds like kind of everybody is unhappy.

I think what we need to do is get really innovative, really creative and find ways to match the people who want to work in the public service to the jobs. Some of the things, like I said that Ms. Bassi-Kellett just referred to, like internships, I think those are amazing. If it makes them more effective to extend them from one year to two years, then let’s do that. You know, job shadowing. I’m really interested in the Student and Youth. You know, some of the positions – we joked the other day in committee – that have been vacant in the government, we could have put somebody through university now to fill those positions. But it takes that contact, perhaps even at the high school level, in order to create the awareness of the kinds of careers that are available in the public and then help guide people through

the education process so they can ultimately end up where they want to be in a career in the public service at the end of their education. I think that getting into the high schools is a really good idea.

The leadership development, the management services, all of these things are what I classify as creative, innovative programs, ideas, initiatives that serve our purposes. We do have a lot of vacancies and it seems like there are people out there who would like to work, but I think it’s a multi-pronged approach in the sense that I do think we need new people to come to the Northwest Territories. I do think we need to find ways to… It’s a combination of everything. We need to find ways to get our own people from the Northwest Territories involved, as well, and, at the same time, with the backdrop of the representative workforce always as our goal.

I’m encouraged by what I hear. I hope it goes well. I don’t know what to tell people when they say, you know, I’ve gone out, I’ve gone to university, I’ve got an education but I can’t get a job with the government. I don’t know what to say to them. It’s almost like you need an ombudsman or something for those kinds of things, because it’s really difficult.

I know, having been in Cabinet, it’s very difficult for Ministers to get directly involved in personnel issues. A lot of people don’t know that. They think you can go to the Minister and the Minister can just, you know, drill down into wherever the problem is and fix it. No, that’s not the way it goes. Even as MLAs, our hands are kind of tied because we don’t have the inside knowledge or the detailed knowledge of how to advise these people sometimes. Other MLAs must find that, too, that you do have constituents come to you and they say, oh, I’ve been blacklisted, or I can’t get an interview, and they tell you these things and it really is sad, but it’s very hard to ever clearly define these things because a lot of things are wrapped around personnel and interviews and those processes are confidential. Some of the positions are unionized and there’s union involvement in them, as well, so it is kind of a complex field. HR in general is a complex field, especially nowadays, and I think it continues to get more complex.

Let me draw the comparison to what we have in the Department of Health and Social Services with the system navigator where we have issues with medical travel and different issues, and we can actually refer those to somebody. There’s nothing wrong with going to the Minister’s office, but ultimately, at the end of the day, we do know that the Minister, you know… I mean, there’s a point where Cabinet can get involved and there can be direct appointments, and there are policies at a politician’s disposal to deal with things like that, but ultimately, it’s difficult. I don’t know. This is just a suggestion to throw out there.

If there was some way that we could refer those kinds of concerns to a single desk somewhere where people could tell their story, I guess, because you do hear of situations, and it’s impossible to be everywhere and on top of every hiring event. It’s very, very difficult for the department to do that, and sometimes people’s own agendas do probably come in to play. I mean, let’s just say everybody’s human. Maybe there are incidents where that does happen, but it is frustrating when we, as MLAs, hear of those cases and feel kind of like that our hands are tied because we don’t really have access to, really, the detail or what the issue is.

I’ll just leave it there. Those are my general comments, but just to underscore that we need to be creative. I guess, when I started off in this government, nepotism was a horrible word. You know, hiring friends and family, that was awful, but it is a small territory. I used the example in committee one day of a private company that I know of who were struggling with labour market challenges, and they looked at the children of their existing employees and said why don’t we have a loyalty program and why don’t we target that critical mass of people and why don’t we have a loyalty hiring policy so that the children of our employees can work for our company too? Now, I know you can’t do that in the government, but I’m just saying that there are ways to get creative about hiring Northerners and networking and people who know people who are qualified to do these jobs, and to get that population up where the Minister of Finance wants it and increase it by 2,000 people. We’ve got lots of challenges ahead of us, but I’ll just leave it at that. Thank you. Those are my general comments.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. We’ll go to Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member brings up a lot of really good ideas for us and to add to some of the initiatives that we continue to work on, some of the strategies, some of the frameworks that we put together to bring people, to recruit people and also to retain people. I think some of the ideas would be difficult to do in the GNWT, and I know that the Member only brings that up as an example, but many of these ideas of job shadowing, being creative and innovative and making sure that we have the right jobs out there that can be filled by the individuals out there. Going to high schools and stuff like that and working on career development opportunities is one of the things that we will be working on with the various departments.

I am going to ask for some other detail. If I could ask the deputy to provide a little more detail on some of the other stuff that we’re working on.

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. Bassi-Kellett.

Thank you, Ms. Bassi-Kellett. Moving on with general comments, I have Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that we report progress.

---Carried

Before we rise and report progress I would like to thank our guest today, Ms. Bassi-Kellet, for joining us today. If I could get the Sergeant-at-Arms to please escort our witnesses out of the Chamber.

I will now rise and report progress. Thank you.

Can I have the report of Committee of the Whole, Mr. Dolynny.

Mr. Speaker, your committee has been considering Tabled Document 22-17(5), Northwest Territories Main Estimates 2014-2015, and would like to report progress. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Do I have a seconder? Ms. Bisaro.

---Carried

Item 23, third reading of bills. Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Kam Lake, that Bill 6, An Act to Amend the Medical Care Act, be read for the third time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. To the motion.

Question has been called. Bill 6, An Act to Amend the Medical Care Act, has had third reading.

---Carried

Mr. Clerk, orders of the day.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until Thursday, February 13th , at 1:30 p.m.

---ADJOURNMENT

The House adjourned at 5:22 p.m.