Yes, I do, Madam Chair.

Is

committee agreed?

Please proceed, Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am pleased to present the Department of Human Resources’ main estimates for fiscal year 2014-15.

The department is proposing an operations expenditure budget of $23.6 million. This is a reduction of $18.5 million for 2013-14, a decrease of 44 percent. This reduction is largely the result of the transfer of employee-specific services such as pay and benefits, including regional roles, Helpdesk and human resources information systems to the Department of Finance. The transfer includes the compensation and benefits for 78 Department of Human Resources staff who are transferring to the Department of Finance, as well as GNWT-wide medical travel and dental plan benefits, and

information technology assets associated with PeopleSoft payroll and shift schedule operations.

The transfer of functions to Finance will increase efficiencies by aligning the GNWT’s corporate finance and human resource information platform for SAM and PeopleSoft. It will frame payroll and benefits within official environment and it will enhance the Department of Human Resources expertise in providing quality GNWT-wide programs, services and strategic advice in human resource management.

The mandate of the Department of Human Resources continues to be to provide leadership and direction to the GNWT, its boards and agencies in areas of human resource management. The department’s leadership on human resource management supports all departments and agencies in effectively recruiting, managing and retaining their staff.

The department ensures that the public service is managed as a corporate resource in a way that promotes human resource stability, employee retention and maximum effectiveness. In turn, this supports the interests of the government and the vision of believing in people and building on the strengths of Northerners.

In our role as a corporate service provider, $4.7 million, or 20 percent of the department’s 2014-15 funding, is allocated for direct support to departments and agencies through programs to address hiring, training and development for anticipated labour shortages in the GNWT. Investments and support of our Workforce Planning Strategy and regional recruitment programs and ongoing initiatives under maximizing northern employment ensure we connect with Northerners to fill our vacancies.

The department is reconstructing two major activities post transfer. First, the human resource strategy and policy division have been amalgamated into the directorate and will be called Corporate Affairs. This change is consistent with the structure of other GNWT departments. Second, the Corporate Human Resources Division has been renamed Strategic Human Resources and the Business Performance Unit and has been re-profiled to this division.

This restructuring strengthens the foundation of human resource management and reflects the government-wide strategic focus of HR programs and initiatives. The department continues to focus on its major renaming responsibility for devolution by ensuring a smooth welcome for federal employees into the GNWT public service. Human Resources will continue to support departments and agencies in their ongoing recruitment efforts to fill positions to ensure the GNWT has a knowledgeable and experienced public service,

able to provide service delivery responsibly as it acquires through devolution.

Our recent career fair in Ottawa, as well as our ongoing HR open houses in the NWT regional centres factor largely in our efforts to fill our vacant positions, particularly those related to devolution. Ongoing development of the public service through 2020, a Public Service Strategic Plan remains a key priority. The department continues to implement practical actions under 2020 through a four-year action plan for 2012 to 2016. Implementation of several initiatives intended to address anticipated labour shortages in the public service that focus on getting more Northerners into the public service and keeping them there is a priority in 2014-15.

The Workforce Planning Strategy, the Regional Recruitment Program and the Student and Youth Strategy are being incorporated into ongoing work for 2020 in support of the 17th Assembly’s priority to

increase employment opportunities where they are most needed. At the same time, we continue to look at ways to attract employees to the GNWT from elsewhere when the NWT labour market cannot provide the skill sets that we require.

As positions become vacant, the GNWT faces a significant challenge in stabilizing our existing workforce through retention initiatives and continual recruitment. The Workforce Planning Strategy provides recruitment and retention efforts, which result in the public service that is representative, effective and ensures organizational stability to achieve our corporate and operational goals. It includes an array of such strategies for students and youth, hard to recruit positions, inclusion, focus on Aboriginal persons and persons with disability, bilingual persons, career fairs, and of course, regional recruitment.

