Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank my colleagues. Out of these applications, 306 students were hired by the government. This sounds like a great number and it is; however, the previous year we had more summer students being employed by the government.
Mr. Speaker, the Minister spoke about the Premier and former Minister of Human Resources encouraging all the departments to see how we can better utilize our summer students. I think this is a great step, however we need to do more. This includes having the departments identifying the number of positions within their business plans and not rely on vacancies.
Mr. Speaker, I realize this would be a challenge but as departments are already working on their 2017-2018 business plans, there should be a section on identifying how many summer students will be needed to help with our future generation. Thank you Mr. Speaker. I will have questions for the Premier today about summer employment for returning post-secondary students.