This is page numbers 4589 – 4648 of the Hansard for the 17th Assembly, 5th Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was services.

Topics

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

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

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Canada’s top employer for youth is a process where there’s a selection committee. They look at about 800 applications, roughly 800 applications at one time and select what they consider to be the top 100. It’s not, I guess, solely related to whether or not we recruit, but it makes it more attractive if we can advertise that we are amongst Canada’s

top youth and student employers, then we are more attractive in that sense. In that sense, I guess, we would be assisting in recruitment from that aspect of it. Thank you.

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

Well, I fail to fully understand why we go to a specialized marketing company and spend $795 to self-nominate, and when I actually called them they told me they couldn’t tell me who competes for these awards because that’s proprietary information. Ultimately, that’s what they said, and they can’t tell me about how it’s evaluated at the end of the day. It almost seems like it’s self-gratification designed.

By the way, let me be the first to announce, I’m creating a Yellowknife Centre MLA award. I won’t tell you who can apply, and it will be in 2014. It’s just as simple as that. Obviously, that was just being tongue-in-cheek.

The issue here is how are we getting these jobs filled when the government is busy nominating itself for awards that don’t really have any value?

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Maybe I’ll try to provide some context to this. What the selection committee looks at is the physical workplace, working atmosphere, social, health, financial, family, benefits, vacation, time off, employee communications, performance management, training and skills development and community involvement. Some of the companies that are on this list that have been selected as top employers are companies such as CIBC, City of Edmonton, Coca-Cola Canada, Ikea, Ontario Public Service, Shell Canada, Telus, Xerox, KMG, LLP. There are a lot of companies there. I don’t think that it takes a whole lot of time. It’s not like the whole public service is busy trying to nominate themselves and we don’t have time to recruit. It’s a very simple thing. It’s an application. You put it in and it’s done. It doesn’t consume a whole lot of time. The people that do the selections, we’re not involved in selecting, so it’s not like we’re busy nominating ourselves for things, that we’re so busy doing that that we’re unable to recruit people to the public service.

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

I think the last sidebar provided the Minister is ultimately the crux of the issue. It’s not the fact that we have to self-nominate. Sometimes we have to draw attention to the great things we do. I understand that. But when we have to pay $795 to self-nominate, it does start to draw into question. This government has said, through its own little PeopleSoft software, that we have over 1,000 job vacancy positions. This government has said that they we are actively pursuing 571 jobs. I went to the job career website today and there were about 102 job postings. We all know there has got to be several hundred summer students that don’t have jobs, so how do we put all this together that we’re so busy nominating ourselves for a great job

we’ve got hundreds and hundreds of job positions not filled, and we certainly have probably thousands of people from top to bottom of the Northwest Territories, whatever community you live in, that need jobs. How are we filling these jobs when we’re busy filling out applications to tell us how great we are?

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Again, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that we haven’t spent a whole lot of time nominating ourselves and maybe a very, very minor piece of work that was done in order to promote ourselves as a good employer. It’s a competition. It’s not like we nominated ourselves and we’re guaranteed to go on the list. Like I said, only a certain group of individual companies and governments and organizations are selected.

As far as summer students go, we’re on schedule to hire an equivalent amount of students that we’ve had every summer. As of May 2, we had hired 217 summer students, of which 70 of these summer students were in the regions, and of the 217 summer students, 48.5 percent were indigenous Aboriginal and 48.85 percent were indigenous non-Aboriginal, so we have hired our students to the tune of 97 percent, and we’re on pace to hire as many summer students as we did in previous years.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

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

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Population is in decline. The cost of living is up. The Minister says we’ve hired 217 summer students. I bet there are at least 800 in total that have been looking for work, so we’re lucky to even get 25 percent of the students hired. The bottom line is I want to know how many job positions are open and how we’re getting them filled. This government has repeatedly said they had 571 jobs they were actively looking for a few months ago. We’ve got, at best, in the range of 800 students, probably almost 600 looking for job. When you go to the website, there are only 102 job postings on our career website. It doesn’t seem like this government is interested in employing people and making sure that they can feed their families.