Under the umbrella of the Workforce Planning Strategy, the Regional Recruitment Program assists in increasing regional employment opportunities by using unique approaches to recruitment that will link community residents with on-the-job training in order to fill our regional vacancies in a way that prepares northern residents to be successful in these jobs. The Student and Youth Strategy improves on existing student and youth programming to link anticipated job opportunities in the public service with studies of Northerners.

In addition to devolution, the employment strategies in the department’s 2014-15 main estimates supports the following key initiatives:

• Strategies that enhance our ability to attract,

retain, advance Aboriginal employees at all levels of the public service. Good progress is being made in this area and there is more work to be done.

• Recruitment initiatives for persons with

disability, youth, bilingual positions and hard to recruit positions to fill vacancies and promote GNWT as an employer of choice.

• Occupational health and safety training will

continue to be a priority in order to minimize the risk of employees to be injured on the job.

• An array of corporate knowledge transfer

initiatives will be rolled out to assist in the succession planning given that our public service demographic information projects a significant number of public servants who are eligible to retire.

• Implementation of a memorandum of agreement

reached with the Union of Northern Workers for safe disclosure and rest periods.

• Continued support for our careers and

Department of Health and Social Services websites, as well as social media sites both as a means of communication with current and potential employees and as a specialized tool for targeted recruitment strategies.

• Continued training for managers and employees

to ensure their understanding of human resource management including filling vacancies, labour relations, occupational health and safety and the duty to accommodate.

• Aboriginal culture awareness and respectful

workplaces.

As I announced earlier, for the second year in a row the Government of the Northwest Territories has been chosen as one of Canada’s best diversity employers. The selection for 2014 recognizes our many initiatives to develop and encourage a diverse, inclusive workplace and the investment into the public service through 2020. We are proud of this achievement. Based on our vision of believing in people and building on the strengths of Northerners, we are making the right investment.

In closing, I am proud of the good work the Department of Human Resources does which serves the interests of the GNWT thus the people of the Northwest Territories overall; 2013-14 has been a productive year with significant milestones accomplished, and I am confident that we will continue this momentum in 2014-15 and ensure another excellent year. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. I would like to ask Minister Beaulieu if he would now like to bring witnesses into the Chamber.

Yes, I do, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Does committee agree?

I will ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to please bring the witnesses to the table.

For the record, Minister Beaulieu, could you please introduce your witnesses.

Thank you, Madam Chair. To my right, Sheila Bassi-Kellett, deputy minister, Department of Human Resources. To my left, Michelle Beard, director of HR, strategic and policy planning, Department of Human Resources.

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. General comments. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to welcome the Department of HR, the Minister, DM and staff here today. I guess, first and foremost, I want to start off by congratulating the department for a well-deserved accolade for the second year in a row under the Canada’s best diversity employers. Again, congratulations. It’s always nice to read about that. I read it in the Globe and Mail the other day, so congratulations to you and your teams for continuing the good work.

I just want to do some general comments here, and some of them might be followed up in detail, but I think it’s prudent for us to talk about some of the areas of opportunity and maybe even point to some of the areas of good work. I’m going to refrain from talking about vacancy positions and things of that nature until we get more into detail or I’ll let my other colleagues dive into it more.

With that, I think, in no particular order, it’s nice to see that recent announcement, due to the fact that our occupational health and safety record was a bit dismal for a number of years. Some of our fines and penalties were in the area of about three-quarters of a million dollars, so it’s nice to see and hear earlier, I believe last fall, the introduction of a Safety Training Program. We didn’t hear very much of it since that initiative, so I’m hoping that the Minister might be able to enlighten us as to where we’re at in terms of the rollout, budget dollars and what priority this will have in this fiscal year in terms of prioritizing safety and minimizing risk to employees.

The other thing that has come up in our discussions a little bit and at least overview is, I guess, our overtime policy. I know committee was a bit concerned regarding the overtime policy, and more particularly, that we did see a substantial growth in overtime in this fiscal budget, albeit a small number, but one which does beg the question what are our policies, have they been reviewed, what are the interdepartmental agreements in place for banked hours, those types of things. I think the committee is asking for that information only to ask that we have some consistencies as we’re going from department to department.

