Agreed. Moving on. Page 219. Human Resources, management and recruitment services, active positions, information item. Any questions? Seeing none.

Agreed. Page 221. Human Resources, regional operations, operation expenditure summary. Activity total, $3,799,000. Mr. Thompson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just five or six agreeable questions. The first one is when we talk about human resources planning. Has the government looked at talking about summer employment? I realize each department has priority or has to make the decision. But can the Minister please provide a commitment or a working tool so that it becomes part of our mandate or our policy that we will look at employing summer students and that we have a goal in each department and every department is given a goal so that they can fulfil that mandate so that we see summer students come back so that we show that we care about them and that we want them to continue on to get educated and come back North. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Mr. Minister.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Thompson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank the Minister for the well thought out and well-planned answer. All that information, I am well aware of. I understand the progressive funding out there and the department does a really good job. However, I would really, really love to see this government work, and you take the lead, that the other departments actually have a number in place, and we have the money put aside so that we can hire our summer students so when they come back, they are guaranteed work, so they can continue to go on to school. I understand that through ECE, we have an increase in funding for their tuition and that. It still costs a lot of money to go to school. I am hoping that this department can take the lead and come up with a mandate, working with the Premier, because the Premier is excited about this. I know in the past I have had other Premiers stand in this House and make it a mandate that you will hire students. I am asking the government, you as the lead department, to take this on your own or take the lead on it and work with the departments to earmark money in the budgets so that we can hire summer students. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson. Mr. Chair, once again, we have a significant number of students who apply. Last year, we had 612 students apply, and we were able to hire 341 of them by the end of what is considered the summer students hire period. We are committed to hiring as many as we can. We do have money. There is money. It is not all coming from the departments through their vacancies. Through the progressive experience program, we have enough money to fund up to 80 positions. This is exactly what the Member is talking about. Through the progressive experience program, we bring back the same individuals who do the same jobs on a regular basis in order to build upon their education and continue to consolidate learning in a particular area. We have enough funding for 80 positions. To all the departments, funding provides a wage subsidy of $330 a week per place of employment to a maximum of $5,000 per student a year. The departments do have to come up with the additional money. The related experience is a little more focused. It is actually focused on 24 placements for Health and Social Services Authorities to provide a wage subsidy of $525 per week for placement to a maximum of $8,400 or 600 hours. This is mostly for individuals that are pursuing health careers. The intent there is also to bring back the individuals throughout their education, so they have an opportunity to consolidate learning for their education.

We are putting a good pot of money into supporting the departments already. On top of that, the departments do fund the remainder through their internal budgets. There isn't a pot of money just for hiring summer students outside of progressive or related experience programming. If the Committee Members feel this is something we need to invest in, this is a discussion we need to have as an Assembly as to whether or not putting dollars in there is something that we should be doing or whether we should continue just trying to utilize the programs that exist. I am sure that Cabinet is listening. I am listening. Happy to have the conversation if this is a priority of the Legislature.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Thompson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am aware of my time here, so I will try to be succinct with my comments. Great job with the 80 with the progressive experience. Even a better job with the 24 with related experience, which is in the health care system, which is great. Well done. But we are missing other fields, and we are missing this opportunity. I am not talking about all students coming back North. I am talking about our P1s, and our P2s, which are our priorities as government. That is what we should be looking at doing. I am hoping that we can hear something from you guys that we can talk about it. I am hoping Cabinet listens and hears and the Premier hears the message so that we can get this done. You have shown a lot of leadership, and I applaud you for that. We are talking 104 positions, which is important. We are still short, and I am trying to see that the government looks at our youth, which is our future. We want these people back here. If we don't make the incentive to bring them back -- I know that ECE has done some stuff, which I applaud them for that, but we want to get our youth back here. Waiting to get them back here is to respect them and give them the employment and show them that they have done well going to school. I am hoping that you can do that. Can you provide us with a breakdown of the communities, number of jobs that are there? I know you have made that are available in the past. Can we get that information to committee? I think you say you do that every Monday. But can we get those things to us broke down into our communities as well? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Mr. Minister, I am going to allow a reply. The ten minutes is up.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I have committed to getting those numbers. I can certainly have it provided by communities throughout the Northwest Territories. Sometimes the numbers are one or two, so we want to be cautious about confidentiality, but we will get those numbers to you. As of June 2nd, 562 applications, 217 hires. There are still some offers out there that aren't fully counted in that. I do hear the Member. I know the Ministers hear the Member. We have to think about magnitude here. There has to be work too. There has to be meaningful work for these summer students to do. Hiring summer students and not having them do anything that is going to help them develop a skill set or help them build their resumes is not particularly helpful. The GNWT is not the only employer out there. We have lots of students coming back. We will certainly do our best to hire as many as we can.

