Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions, as well, today are addressed to the Minister of Human Resources. I’d like to start off by asking him about an event that was held about two weeks ago, not that long ago. It was open houses that the Department of HR held in seven different communities across the NWT. I haven’t heard anything since they were held as to what sort of success there was from these open houses, what were the results of the initiative, so that’s my question to the Minister initially.

Were these open houses successful? Does he have any results that he can share with the House as to the success or failure of this initiative?

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; there were open houses held across the North, and the idea would be to try to provide information to individuals who are interested in coming to work for the Government of the Northwest Territories. I don’t have the matching amounts for the number of individuals that have come to the open houses and whether or not that resulted in us hiring more individuals as a result of the open houses. I know that it has been a good avenue for disseminating information from Human Resources and several departments that do participate to getting people in the communities who are trying to get work with the GNWT.

So far the information I’ve got is it’s been successful, but I don’t have the particular numbers on each of the open houses that results in actual people coming to work for the GNWT.

I look forward to seeing the numbers that the Minister can pull together at some point in time. I’m not surprised he doesn’t have them. It was only two weeks ago, after all.

We’ve held open houses or career fairs, job fairs, whatever you want to call them, in the South as well. I would like to know from the Minister, my understanding is that when we hold a career fair or a job fair in the South that the staff that are attending these fairs are able to offer a job on the spot to applicants who they think are credible and could take a job. I’d like to know from the Minister if I’m correct in that assumption, and if that’s the case, was the same ability given to staff at the career fairs or the open houses that we held in the NWT? Were they able to hire people on the spot?

We are looking at the hard-to-fill positions, as the Member refers to the open houses in the South. We are looking at jobs that have been vacant for at least 18 months and have been advertised at least two times in the North and still with no success of filling the positions. Now we are trying to develop a team that will go down there and make job offers on the spot in those hard-to-fill positions. In the NWT, our open houses, we’re not dealing with the same group of people. These jobs are not considered hard to fill. We will go through the regular process of the departments working with HR to go through the advertising process. The people who are attending the open houses do not have the authority to hire people on the spot at open houses in the NWT.

To the Minister: That’s rather unfortunate. We have so many jobs in the GNWT which are unfilled, whether they’re hard to fill or whether they’re just “regular jobs,” so I fail to understand why the department wouldn’t want to hire as many people as possible, fill as many positions as possible, particularly in the North, but whether they be hard to fill or not.

One of the things that we have heard much about but have yet to see written on paper is the Population Strategy that this government is working towards bringing 2,000 bodies to the NWT to try and beef up our population.

I’d like to know what the Department of Human Resources is doing. What is their part in this Population Strategy to contribute to bring more residents to the territory?

The Department of Human Resources works with all of the departments and we are thinking that reducing the vacancy rate is something that will increase the population in the Northwest Territories. I referred earlier on in my response to hard-to-fill positions that where we will be actively trying to hire individuals from the South and giving the people the ability to hire on the spot. In those positions we’re expecting to increase the population by that.

As far as vacancies go, a year ago we had over 1,100, well, 1,175 vacancies six months ago. We’re down to 1,038 vacancies, and today we’re at 917 vacancies. Each time we do a vacancy we actively try to reduce the amount of vacant positions in the GNWT, and I think that we’re being fairly successful.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. I totally agree. It seems like a no-brainer that reducing the vacancy rate is going to bring more people to the Northwest Territories. But I guess I would like to know from the Minister, if we’re trying to reduce our vacancy rate – and I

have to say, I have to give credit to the department for reducing the vacancies by 200 or so, as the Minister mentioned – or we’re trying to fill jobs, why would we not, at these open houses, albeit we’re giving out info, but why would we not give our staff the ability to hire on the spot to fill as many jobs as possible with Northerners?