I know that we did have some questions and concerns regarding the service partnership agreements between the Department of Health and Social Services and, I believe, Finance because of the fact we are transferring a lot of duties with the medical travel. I understand in your opening comments the rationale for it, but I think it’s important that people understand why and whether or not all the financial aspects have been taken care of with that transfer.

Now, you might want to correct me if I’m wrong through the Minister here, but I am going through the employee survey, and I believe the last survey results that we have tabled to the public was in 2012. I have to comment only because that’s what I only have in front of me here, which I am using as a tool as we, I guess, get our palate wet in terms of what’s happening in the Department of HR.

The 2012 GNWT Employee Satisfaction and Engagement Survey, for the most part, is a good survey. I want to say that for the record. However, as we are all aware that there are opportunities here they call the priority areas, and a lot of the priority areas where our employees have told us, as a government, they would like to see improvement. I have yet to see a substantial document or positioning statement or, I guess, action plan, per se, that would address some of the lower scores that we received in that survey, and again, if there’s a new survey pending please advise the Members here of upcoming results possibly from 2013.

As I said, in no particular order here, and again maybe we can get some confirmation here, we know that the legislation pertaining to HR under the Safe Disclosure Policy is hopefully imminent. We know that committee members have spoken quite at length in terms of its support and the fact that there is a requirement for doing so.

There is equal argument for, I guess, the private sector, as well, to have something of equal value within the parameters of a safety act of that nature. Again, I would ask that maybe the Minister could comment as to where we are with the Safe Disclosure Policy and whether or not the private sector would be part of this whistleblowing protection that seems to be on the mind of many.

Other than that, I am going to have more specifics as we go into the details here, but again I wanted to reiterate some of the positive comments that we are seeing in here and maybe if we can get a little bit of an update to some of those inquiries not mentioned in the opening address and somewhat embedded in the pages of the main estimates here, that would be great if we could get some clarity on that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will attempt to respond to some of the information and then have the deputy fill in, the deputy or the director fill in with some of the areas that we may be able to provide more specific details.

I guess to the overtime issue, we don’t have any overtime scheduled in any of our business planning or in the mains, and I guess that is sometimes part of the issue with some of the discussions that have been continuing in the House over the last few days. At some point there are individuals that are not able to come to work, especially in the 24/7 operations of the hospitals, the corrections facilities and so on, but the positions have to be there. So sometimes people are called back to work and do perform overtime and this has an impact on the positions, or relief workers are brought in that may actually have other jobs, so they are paid overtime, or employees are kept on after their regular shift to continue to fill the position of the individual that may not be there.

The more detail, I guess, on the employee survey 2012 and what we’re doing to address the areas of concern, I am going to ask the deputy to respond to that and provide a little bit of an update on the Occupational Health and Safety Program that we have recently announced in the House and have contracted a private company here in the city.

The Safe Disclosure Policy, the safe disclosure is something that we have negotiated with the northern workers’ union, the Union of Northern Workers, and that is something that will be going to the legislation. It is an act that will provide safe disclosure to public servants that work for the Government of the Northwest Territories. Anything outside of that, any whistleblower from outside the government, a person that is not employed here, we’re not covering in this legislation. It’s outside of our mandate for this particular issue.

With that, Madam Chair, I would ask either the director or deputy minister, maybe starting with the deputy, to provide some more detail on Member Dolynny’s questions.

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

Thank you very much. Next on the list for general comments on Human Resources, I have Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to start off, as well, by commending the department on their award for Canada’s Best Diversity Employer for the second year in a row. Good job on that.

With that being said, there are a lot of initiatives that have been happening since the onset of this government and one I’m pretty interested in hearing more information about – maybe we can get into detail or have further briefing notes – on the initiative for the Regional Recruitment Plan. I refer to it as the 80/20 plan, 80 percent salary and 20 percent training for any of our residents of the Northwest Territories that want to get into the public service. I want to know how that’s rolling out, how that’s been brought forward to the general public of the Northwest Territories and whether or not that was something that was discussed at the career fair in Ottawa or discussed in the regional open houses with Human Resources.

