Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This government or this Cabinet has made it very clear that it’s on a mission of hiring 2,000 people. Here in the NWT, homegrown in our communities are students who are being encouraged to go back to school, study all they can and come back and hopefully we can give them a job.

There is always the challenge, of course, ensuring that we strike a balance between large cities like Yellowknife, regional centres and communities as well.

My question is to the Minister of Human Resources. Why are GNWT summer jobs not readily available for students in communities? Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. The honourable Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Summer Student Employment Program is not restricted to regional centres and Yellowknife. In fact, student summer employment is supposed to be employment for students right across the territory. We are doing some campaign work right now. We’re sending out some e-mail messages and putting some of those employment opportunities on our HR website and a poster advising in Yellowknife, some regional centres and service centres, community band offices and also with the GNWT, government service officers will be going on at this time. Thank you.

Last year there was an effort to recruit at least 280 returning summer students and provide them jobs. Can the Minister indicate to this House how many of those jobs were in communities? Mahsi.

I don’t have the breakdown between the small communities, the regional centres and Yellowknife. What I do have is, of the 271 students who were hired, we were applying the Affirmative Action Policy and 51.7 percent were indigenous Aboriginal students and 43.0 students were indigenous non-Aboriginal students and priority 1. Only 4.4 percent of the students hired by the GNWT last year were from outside of the NWT. Thank you.

I would like to thank the Minister for giving that response in terms of where the jobs are going for students. I hope at some point he will be able to substantiate further some various precise statistics on job concentration for summer students.

Human Resources, of course, is the lead department in terms of dealing with employees of the government. At the same time, it has a lot to do regarding human resource planning, especially with

students as they come back home. It’s expected that we do our part in trying to get them career advice and career planning.

Is the department taking the lead to ensure that each department has concrete plans to have summer student employment available for students who return in the summertime in the communities? Mahsi.

The Department of Human Resources has started work with other departments in December of 2013 in preparation for the summer, April to August 2014, preparing to take on summer students. So if there is some work that is being done right now, I can provide the status to committee. I can also provide the number of students last year, the distribution of the summer students in Yellowknife, the regional centres and the ones who have gone into small communities. I will report that back to communities as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This government is clearly on a campaign of hiring 2,000 extra people so they can live and work up here in the NWT. The Minister has indicated, as part of the effort to recruit summer students, there’s a campaign that his department is entertaining.

Could the Minister further explain what other substantive and concrete steps he’s willing to take to ensure that we have a target of ensuring that we hire students as much as we can? Would the Minister perhaps even consider meeting the policy directive of ensuring that all government agencies hire some of the students to ensure that returning students are employed? Mahsi.

Thank you. I’m more than prepared and willing to discuss this with the deputy minister of Human Resources to get some sort of a concrete plan on the student hires from all of the deputies. For this student hire, the monies to hire our students is paid out of the vacancy rate of the various departments and it would depend largely on whether or not the departments have some room to be able to hire. In addition to that, the Department of Human Resources is providing a Progressive Experience Program, which is $330 a week to the departments to hire students and we have about 80 places. That’s over and above and within the overall student hires, but it will enhance the student hires in HR. Human Resources also has a program that’s run by the Department of Social Services, the Relevant Experience Program where they have 24 placements and they pay $525 for each student that comes to work within the health and social services system. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. Robert C. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the Economic Action Plan that was announced in 2014, there is a National Disaster Mitigation Program, and in our discussions with them we brought up the issue of the flooding in Hay River and how dredging could help assist that community. We believe that if we can get an application into this fund, this would be an eligible category. They haven’t worked out the allocations for the money yet and the details and we’re just working on that now, but we will work closely with the Member and the community of Hay River to see how we can access this money. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate the Minister giving me that information and I look forward to working with the Minister as well.

Can the Minister give me a little more details on the information? What is this program – it’s a federal program, I’m assuming – and what is that federal program designed for?

Thank you. I’m also the Minister responsible for emergency measures, and a couple of the FPTs that I’ve gone to we were informed that the old JEP funding it was called, Joint Emergency Preparedness, was being replaced by the Disaster Mitigation Program, and this is to assist communities and jurisdictions to try and fix up their infrastructure so they can actually try and avert some of these disasters of flooding in Hay River, for example, is a good one.

So it’s a new program, it’s a federal program and I believe that they’ve announced there’s a $200 million price tag attached to this. However, this is going to be divided amongst all the jurisdictions. We haven’t decided on the formula yet. So as soon as we have more details on how we can get our hands on some of that money, because we do have a lot of flooding in the Northwest Territories, we will share it with the Member, members of committee and the communities that are affected by this. Thank you.

Thank you. I look forward to working with the Minister and the Town of Hay River to alleviate this problem. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Comment. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to address my questions to the Minister of Health and Social Services and I’d like to follow up on my statement. AEDs have a fairly low profile in the NWT. Certainly when my office was doing some research, it was pretty obvious. Some organizations have taken actions and others have not. For instance, we do not have an AED here at the Legislative Assembly.

So I’d like to ask the Minister, first off, whether not the Department of Health and Social Services or the GNWT, if he knows that, has any policy regarding the placement of AEDs within the territory, within our buildings and our public places. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t believe that we actually have a policy requiring private industry or businesses or public places to have AEDs, but I do know that Yellowknife currently has defibrillators in the arena, swimming pool and other sport facilities. I also know that the airport here in Yellowknife has a defibrillator and, just for information, every health centre has a defibrillator and every health cabin in the Northwest Territories has an AED.

There is a federal program in place to help pay for defibrillators in arenas that any community with an arena can access. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for that and I can advise the Minister that there are defibrillators in every NorthMart or in every Northern Store within the territory, which is good to know. So some buildings have them and some buildings don’t. We obviously don’t have a policy within the GNWT and I would suggest that’s someplace that we need to go.

I would like to ask the Minister whether or not we have, apart from what he’s listed, a registry that encompasses all the defibrillators that exist within the NWT, all the places where they are. Thank you.

No. We can tell which GNWT facilities have them, but I couldn’t tell you what private facilities have them. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister and I didn’t think we had one, so I’m glad that that’s confirmed.

The Minister mentioned a program that exists, I believe it’s the federal government that provides money to communities so that they can get AEDs

and put them into their public places and their public buildings.

I’d like to know from the Minister if he’s aware of any program within the GNWT that would provide money to organizations, to communities, to basically organizations and communities if they wish to buy an AED and install it in their space. Thank you.