Bob McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have had some discussions on it, mainly because of the fact that we have had some requests from Aboriginal employees that have been to visit and seek traditional healing from different places in Canada.

This is something that is starting to be recognized in formal medical circles. We are trying to make sure that we can deal properly with employees that want to seek traditional healing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The 16th Legislative Assembly worked to refocus government to achieve greater effectiveness and efficiency in how the Government of the Northwest Territories operates and delivers programs and services. In order to provide a high level of service to the people of the Northwest Territories, we must continue to develop and maintain a professional and well-managed public service.

Later today I will be tabling the 2010 Public Service Annual Report. The Public Service Annual Report highlights the overall results of public service performance achieved in the context of 20/20: A Brilliant North, the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following two documents entitled 2010 Public Service Annual Report, Government of the Northwest Territories, and 2011 Employee Satisfaction and Engagement Survey and Human Resources Client Satisfaction Survey.

As I indicated, we are looking at how to increase cultural awareness and diversity. I think that would be a start. We’ll get our consultant to help us in identifying those areas and make sure that those employees that practice it are not dismissed out of hand and we can try to work together to find ways to deal with it.

We don’t have a plan, per se. As the Member may know, within the Government of the Northwest Territories most of our expenses are either covered through our insurance policies or through the government programs. I guess the difficulty we’ve been having is to identify -- how would I say it -- in a formal medical sense we have to deal with certifications and we need approved medical criteria that we deal with. We don’t necessarily have that with traditional healing. Generally we deal with it on an ad hoc individual basis, but we are doing some work to promote cultural awareness and diversity...

Mr. Speaker, I’d like to recognize Morag MacPherson, the founder and creative force behind ArtsEnergy. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following two documents entitled Government of the Northwest Territories Contracts Over $5,000 Report for the Fiscal Year Ending March 31, 2011, and 2010-2011 Grants and Contributions Results Report, August 2011.

I can think of a number of barriers. I think it’s very similar to when the government developed the Traditional Knowledge Policy. In a lot of cases at the community level, people, when there were no other medical services, used traditional healing or traditional knowledge with regard to traditional medicines and how they dealt with different kinds of illnesses or accidents. So there is the formal. It’s the same when you look at scientific knowledge and traditional knowledge. It’s a question of how do you recognize it. So we would have to work with our Department of Health because traditional...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s our intention to review the Summer Student Program the way we do every year. We’ve discontinued the hiring of students as of August 15th. We’ll review our practices. We will review the exit interviews that were done with summer students and we’ll assess how successful we have been. We think we’ve been successful this year, considering our fiscal situation. We’ve increased the hiring of the number of summer students from last year. We’re not aware of any significant staffing issues when it came to the hiring of summer students and we will incorporate that into next...

I would say that without the involvement of the different filmmakers we would never have gotten this far. They have been working with us every step of the way. Now that we’ve identified funding, they’ve been working with us to develop the criteria. Certainly I would want to continue to work with them and I would certainly like to see such an organization be developed, so we’ll work on that area.