Other things that the Minister and his staff are well aware of are some of the things that have been brought up in this House this past week and last week. One in particular was job descriptions. Time and time again I have heard from constituents who have applied on jobs and didn’t get an interview, then seeing the job being posted again and wondering how come it wasn’t filled. There is an employee who wants a job but seeing some of these job postings being time and again without any filling of those positions. They want to know what’s the write-up in terms of standardized job descriptions, how they’re written. Mainly when we talk to post-secondary students trying to get into the job system, a lot of these job descriptions are asking for years of experience when we know full well that our post-secondary students are making the commitment to go to school. When they’re finished, they are caught in a catch-22 situation where they can’t get a job because we’re asking for years of experience in the field that they specialize in and got educated in. I think that needs to be addressed moving forward.

Getting into the vacant positions, news to me – and the Minister made comment to this yesterday in the House – that some jobs are deliberately left vacant. We can get into that in detail, but I want to put it down here for the record that that is concerning because if we have jobs that are averaging about $100,000 a year, that is money that we approved in this House and those are being left vacant.

Another program I wanted to touch base on was the PeopleSoft program, a good program to work with all our public service employees within the government system. I would like an update on some of the trends, some of the things we are seeing with PeopleSoft and even though we did get the award, how can we still better the system, working with our employees throughout the Northwest Territories.

Some concerns that are very common within my region and the communities is the ROE, record of employment, that some people are seeking. In some cases, I’ve heard six months for something to

get done. I know there has been some concern from some constituents in our regional office that the staff in our regional office might be understaffed or overworked, one or the other. It does need to be fixed because people are having a hard time getting their records of employment when leaving their department. In that case, just leaving the department itself, there has to be a one point entry system when an employee from the GNWT wants to leave and get everything straightened out so they can move on to their next job or their next career. In some cases, whether it’s moving from sick leave or just a leave of absence or a transfer of some type, sometimes the paperwork and the working between the headquarters and the regional offices can be confusing for the individual and actually can even lead to prolonged stress leave as well. There have been some cases that I’ve heard within Inuvik.

The direct appointments, as a GNWT employee in a previous career, I did see some shuffling of direct appointments within some departments that were a cause of concern not only with me but people that were in the departments throughout the NWT as well. So making sure that any direct appointments are communicated with the department, with committee members, with the individuals that are in the ridings so that people don’t come to us, as MLAs, wanting explanations why a certain person got a direct appointment when there are other people that are qualified for the position in the community.

Also, I wanted to talk about the Safe Disclosure Policy. I think in our last update we heard that there weren’t any updates in the Safe Disclosure Policy. So how that’s rolling out and if we’re continuing to move forward on how we’re going to continue to implement that program and how we can get that information out a little bit more.

Those are just some general comments that I wanted to bring forth with the department, but I know it’s a challenge trying to manage all the vacant jobs, trying to get individuals into the positions that we’d like them to have. I’ve seen it working in the departments that I’ve worked with in the past and seen that this level brings a whole new insight. I appreciate the hard work that’s going on within the departments, but obviously there are still some concerns and, really, I do support the initiative of the and really want to see how that works out. I think that’s a great opportunity to make some changes and look at job descriptions that will make it easier for our northern residents to enter the public service system if we want to put in this Regional Recruitment Plan, but we’re still kind of not allowing our guys to get in there. So what’s the use of having it when we’re still writing job descriptions for years of experience when it’s not there? It’s kind of a holdback of trying to get our people into the system.

So just some general comments. I know these questions can be brought forth further through briefings or when we get into detail or brought into the House, but I’ll leave it up to the Minister if he wants to answer now. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The regional recruitment was something that the people from the departments have been talking about at the open houses. We’ve had one open house; we’re expanding to open houses in all the regional centres where we have service offices. We’re going to have two days of open house here to cover the city of Yellowknife and because regional recruitment is the intent of that, the strategy is to fill the regional positions, positions out there in the regions that could be also in the communities. It was not discussed in Ottawa. The career fair in Ottawa was not specifically to look at individuals that may not have all of the qualifications necessary to do a job. We weren’t looking for people down there that would be coming up here using 80 percent of their salary for the pay and 20 percent of their salary for training. So that wasn’t discussed at that Ottawa career fair.

