Thank you, Madam Chair. I will look for the officials to support me in this in a general response. Generally what we could respond to is, any vacancies that are in Human Resources, the Department of Human Resources, and then for the overall vacancies in the government, the various agencies, whether they be health authorities or the education authorities, we would need to have the vacancies responded to by

the appropriate Minister. As far as the Department of HR goes, we have seven vacancies that we are currently in the process of staffing. Only two of those are in the region and five are in Yellowknife. Of the seven vacancies that are on the books now, two of them have been filled and the other five are in the process of being filled.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Anything further, Mr. Blake?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I was specifically talking to the Beaufort-Delta riding and the Mackenzie Delta riding. Yellowknife has hundreds, almost thousands of jobs and my main focus is up where it is really needed and that is in the smaller communities of the Mackenzie Delta riding. Thank you.

Again, as I indicated, that was the full sum of the vacancies in the Department of Human Resources. We could, I suppose, go through the detail on the rest. We do have a report on the rest of the vacancies for the rest of the departments, but to speak specifically on the processes that are going through, or the plan that the various departments have on filling those positions, I don’t have that information with me. Each department, again, is responsible for filling the vacancies. When I spoke about the seven vacancies, that is the full vacancy for the Department of Human Resources.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Next I will go to Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Maybe I will reword the questions, just so it is clearly asked and can be clearly answered. At this present moment, the Department of Human Resources issued a snapshot which I know they do on a regular basis. How many vacancies in the public service would be recognized in that snapshot? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The report that we do on a semi-annual basis indicates the vacancy rate and then breaks down which positions are true vacancies where we are attempting to fill the positions. We have 466 positions where we are actually in the process of recruiting. They are at advertisement or they are at the stage where we are preparing to advertise or they could be in the job offering stage after all of the interview processes have taken place. The vacancy rate, which includes positions that are inactive, positions that are filled by casuals and other positions, positions that have been held vacant for transfer assignments and so on, that actual number is 1,038 at this time.

Does the Department of Human Resources keep any statistics on southern versus what I would call northern hire? Thank you.

Yes, we do.

I would ask the Minister, could he elaborate a little more, such as some of the details that they keep?

It is indicated when we have job competitions, we ask for individuals to give their priority status for the competition. When we go out to job advertisement, individuals will indicate whether they are a priority 1 candidate, Aboriginal indigenous Northerner; or priority 2, non-Aboriginal indigenous Northerner; or priority 3, not having either of those two statuses. In reality, if an individual was here but did not attain any of those two statuses, they may consider themselves a resident of the NWT but would not achieve either of those two statuses or they would be in the same category as somebody that was hired directly from the south. So we have those statistics and we have the percentage in each of those statistics in the public service at this time.

In the last year is the Minister able to provide statistics on southern hire versus northern hire? Thank you.

We would have to do a manual count by department, so what happens with our reporting on PeopleSoft is that they give a snapshot in between from one report to the next, so for about a six-month period what it would show would be the change but it wouldn’t show the amount of people going in and out to actually create that change. It would show the new number at this point. In order for us to determine how many southerners we hired or non-priority candidates we were to hire in the GNWT versus priority 1 or priority 2 candidates, we would actually have to do a manual count department by department to be able to provide that information.

Would the Minister be able to epitomize that?

Did you say would he be able to crystalize that?

Epitomize. Write a letter. Respond in writing.

Thank you. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We would be able to provide that in writing if the committee wished for us to provide that information in writing. We are also looking at creating a field in this report so that… Right now, this concentrates mostly on the vacancy rate. We’re working on creating a field in this report that would indicate overall which the candidates were, either a priority

1, 2 or 3. Just for more clarification, I would like to ask the deputy minister to add to that.

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. Desjardins.

Thank you, Ms. Desjardins. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I wasn’t sure if the Minister was going to provide that in writing or not. He said if the committee wants that. This is very unusual, in my experience, that we now need the whole committee of the Assembly to request information. Is that the position of the Minister?

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Beaulieu.