I’d like the Minister to tell me exactly how many of these jobs are open and what is he doing.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Like I said, we do get 700 to 800 applicants to our summer students. We hire around 300. We’re on target to do that again. We tried to do a fairly even split between Yellowknife, where the majority of the public service is, and out there in the regions and the communities. We do have 100 or so competitions at one time because we can’t run all the vacancies at one time. All the positions to recruit, we cannot run them all at one time. They’re at varying stages. Some of them may be at the offer stage, some are at the appeals stage, some are just becoming vacant and so on,

so there is a constant flow. We have about 500, maybe 10 percent turnover, so on an annual basis we turn over about 10 percent of our public service. We do have a vacancy close to 20 percent and we hire casuals and so on throughout the years and we have the departments manage their human resources the best they can to get the job done.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Colleagues, the time for oral questions has expired. Item 8, written questions. Item 9, returns to written questions. Item 10, replies to opening address. Item 11, petitions. Item 12, reports of standing and special committees. Item 13, reports of committees on the review of bills. Item 14, tabling of documents. Mr. Miltenberger.

Michael Miltenberger

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

I wish to table the following three documents, entitled “Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 1, 2014-2015,” “Government of the Northwest Territories Response to Committee Report 2-17(5): Report on the Review of the 2012-13 Public Accounts” and “Program Review Office Annual Report, 2013.”

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Lafferty.

Jackson Lafferty

Jackson Lafferty Monfwi

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document, entitled “Junior Kindergarten – Fact Package.”

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.

Bob McLeod

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following letter from Prime Minister Stephen Harper, dated May 16, 2014, regarding the

extension of the term of the 17th Legislative

Assembly.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.

Michael Miltenberger

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following two documents, entitled “Tundra Science and Culture Camp Annual Report” and “2012 Annual Report of Wildlife Research in the NWT.”

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Dolynny.

Daryl Dolynny

Daryl Dolynny Range Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to table a number of documents here from the Canadian Travellers Report Card and Evaluation of Government Policy and Practice for Canadians Who Travel, 4th Edition. This is by the Canadian

Snowbird Association.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Item 15, notices of motion. The Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Thursday, June 5, 2014, I will move the following motion: now therefore I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, that the Legislative Assembly strongly recommends that the Department of Education, Culture and Employment identify and seek new funding to support the implementation of junior kindergarten instead of reducing funding to any other education districts; and further, that the department ensure that the Junior Kindergarten Program be professionally designed and delivered by properly trained staff; and further, that the Junior Kindergarten Program be oriented toward early childhood development and not a hybrid Junior Kindergarten Program; and further, the department’s rollout of junior kindergarten be focused on communities without an Aboriginal Head Start program; and furthermore, that the

government provide a comprehensive response to this motion within 120 days. Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

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

Frederick Blake Jr.

Frederick Blake Jr. Mackenzie Delta

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Thursday, June 5, 2014, I will move the following motion: now therefore I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Monfwi, that the following persons be approved by the Legislative Assembly as sole adjudicators:

Honourable Ronald L. Barclay;

Mr. Paul D.K. Fraser;

Mr. Ronald Perozzo;

Honourable J.E. (Ted) Richard;

Honourable Marguerite Trussler.

Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Blake. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.

Alfred Moses

Alfred Moses Inuvik Boot Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Thursday, June 5th , 2014, I will move the

following motion: I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Great Slave, that, notwithstanding Rule 4, when this House adjourns on June 5, 2014, it shall be adjourned until Thursday, October 16, 2014; and further, that any time prior to October 16, 2014, if the Speaker is satisfied, after consultation with the Executive Council and Members of the Legislative Assembly, that the public interest requires that the House should meet at an earlier time during the adjournment, the Speaker may give notice and thereupon the House shall meet at the time stated in such notice and shall transact its business as it has been duly adjourned to that time. Thank you.