Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the Department of Human Resources helps facilitate summer student hires. Ultimately, the hire of any summer student is the responsibility of the individual departments, as the Member has indicated. To help facilitate the hires so that the departments know who the students are, know where they are, know what types of skills they have, the Department of Human Resources does facilitate the application of our summer students into the summer student employment program. This is where all students can come and be registered. As of June 2nd, we have 562 students registered and 217 students hired, which is a little down from where we were in previous years.
The department also does provide a couple of different programs. One of them is the progressive experience program. One of them is the related experience program, which does provide a little bit of financial assistance to the departments to actually do some of the summer student hiring to help them offset the cost. Departments are not funded for summer students. In order to hire summer students, they have to rely on some of the money that they may have in the budgets or as a result of vacancies or other things that are happening. Their ability to hire is limited by budgets and whether or not they have some vacancies over time that can actually help them carry some of the students.
A number of months ago, I had a conversation with the Premier, who indicated that he would like the departments to at least meet the types of targets they had last year. On his behalf, I did send out an e-mail to the Ministers and the departments encouraging them to meet the numbers that we attained last year. Yes, we are still a little down, but hiring isn't over. Earlier today, the Premier sent a follow-up letter to all of the Ministers and the departments encouraging them to meet their targets in recognition that we are a little bit behind. Cabinet is aware. Cabinet is pushing the departments to hire. The departments have to make the decisions based on what they actually have available as far as money. We provide a little bit of money through those two programs, and we have a complete database of all students who are available. If they are looking for students, and they say I want students with this type of skill, we will send them the resumes based on affirmative action of individuals who meet those particular skill sets.