Masi. Oral questions. Member for Mackenzie Delta.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, we are so close to completing this project. With a little extra help from the ministry, I could see us completing this project this winter. Will the Minister ensure that the community is approved before the winter months come up because, as I mentioned, we have a lot of preparation to prepare for our January to April. That is the small timeframe we have to complete this work. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Like I said, we will review it and get back to the Member as quickly as we can. The other thing is the Member has already invited me to tour his region. I look forward to going out to site and having a look at this road and Willow River and everything else this entails.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions for the Minister of Human Resources. Earlier today he said that we must ensure our youth get the education experience they need to become the NWT's next generation of leaders. My questions are on the summer student hiring. I brought this up earlier during the Main Estimates. I didn't quite have all the numbers in front of me, but I have the numbers now. Hay River Regional Centre, our population is about 50 per cent higher than that of Fort Smith; yet Smith hires about 50 per cent more summer students, 43 in Smith compared to 29 in Hay River. Similarly, Inuvik, where Hay River is about one-sixth larger than Inuvik, but they hire about a third more summer students. The first question I have is what role does the Department of Human Resources have in hiring summer students? Is it just encouragement? Do they just encourage other departments to hire? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Minister of Human Resources.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the hiring decisions for summer students, as with all positions, actually lies with the department. With respect to summer student hiring, the role for the Department of Human Resources is to facilitate the database. So we actually facilitate the database, make it available to students, encourage students to get registered. When a department indicates that they have a desire for some summer students, they will let us know the skill set they're looking for, we search our database, we provide those resumes to the individual departments so that they can actually do the hire based on their needs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Minister's been doing a great job of keeping us updated, weekly updates as to how many summer students have been hired, where they've been hired. I know that there was an article on CBC the other day that said his department does encourage other departments to hire summer students, and they try to encourage departments to exceed last year's hiring. So I was wondering with these stats and with this encouragement that they give, do they do anything with those statistics? Do they look at areas there there's deficiencies in places like Hay River where we have a low percentage of hires? Do they try and address those deficiencies? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the encouragement actually came from the Premier who asked the departments to do everything they could to try to attain last year's numbers. Ultimately, the hires are the responsibilities of the individual departments. If we do get resumes of individuals with particular skill sets, we will forward to the department if they match the type of work that the department is doing. So we're trying to get the information out there, let the departments know who's out there, know who's working, who wants to work for the Government of the Northwest Territories. I do have to remind the Member, as all Members, we want to hire as many as we can, but it has to be for meaningful work. We can't just create jobs if there's nothing to do. The departments have to come up with the funding to cover many of these jobs. We do provide some offsets, some top-up money to the departments to help hire summer students through the progressive experience program or the related experience program. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it's the individual departments that are responsible.

As far as the lower numbers in Hay River, the Member did raise that in Committee of the Whole. I'm trying to get verification on why that might be. We believe part of it might be the fact that the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority is outside of the public service, so it doesn't always show those numbers, and we don't participate in the summer student hiring program for Hay River. So I'm trying to get some verification on that. When I get that data, I'll certainly provide it to the Member.

I'm sorry for mis-speaking, I guess it was the Premier who gave that encouragement. The numbers I quoted do include the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority. The Minister was saying that the departments tell them what skills they need and they try to have some meaningful work these summer students. Does the department do any work with the other departments to help create meaningful work, to develop some sort of plan so that say, the Department of Transportation, can create a meaningful position to hire a summer student?

Exactly one of the reasons that we created the Progressive Experience Program: it does provide some additional money to departments so that they have some resources to actually hire somebody in a progressive experience situation. So they would hire somebody who comes in with particular education, that matches a particular activity the department is trying to do, and then they would rehire the student again and again and again, allowing them to build experience as they move through their education. These are the dollars that we're making available to try to encourage some of the departments to pursue more students and commit to some of these students in a longer term.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know I've brought this up a couple of times, and it's because people in town bring it up to me; they want their children to get these jobs and stay in the North and be encouraged to come back to the North. So it's something that I'll be bringing up again and I'll be looking forward to working with I guess the Ministers of all the departments, since they're responsible for the hiring, to try and up those numbers in Hay River. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. I take that as a comment. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have some follow-up questions about the process. In my Member's statement I explained the process of how I understand negotiated contracts. I was also informed each request to negotiate is carefully considered by department and Minister and results in a decision to proceed with seeking Cabinet approval to negotiate or, in some of the instances, decision to proceed with tendering. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell the House if Cabinet or the department decided not to go to a negotiated contract for the contract in Highway No. 7? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Minister of Transportation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In that particular contract, the decision was mine and mine alone not to bring into Cabinet. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I guess I'm quite disappointed in hearing that answer, and I'll deal with some other questions later on. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister please provide the rationale why did he and his department decided against this proposal?

The reason that I made that decision is based on a negotiated contract policy, and there's things in there that I base my decision on and that's what I did.

It looks like I'm going to have a set of questions tomorrow for the Minister on this as well. In the letter and the correspondence I received from the Premier and the Minister they talked about the companies being on a level playing field. However, Mr. Speaker, the economic reality in the NWT, contractors are not on the same playing field with contractors who come from outside of the NWT. Mr. Speaker, is the Minister aware of any barriers facing companies from the North bidding on work in B.C.? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As far as I know, I don't believe there's any barriers for any northern company to bid on any southern work.

Masi. Oral question. Member for Nahendeh.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I understand the Minister may not be aware of barriers, as I recently was informed that there are some barriers. Mr. Speaker, if an NWT company is successful in getting work in B.C. they are required to pay PST on all their equipment moved into B.C., plus they need to file multi-financial statements and related documents. On top of that, they have to purchase various permits. This adds up to thousands of dollars to the cost of the contract. Mr. Speaker, will the Minister have his department look into implementing similar for the NWT so we are on a level playing field? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As we have GST and they have GST and PST, and probably some other taxes that's relevant to all contractors bidding on work probably in British Columbia. As far as contractors coming North and us, we all have the same contracts stuff we have to abide by. We've got to have workers' compensation, you've got to have your permits in place, and pay GST and the payroll tax and all those number of things. So there should be no impediment, any difference back and forth.