To give them the authority to hire at the open houses within the Northwest Territories would not really be something that would be necessary. That’s the reason we’re not doing it. We could look at talking to departments that may want to go there and be prepared to look at applicants of certain positions that they may talk about in the open houses. But at this point we find that the departments are being relatively successful in trying to reduce the vacancy rates and do the hiring using the current method of how we are hiring people in the Northwest Territories. For that reason we had not contemplated the idea that individuals who are attending the open houses, we had the ability to hire on the spot.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister of NWT Housing, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In Yellowknife alone we’ve provided some money to the Aven’s Working Group to help with their new plan that they have going forward. Sixty-four percent of our homeownership projects in the last year have been utilized by seniors. So as far as the actual investment in seniors housing in Yellowknife itself, there hasn’t been much other than the programs that we have for repair, but across the Northwest Territories we have four seniors units that we’re building and one seniors

unit that we’re replacing in some of the smaller communities. Thank you.

I’d like to ask the Minister of Housing why they’re not investing into more housing for seniors in Yellowknife. In my Member’s statement I pointed out that in the age category between 65 and 74 we’re going to see almost a 400 percent increase in growth, and further, at the age category of 75-plus we’re seeing over 400 percent growth in the next 11 years in seniors. So, clearly, seniors need housing. They need housing options, and these housing options will keep them out of poverty. Avens is an able and certainly a willing partner.

Would the Minister be willing to find some money to help invest in their project so they can expand housing solutions for seniors? Thank you.

As I said before, we have given $150,000 to help with the planning, and part of that planning, I’m assuming, is going to be a business plan coming forward with a dollar figure attached. So, we’ll look forward to seeing what they come up with.

As far as the Member’s numbers, the Member’s numbers are correct. You know, we do recognize that there is going to be a larger population of seniors down the road and we at the Housing Corporation are coming up with some innovative ways to try and address that. One of those ways is working with the City of Yellowknife on their Canada Winter Games proposal to see if there are opportunities for us there to provide something to them to use as an athlete’s village and then possibly turned into a seniors facility once the Games are done. So, we are finding innovative ways to stretch our limited resources as far as they can go. Thank you.

The Canada Winter Games, of course, is a number of years away. So, we can all hope, of course, and we’ll see if accountability actually shows up in a sense of someday that actually materializes. More specifically, the Minister says they’re looking for innovative ways.

What about being innovative by doing what the Housing Corporation’s portfolio is really about, about establishing housing in need areas? Seniors need housing. It keeps them out of poverty situations. They’re not all in that situation, but many are. CMHC facts will tell you that. So, if the Minister wants to be innovative, why doesn’t he make a decision today to say we’re going to put 50 more units in the city of Yellowknife within the next five years? He could do that by initiating that type of mandate and doing what Housing is supposed to do: build houses.

Housing does a good job of providing housing and programs, and as I

said before, 64 percent of the uptake is from... Oh sorry, I thought you were…

I was looking at the Page here. Go ahead.

Sixty-four percent of the repair programs are taken up by seniors. As I said before, we are challenged again by our limited financial resources. We are trying to put together a plan to deal with a lot of the houses.

In some of the larger market areas we’re a little more challenged because we have our territorial Rent Supplement Program that provides some relief and we have a number of programs that are designed specifically for seniors and trying to help with their housing needs. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Sorry about that. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A 400 percent increase in seniors in the Northwest Territories in the Yellowknife-specific region only is a serious initiative.

When is the last time this Minister of Housing has put in a request for a capital investment to have a serious impact in the housing situation directly intended to invest in seniors to ensure that they have quality housing to keep them out of poverty? When was the last time we’ve had an investment, and furthermore, what’s stopping him from putting that request in to invest in seniors, invest in population growth that would make a huge difference? Thank you.

As I said before, we have four seniors units that are going up across the Northwest Territories. We have one that’s being replaced because of the age. So we have five in total and we continue to bring forward recommendations and we continue to have a look at where we can access money. As I said to the Member before, we are trying to come up with ways where we can deal with some of the issues of seniors housing here in the capital and I brought forward one of the things that we’re looking at. The Member talked about 11 years. I know the Games are a bit away, but we need to start the work and start the planning now so we’re not rushing at the last minute.

So, we continue to do what we can with our limited resources, again, being challenged with the CMHC declining funding, to bring more and more seniors housing on board, recognizing the fact that the population is growing rapidly over the next few years. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.