Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to echo a little bit of the concerns from my colleagues around the decentralization of the human resources function.
As I've moved through some of my own health stuff at the hospital and talking with technicians and things there, there is a perceived notion, and I don't know how accurate it is, that the holdup on some of the recruitment is the department of HR and not the department of health and that, you know, as it was put to me, the job description, etcetera, had already been put in long ago to the Department of Finance, and nothing had moved. And so I just wanted to echo that that is a concern that I hear. I do recognize that, you know, everybody is struggling for employees at this time, but it sounds like we are a bit bogged down at times in our process. So I don't know that I really have a question in that but just more that, I do hear the same things as my colleagues, and particularly in the more specialized hiring areas, that perhaps some of that control needs to go back to the departments.
But my question is a bit around Indigenous representation, particularly Indigenous men. I think it's still stagnant at the 8 percent representation. And as a government we do very well with hiring of women, generally. So I think that there is a real lack here, or something is obviously very flawed if Indigenous men are only 8 percent. So I also hear stories of tokenism and such, or where people are hired but only then to be sort of that face but not really advancing or having the opportunities for training. So I guess I just want to hear the Minister speak a little bit more about how things are changing to increase the representation of Indigenous people within the GNWT and particularly Indigenous men? Thank you.