Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know that we’ve looked at the 20/20 strategy and we do understand that a lot of our employees are going to be retiring. They are coming to that age where they’re going to retire and we will need people to fill those positions. A lot of them will be in senior management, so I think it’s a great opportunity to look at our long-term service employees and give them the tools.

The Minister did mention that this month we’re going to have one of our recruitments in place, so I wonder what his targets are for this year in terms of getting individuals into this program.

Does he have a target set for getting our NWT residents into these jobs, these vacant positions and these higher level positions? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We have not set targets as a department. We are asking all of the departments to come forward with the positions that we are hoping to fill with the Regional Recruitment Strategy. Once we have all the departments who have identified their positions, then we, as the Department of Human Resources, will go back and engage those departments to make sure that there aren’t more positions that can go under this strategy. At that point, we will set targets of how many positions we hope to fill using the Regional Recruitment Strategy. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are following up on my Member’s statement directed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. The Minister is reducing annual funding to Yellowknife school boards by hundreds of thousands of dollars each, starting in a few months.

What will be the total reductions for the next two years and what will be the amount reinstated in year three when Yellowknife’s junior kindergarten must begin? Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Part of the process is, of course, rolling out the program in a three-phase approach. There will be 29 communities and the second year will be on to Hay River and the third year will be Yellowknife.

There’s Detah, Ndilo. So Detah will be $14,000 surplus for year one, they will be given the funding to operate. For Ndilo, $91,000 in year one to operate. YCS, the first year will be minus $434,000, year two will be minus $264,000, and year three will be plus $484,000. So a slight decrease of 1.2 percent of their overall budget, Mr. Speaker.

YK1, year one, $569,000 in the minus. Year two will be $322,000 minus. Year three will be $829,000 in the plus. That’s a difference of 0.3 percent of the overall budget decrease. So those are just the minor decreases that are happening over the three-year phased approach. Mahsi.

So, essentially they’ll be slightly less at the end of this time and, of course, the Minister forgot about the cost recovery programs that are in place that he’s requiring that they drop. So a net substantial loss. In the third year, obviously, with 120 extra people, small children to look after, they’ll be expected to provide junior kindergarten with no new funding in year three. This will be on the backs of services currently provided to our children, as I’ve mentioned.

What is the Minister’s assessment of the impact students will have to bear from this failure to provide new support for these new responsibilities? Mahsi.

Mahsi. The Yellowknife school boards have been offering the monthly fee-for-service four-year-old pre-kindergarten spaces beginning in 2008. So it has been operating for the past six years now, which has grown over the years. Currently, it would include approximately 163 licenced four-year-old spaces. So YK1 with a possible 90 fee-based four-

year-old preschool space, bringing in revenue of approximately $600,000 per school year. Same with YCS, approximately $500,000 per school year on fee for service. So that will continue for the next two years and in the third year we will be providing them funding at that level.

As I stated, it is 1.2 percent for YCS, a decrease, and YK1 is 0.3 percent of their overall budget when you look at the territorial-wide budget and their budget as far as our contribution agreement. So there is a decrease, but we have to think long term as well. Mahsi.

Thank you. Indeed, we do need to think long term and I don’t believe the Minister is doing that. Obviously, these school boards are losing over $1.5 million over the next two years and then they’ll lose all of the revenue that they have from junior kindergarten currently in the third year, so they will be in a net deficit and yet huge new responsibilities that the Minister is asking them to take on. \What collaboration and support has the Minister experienced for this plan from our school boards? Mahsi.

Mahsi. I did mention in this House that there have been various meetings that took place since August 21st of 2013,

September 18 and 19, 2013. These are with the superintendents of the school. November 27, 28, 2013, January 2014. These are ongoing discussions that we are currently having. There has been a recommendation brought forward by a superintendent to make adjustment to our approach of the PTR and we took that into consideration and instead of using 10 to Grade 12, they indicated that maybe we should try K to 12. So it does balance it out, all of the communities throughout the Northwest Territories.

We are listening to the school boards, we are listening to the superintendents and there are a lot of supports out there as well. Especially the small communities, the 29 communities, as I highlighted, there are 10 communities without any licenced programming for early childhood development. So, those are just some of the discussions we’ve been having. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re talking about Yellowknife here. I asked, what’s the Minister’s assessment of the impacts of this on the services to the students? No answer. He went off in a different direction. I asked what collaboration and support. I didn’t hear any collaboration and support. They’ve had meetings, dictatorial results.

Will the Minister commit to working with our school boards to provide the new investments required with these new responsibilities that he is asking of them? Mahsi.

