Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This can be also an educational process. If you look, for example, in the Sahtu, if you look at the fish scale artwork done in Fort Good Hope or the fish nets made out of willows in Colville Lake or the beading in Deline or the moose skin boat in Tulita, they all have meaning behind it. It would be nice to have a CD at the end of the project so kids can take it and then they can understand. Visitors can listen to it and say this is the meaning behind the art for this region; this is why they do this art.

I’d like to ask the Minister if that’s something that he can bring to the Arts Strategy to look at and say bring up these CDs so we can learn about the artist and the work behind the art.

Again, it’s very important that we keep the stories alive and we keep the culture alive, and that’s only going to be done if we preserve that and get it done one way or another. I know there are maybe opportunities through the school curriculum, maybe, to have that story told over and over again and become, eventually, part of a school curriculum.

Again, I made a commitment to speak to the Minister of ECE. I will do that and get back to the Member.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the years I have brought up the concern from the communities that there’s a lack of housing that’s needed. As we just passed the budget for this upcoming year, I’d like to ask the Minister of Housing, how many units are planned for the communities in the Mackenzie Delta?

Thank you, Mr. Blake. The Minister of Housing, Mr. R.C. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The capital budget we just passed, I think there were two units that were allocated for one of the Member’s communities, and there was an additional nine with the replacement of the Joe Greenland Centre in Aklavik, so that’s 11 that we have for this year. As well, through the

Modernization and Improvement Program, which is a major retrofit, we’ve got 19 units scheduled for the Member’s riding.

That’s really good news, by the way. I’d also like to ask the Minister, I know when we do get new units, a lot of times they’re just replacements, so in the future, when are we going to get more units as add-ons?

With the decline in the CMHC funding, it’s getting awfully difficult for the Housing Corporation to put in other units, so we have to replace the ones that are already there. We have a lot of units that are old and that need replacing. The two units that I spoke to before, we’re doing our initial allocation for the market housing and the money that we had received through FMB and the Legislative Assembly to try and provide housing for professional staff in the community. We’re doing our initial allocation. I think there are a few that are earmarked for the Member’s riding. As well, next year there’s going to be another significant investment in the Member’s riding with the seniors complex in Fort McPherson, and that’s in addition to the $31.8 million we’ve spent in the Member’s riding since 2006.

Order! Order! The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is no policy for early hiring of students such as in March or February. The target group for the hire of summer students are the students that are

finishing the courses down south. Usually these courses end, I think, at the end of April, and so the target for the summer students would be for May, June, July and August, so kind of a four-month program that runs during those four months, and that is the target group, and I think the majority of the students come in there. I’m not aware of students starting earlier than that.

It’s difficult to tell both a parent and a student about the competitive process that they don’t see, don’t know about, and when you tell the parent, well, don’t worry, the system is there for you, I assure you, to be honest, I don’t actually believe that at times, because you hear from parents who see the concern that their kids aren’t being hired, and you hear this regularly.

My question now for the Minister of Human Resources is: What type of public scrutiny process is there to ensure that these potential job openings in departments for summer student positions are not only fair, but honest and transparent so people can see them in a competitive way? Because right now both these parents and students think of them more as they’re about who you know and not necessarily what you know.

The departments use various methods to attract students. They’re on the website, they’re advertised by posters and so on. I indicated yesterday that that type of campaign for this coming summer was started in December 2013. The plan is to try to match the students as much as possible to their studies, so more of what the plan is, is to try to take the students and match them into the departments that they’re eventually hoping to study, and based only on that, not based on people hiring people that they know and so on.

Well, all I know, and I think a lot of Members know, is there’s a little button on some web pages that says apply here, click, send your resume in and good luck. That’s all that exists. There is no transparent process to know you’re competing for anything. There’s no transparent process to say or show or demonstrate your resume actually has gone anywhere besides the in-box of who knows who, who knows where, and who knows when. There is absolutely nothing for any student to know that their resume has been sent out and fairly, competitively been considered. That’s all I’m asking.

Now I’m asking the Minister of Human Resources, what does he have in his authority as a policymaker, as Minister of this department, to show parents and students alike that jobs are being fairly competed for, rather than, as I said earlier, it’s not about what you know, it just seems to be who you know.

The campaign last year and all the years past to try to attract students usually attracts around 700 students, and the target

is to try to hire about 300 students. Again, because the summer students are hired based on the vacancy rate that is in the various departments, the departments determine how many students they can hire with that type of budget. We think it’s fairly broad. Like I indicated, we recognize that about 700 students usually register for employment, 700-plus every year, actually, and then around 300 are hired.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have to school a single parent by saying we don’t have a job for every student. They know that. They understand that. They respect that. They know we don’t have the money for that. They’re not fooled. But what they are fooled about and certainly upset about is the myth that their child’s resume is being competitive, and that is making them mad, because they feel they have a fair shot and they’re not getting a fair shot.

All I’m asking this Minister to do, and I’m going to ask him this again, is what type of transparent process can he bring forward to ensure that there is some type of competitive process going on there? Because, quite frankly, parents are seeing their kids not being hired or even considered for interviews and this isn’t happening one year out of three years, this is happening year after year and year and I’ve witnessed it myself. Many darn good A students are being ignored, and the parents’ frustration with me is I guess I’m not a connected parent, I just don’t know the right people, what am I do to. I don’t have an answer. Maybe the Minister of Human Resources has an answer so I can start looking these parents in the face and telling them something. Thank you.

[Microphone turned off] …have very good numbers. When we’re hiring students, we’re hiring students that come back to the North to work. Over 95 percent of the students that do come to work for the GNWT are either priority 1 candidates or priority 2 candidates.

I can talk to the Department of Human Resources to track the students that are coming in. Like I indicated, we’re getting about 700 applicants and if 400 of those students are not hired, then we can track those to determine why they were not a match, why they were not picked by the various departments that they did apply for. Students actually show their interests in the jobs they wish to apply for, so it would not be difficult for us to track those students that were not hired and then provide some feedback to committee on the results of that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I just wanted to ask some questions on behalf of the Mothers Against Drunk Driving contingent in Fort Simpson. These questions are for the Minister of Transportation.

What is the department doing to tackle the high rates of impaired driving in the Northwest Territories? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Transportation is developing a High Risk Drivers Program, focusing on drivers that continue to engage in dangerous behaviours despite various interventions. We are now working with a couple of programs that are intended to put on more severity on individuals that are caught; for example, for repeat offenders of impaired driving and so on. We are looking at demerits, monetary penalties and suspensions and so on, and trying to address the issue. But just developing the High Risk Drivers Program is where we’re trying to focus in on this type of issue. Thank you.

With our government’s efforts to reduce drunk driving, parental groups like MADD and even SADD, Students Against Drunk Driving, have we seen a decrease in the amount of drunk driving convictions and charges in the last five years? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.