Job descriptions are written by the various departments. The employing departments write the job descriptions, and all job descriptions are evaluated in the same fashion. They’re evaluated through the Hay system, then, based on that, the points and the qualifications that the departments think are needed for that to effectively perform 100 percent of those job functions are put in there and evaluated as such.

As far as experience goes, that is a bit of a dilemma where you have young people graduating from university and so on that don’t have experience and some of them call for experience in these job descriptions. So, many times we put programs in place to provide experience to students, such as the Internship Program, the Summer Student Program and now we’re looking at the Student and Youth Strategy. That’s all designed to attract students and youth into the public service.

The vacancy rates are something that we are going to put in writing to committee. The comment of positions being left deliberately vacant is not a situation where the government comes to the Assembly and asks for positions in the mains or through the business planning process and then immediately keeps the positions vacant. Often what happens is, as a management tool for budgeting, there will be vacant positions, as we know, throughout the system and a deliberate attempt is made to manage the human resources by each of the departments in order to make sure that they are not over-expending their budgets in any area.

I’m going to let the deputy minister speak on the PeopleSoft. The record of employment is something that has come to my attention. As I have information, last fiscal year we had just slightly over 600 individuals leaving the public service, GNWT public service and for each of those there’s a requirement to get their record of employment out to each of those staff members in the appropriate time. I guess I could also provide an additional number that up until 2014, I guess that would be the fiscal year ‘13-14, we’ve had 457 people leaving the government. So in situations where individuals need a record of employment to move on to other types of things where we are trying to meet the requirements on providing the record of employment to individuals, sometimes we understand it’s being extended a lot longer than it should be, but for the most part one of our objectives here recently, and I guess always has been, is to try to get their record of employment to the individuals that have left the public service as quickly as we can within the legislation that indicates to us how long and we have to provide that information.

As far as direct appointments and what we do for direct appointments often used as a development tool for different departments, various departments that present a direct appointment to Cabinet. Their direct appointment is used that otherwise would not really achieve any other result. There is no other positive results that could be gained by putting the job out for public advertising that we have a candidate within the system or just that wants to come into the system that is looking for a job that a direct appointment would be the best and most efficient way to bring the person into the public service. We know that we had 216 direct appointments in the first two years of this government. Of that, 193 of those positions were priority candidates, either priority 2 or priority 1 candidates, and if we have just a priority 1 candidate, 119 of the 216 direct appointments were priority 1 candidates.

I think we did talk a bit about the safe disclosure, but in case I’ve missed anything, especially the area of PeopleSoft as a tool for human resources, I’ll ask the deputy to provide some of that detail.

Thank you very, Minister Beaulieu. Next I have Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, have a number of comments, and answers can come later on. I may ask further questions when we get to detail, but I just have some observations and some comments that I’d like make comparing last year to this year and so on.

I’d like to comment, first of all, about the Workforce Planning Strategy. I’m really glad that we have that and that it’s still being worked on. One of the things that we noticed, particularly in the last budget or the

budget before that, was the number of retirees. I shouldn’t say number of retirees. The number of employees we have who are close to becoming retirees. We have a large number of very senior employees who are going to be retiring in the next 10 years. I believe that was two years ago. I’d like to know, at some point, from the department on how the Workforce Planning Strategy is dealing with that particular problem. Are we succeeding or do we still have a fairly large bulge of knowledgeable, competent and senior people that we’re going to be losing in the next 10 to 15 or 5 to 15 years?

The accommodating people who are returning to work, I know that the department is working on that. I also know that there are difficulties sometimes with certain individuals when they wish to return to work and for whatever reason a particular department can’t accommodate them or won’t accommodate them. There’s obviously differing opinions between the employee and the department in some cases. I’d like to know how the Department of Human Resources assists another department in accommodating somebody who is returning to work. I think we have an officer who’s doing that, and I’d like to know whether or not that is successful at this point or if the department feels that there needs to be some change made there.