Mahsi. When I highlighted all the dates, those are interactions that we are currently having in coordination with the school boards, with the superintendents. We’ll continue to do so because we have to work with the early childhood educators, as well, and the operators, the daycare operators. This is beneficial to all 33 communities. Yes, the Member is referring to Yellowknife, but we, as a government, are responsible for 33 communities. Mahsi.

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

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve indicated in the House previously that we’re also going to be posting jobs at the community level. I’d indicated in the small communities exactly where the jobs would be posted and so on.

To answer the Member’s question, if the department has a vacant position that they wish to fill, then they indicate their desire to fill the position by ensuring that the job description, the ad and everything is ready, then they start working with the department. My understanding is that from the time the department advises HR that they wish to fill the position, that position would be advertised in about four weeks.

Thanks to the Minister. Four weeks seems like an inordinately long time to go from when you know that you need a body to when it is

posted. I appreciate that that’s bureaucracy and my concern is bureaucracy moves awfully slowly.

It’s fairly common knowledge, I think, and I don’t think it’s something that the government really wants to admit, but I think it’s out there that there are jobs that are not posted because they’re being held back for a particular person and I’d like to ask the Minister what he knows about this practice. Certainly I feel, and I think many of the residents of the NWT feel, that people, constituents, residents should have the opportunity to apply on any vacancy, and if jobs are held back then, obviously, that’s not available for them to know about the job.

So, to the Minister, how many jobs are held back? Does he have that number and could he comment on the practice? Thank you.

Thank you. I don’t think we have a category in PeopleSoft, in our system totally at all that are a category that our jobs are held back for someone else. We have vacancies, yes. There are vacancies that can be held for an individual that’s on a transfer assignment that is going to come back to their home position and then there’s also, on the other side of the coin, there would be vacancies where the department sees that it would be a good opportunity for someone to come into the department on a transfer assignment, those vacancies filled by casuals because they’re having positions that are difficult to recruit.

I know that last year, in 2013, the departments had 1,818 staffing actions, 1,265 were either hires, transfers or promotions and 553 separations. So I think things are moving through the system, but I’m not aware of positions that are being specifically held back. At least the deputy minister doesn’t come to me and say, I decided to hold these positions back because I have someone in mind. That is not just a category that we entertain. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. I don’t think the Minister understood where I was going. I’m not talking about a category in PeopleSoft; I’m talking about something that happens before the job ever gets to PeopleSoft. It certainly, I think, is well known within the government service that a job may be coming vacant and it’s not put into PeopleSoft, it’s not advertised because there’s somebody either within the department or, I hate to say it, somebody’s friend who they may want to get that job.

The Minister kind of led me into my next question and that’s the use of casuals. Casuals are a very common practice for us in terms of filling vacancies, but casuals are often extended many, many times. I know any number of people who have had their casual position extended five times, a year at a time, six months at a time.

I would like to know from the Minister, when a job is filled by a casual, is it advertised in PeopleSoft as a vacancy? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, as of October 31, 2013, of the 1,150 vacancies, 208 of those categorized as vacancies were filled by casuals. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Minister, I can appreciate they were filled by casuals, but were they advertised in PeopleSoft as vacancies? They should be. If it’s a casual position and not permanent, if there’s not a permanent person in there, it should be advertised.

The Minister mentioned, in one of his answers earlier, that jobs are not necessarily advertised as vacant because they can be in various stages. They could be in the advertising stage, the interview stage or offer pending stage. It seems to me that we should have all of our jobs posted and if there is a stage, it’s in a certain stage, like an offer stage; for instance, flag that job as it’s in the offer stage. People would then know that the job may or may not be available in the next period of time. It may be filled; it may not. I think that certainly the more information we can provide to our residents the better.

I would ask the Minister if he would consider whether or not PeopleSoft would start reflecting all jobs at whatever stage they’re in. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I’m going to have a discussion with the deputy on this because I’m not quite understanding how we would be able to do that. When someone leaves the employ of the GNWT then that position becomes vacant. That vacant position, if there’s an immediate requirement, then that position could be filled with a casual. That gives an opportunity for the department to maybe evaluate what they wish to do with that position. As an example, it could be a position that’s hard to recruit. I’m not quite understanding clearly how we would be able to let the public know that we have this many vacancies but only this many of them can be advertised at one time because this many positions are in the appeal process, this many people are in the hiring process, this many are in the offering process and this many are in the interviewing process. I’m not sure that there would be any value in that to start with, but I’m not even sure how we would be able to advertise that whole thing on the website. It would be something that’s difficult to do, but something that we would like to look at. I can promise the Member that I will talk to the deputy, like I said, and see if that is a possibility. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.