There are some questions. I have heard a lot of individuals say we are paying some of these summer students incredible sums of money. We are paying them based on the collective agreement that we have negotiated with the UNW base and the work that we are having them perform, there has been a lot of discussions about those types of thing, whether we should create a category of summer students and have them do temp-type work or random-type work. But those would need to be defined and evaluated and compensated. All of these things do come with a price tag. Every one of these things comes with a price tag. Happy to have further discussion on this. Happy to hear what the Members have to say. But as a caution, there are other employers. We only have so much money. We are working hard to, at least, meet previous year's numbers, and we will continue to do so.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Recognizing Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson. Mr. Chairperson, under this category I want to ask more questions about recruitments since this category includes recruitment. I am not going to request to go back to the previous category, but I do have an additional question on a priority one candidate and the Affirmative Action Policy. Could the Minister advise me why it would be necessary to go beyond interviewing anyone else if you have priority one candidates that are qualified for the jobs that they are applying for? Whether it be a priority one candidate individual or whether there be several priority one candidates, why would we interview anyone else at all? According to the Affirmative Action, should we not just go to the qualified priority one candidates and interview them first? Thank you.

Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, when a job ad is put out, the criteria is determined based on what is identified in the job description. I have already indicated we are going to be going through job descriptions trying to remove some of the systemic barriers. Should a P1 candidate apply, and meet the criteria outlined within the job description, they would be interviewed. If there were three P1s, they would be interviewed. If there were one P1 and one P2 and 40 P3s, we would interview the P1. If that person passed we wouldn't have to go any further. If that person did not pass the interview, then we would look at the P2. If that person did not pass the interview, then we would certainly be looking at P3s and other candidates. The Affirmative Action policy is pretty clear that if there are P1 candidates who meet the criteria established within the job description, they would be interviewed. If there are 40 P1s who meet the criteria, we will try to identify the ones who have the highest ranking as far as meeting the criteria.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes. I had indicated in my question that it was qualified Priority One candidates. Just to get this very clear and on the record, the Minister is indicating that if Priority One candidates are qualified in accordance with the job description that is put out there, then they only interview the Priority One candidates in round one of interviews. We will call it round one of interviews. It may not go beyond that. Is that what I am hearing? That only priority one candidates will be interviewed? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, if there was only one P1 candidate, we might actually look at a P2 or P3 as well. However, if the P1 passes, the P1 would be offered the job. That is to save time later should an individual not pass. The priority would still go to the Indigenous Aboriginal candidate who is screened in and passes.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman, that is where we run into problems. If you have a qualified priority one candidate, but there is only one, because for some reason the department makes a decision that it would not be appropriate to only interview one person, I wouldn't know what the problem would be, but if that is a decision made, as the Minister just indicated, there is a possibility of a priority one or non-priority candidate who would be interviewed. And that is where the problem comes. With that scenario, then, if the priority one candidate passes the interview but is way behind in the scoring against the other two persons, priority two and priority three, in that incidence who would get hired?