Thank you. Once again, this is a short question that would require a very complicated answer if we wanted to cover all the issues. But there are positions, the money is used in some cases to help cover off a gap in benefits, there are casual dollars, there are contract dollars, there are staff that may be on transfer assignments. So there’s a range of reasons why some positions may be empty.

The issue, though, is one of concern to the government that we need to find a way to make sure… We have a couple of competing issues here. We have northern graduates that don’t come home and we have positions that we are going begging in terms of permanent employment, and we have to reconcile that as we move forward. If we could fill all our positions we would go a long way to addressing some of the concern we have about trying to go from 2,000 in five years, in terms of population increase. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I heard on this side that we could be very creative on this initiative as to filling these 400 vacant positions, the active positions. I’m going to make the assumption that the 400 inactive, what does inactive, meaning these 400 positions to fill, and we can embark on that, and as I said, like some of our colleagues, but let’s start training up people in our own communities, start upgrading them. Maybe that’s the bigger picture.

I want to ask the Minister, when will the Cabinet come over to our side and say let’s sit down, let’s figure out how we can resolve this. Right now, as it stands, we have 800 vacant positions within the Government of the Northwest Territories and yet I’m not too sure what the financial cost is of us approving those positions in past Assemblies to have those positions in the GNWT.

Thank you. If the Member will recollect, before Christmas we had a meeting and I indicated to the Members that we were intent on coming forward to try to address this issue and that we would keep committee fully engaged and apprised. We had a first inaugural meeting with the mine presidents as well as the chamber representatives this week, just to see if there was a shared interest in trying to address this issue, and there is, so we’re in the process of striking a high level senior working group to try to look at some of the things like the immigrant Nominee Program, the fly-in/fly-out issue as well as some of the broader ones. It’s not only the government that has vacancies, it’s the private sector as well. So we are going to look at those as well as we are definitely turning our attention to how do we do a better job recruiting our own students to come back home. We intend to get that working group going. If the committee has a specific role that they see for themselves or potentially how they would like to be engaged, if they would let us know, we would be happy to look at that.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I just wanted to focus a little bit about decentralization and moving jobs to the communities as laid out in the Minister’s budget speech. That’s a key part of devolution. He’s talking about phase 1 and phase 2. Perhaps I’ll just ask on phase 1. What is being planned for phase 1 right now? Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Phase 1 was completed last year and we laid it out in the budget last year. Phase 2 speaks to some of the things we are looking at in the more immediate term in terms of devolution and reorganization, the lands, departments being set up in the regional centres and those types of things. Then as we look at our devolution and post-devolution organizational structures and then the longer-term phase 3 is going to be a bit more in-depth as we look at some of the things that are once again impediments to moving positions outside of Yellowknife, which the two main ones

would be office space and availability of housing. Then looking at what distinct, discreet functions of government would make sense in an operational sense about where…(inaudible)…located outside of Yellowknife.

I was just wondering: has the department or does government have a rough idea about what regions may be getting jobs? I know that office space is an issue, and housing, but we’ve got a little bit of an infrastructure plan with housing. I’m not too sure about the office, but have they got a sense of what regions will benefit from these 50 positions?

The housing piece, the $22 million that is going to small communities, the actual location has yet to be determined, and of course, we’re doing some of the initial planning subject to approval in this House. The office space requirements, we’re looking at some communities where it seemed to be an issue, and as well, some communities may have other housing challenges, like the small communities, so that’s being looked at as well. We do know through our current process that’s now before this House, there are structural changes coming with the new departments. For example, we talked about, in the budget speech, a Lands department being set up in every regional centre. That’s underway as well.

I guess my experience has been that often when we’ve got lack of housing issues, some of those government department jobs do get sent to bigger, larger centres, and they often stay there only because citing, of course, that there’s no housing.

Is there a strategy in place where the new recruits, or whoever is being hired, are advised that at some future point they will be relocating to the regions and communities?

Where there are no incumbents, that is not an issue of concern. Where we are taking over responsibility with incumbents, there is a two year, I believe it is, guarantee of job certainty in the position in the community where they currently are, which in this case would be Yellowknife. After that, the opportunities for longer-term planning would kick in and potential decentralization opportunities may flow.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’m glad for that answer, but I guess the key thing is that, well, just in the newspaper, as well, is that a lot of our regions and communities, it’s government jobs that is our sector only because of lack of industry at this point in time.

Once again, when will the government be deciding on which region, what kind of breakdown will these 50 jobs be slated for?

There is some certainty in regards to the Lands department and those kind of organizational changes where there’s going to be a Lands department in each regional centre. Those decisions are there. Some of the other components that may be decentralized, we’re still looking at what makes the most sense and what is available in terms of capacity in communities to absorb potential positions, and that will be happening over the next few months.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to throw a few single words out there that the government might want to consider when trying to recruit people for the 800 vacant positions and how we are going to get Northerners first and foremost into those positions and, secondly, how we could attract other people to come here. Let me throw a few of those out: mentoring, sponsorship, job shadowing, transfer assignment, succession planning, partnerships with the private sector, tracking our students when they’re out there, forecasting labour market trends in the Northwest Territories so we can tell students even when they’re in high school what kinds of positions we’re going to have a shortage of going forward, scholarship, loan forgiveness. If we lose $25,000 for every student that doesn’t come back to the Northwest Territories – at least $25,000 and probably more once they get established and start a family and so on – what are we doing with their loans, the debt? That’s what you hear down south all the time. The biggest burden for post-secondary, after people graduate from university with an education, is starting off life with these incredible education debts. We should get ahead of the ball here and try to think about doing something, knowing full well that if we don’t get our population up, that grant from Canada is just going to keep going down.

I’d like to ask the Minister of Finance, on the 800 vacant positions, how many of those are inactive and how many of them are we actively trying to recruit people into?

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this particular moment, I understand we are recruiting actively for 571 positions.

I’d love to see where those advertisements are. You’re actively recruiting 571 positions in the Government of the Northwest Territories. Does the Minister have a breakdown of how many of those are in headquarters and how many of those are in the regions?

I don’t have that level of HR detail, and I don’t have the ability to ask my colleague from Human Resources to provide the statistics, but we have those numbers available, it’s just that I don’t have them before me here today.

Well, if the government is actively trying to recruit for 571 vacant positions in the public service at this time, you know, please include us in that challenge. We probably could have some ideas to help you out in filling some of those positions.

I would like to ask the Minister of Finance, on the 800 vacant positions, what kind of monetary dollar value does 800 vacant positions represent? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If you used the ballpark figure of, on average, $100,000 per position, the math would be $80 million. Thank you.

Is there a strategy or anything out of the ordinary in place right now to attract, recruit for those vacant positions at this time? I don’t know; if there are that many advertisements and that many posts out there on government websites, I haven’t seen them.

What is the effort that is being put forward at this time? Thank you.