There’s been some comment already about the career fair in Ottawa and the open houses that are being held here in the North, and I guess my question is more to what is the content of the open houses. What are we trying to accomplish with an open house that we maybe could better accomplish with a career fair? I stopped into the career fair because I happened to be in Ottawa and it was really well attended and I think it was an extremely well visited venue, but why are we doing open houses in the South? Should we not also be doing career fairs here? I’d appreciate hearing what the department thinks about that.

One of the things that struck me when I took a quick look at yesterday’s federal budget address and some of the elements of that budget is that there’s going to be a fairly large impact on federal employees’ benefits and benefits of retirees. The public service, I’ve lost the name of the organization that provides us with our benefits, but retirees, for instance, are going to be paying double for their benefits than they are currently. NWT employees are under the same plan, so I would like to know if the department knows at this point or maybe they need to find out, but how are GNWT employees under the same plan as the federal employees and retirees under the same plan as federal employees, how are they going to be affected by these announcements in the federal budget.

WSCC costs were a really big issue a year ago when we discussed the budget, and I would be

interested in knowing whether or not we have seen a decrease in our WSCC costs. I know initially there was. We were advised by the previous Minister that there was some decrease in our WSCC costs, but has that continued to go down or have we gone down and we’re now at a plateau.

I’m pleased that we a have a Youth Strategy that the department is working on. I think this was raised in the House within the last few days, but one of the issues that young people have in trying to get hired is they have knowledge in a particular field. They graduate from school but they have no experience, and they’re in a catch-22 because they don’t get hired because they don’t have experience, and if they don’t get hired then they can’t ever get the experience. My question to the department is whether or not you would consider hiring someone with no experience but with the qualifications that you’re looking for and give them a year, six months, a year, two years under, say, a mentorship system or program to gain the experience that is necessary to move them from the very junior position that they’re in up to where the position that we actually have advertised for and need them for.

When people leave our public service, I think we do exit interviews. I would appreciate that being confirmed if we do exit interviews, and if we do, do we have any data on why people are leaving the public service and how is that data used.

There has been a lot of talk about increasing the number of people in the NWT. It was certainly a part of the budget address and there is a plan which the government is going to put forward. I mentioned the other day that there seems to be a disconnect or something, but there seems to be a problem with us hiring some Northerners back. We have Northerners who want to come home, who have the education, who have the skills, and for whatever reason the hiring process seems to get delayed. They give up and they take a job in the south as opposed to coming back here. I don’t know if it’s something that the Department of HR can do something about or if it is something that HR can in some way educate other departments, because I realize generally these things are being done through other departments and HR doesn’t actually do all the hiring. Whatever HR can do to make changes across our system to ensure that when we’ve got a Northerner who’s coming back that we actually smooth the way to hire them as opposed to putting obstacles in place.

Lastly, I must comment on the change that we use in advertising our positions in GNWT. There’s been quite a bit of comment about it in the media and so on, but I am concerned that we’re not reaching the people we need to reach by only advertising on-line or only putting our jobs out on-line. We are advertising in the paper. I appreciate that. But when the ads are in the paper there are no jobs listed. It

simply says come and work for the GNWT and references you to a website. That’s fine for people who are computer savvy who are in a jurisdiction where they’ve got easy access to the Internet and fast speeds, but I would think that it’s probably going to affect our residents to a certain extent, certainly in the smaller communities, and some people in the larger centres who are living in a poverty situation and can’t afford Internet. That’s a concern for me. I am concerned that that strategy is going to have a negative impact on our hiring. I think it’s going to affect a small number of people, but I think any time we negatively affect people who might want to come and work for us or we restrict the number of people who might apply for jobs, I think that’s a bad thing.

That’s it. I just have comments, and if answers can come later, I’m all for that. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Beaulieu.