Bob McLeod

As we know, Mr. Chair, how many positions are out there with regard to which are funded and unfunded is a question best posed to individual departments.

Mr. Speaker, in the last ten years we have witnessed an incredible surge in the Northwest Territories’ economy driven by strong investment in non-renewable resource development and, in particular, diamond mining and oil and gas exploration. The prospects of the proposed Mackenzie Gas Project promise even greater economic potential for the future.

As a government we are working to ensure economic development is managed in a way that fosters continued growth, builds business capacity and will allow NWT residents to benefit fully from their participation in the resource sector. It is to this end...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’ve had self-service in place for over a year now. I think it would be worthwhile for us to review it to ensure it’s working properly and also to make sure it’s accurate. We’ve found that after some initial periods of growing pains and getting employees to try it and to realize it wasn’t as hard as it was made out to be — all they had to do was get on-line and start trying it — they could deal with self-service on a regular basis. What we’re hearing is that people on shift work and so on are paid in a more timely and accurate manner. Because of the different things we...

It’s not on that list, because it’s been inactivated and been removed.

Certainly, when there was early talk about possible budget reductions, there were a few departments that initiated their own freeze. We felt that was premature and would adversely affect government operations, so we gave direction that they were to continue with normal activities until such time as they received direction and approval of budgets by this body.

I indicated that was a budgeting issue. This is the direction…. When the call letters go out, the Minister responsible for budgeting could ask every department to identify each position. The general approach is that the departments are free to budget as long as they come in within budget.

Mr. Chair, this is something that…. I think every department has unfunded positions, and different departments take different approaches to it. Some departments only cost out positions at 75 per cent or 80 per cent; other departments just rely solely on turnover in staff. As a government, I think, we have 20 per cent turnover. Sorry; I stand corrected. It’s 14.2 per cent turnover, so you can generally count on at least that much. As another rule of thumb, generally some departments sort of go with about 10 per cent unfunded positions.

We’ve been trying to stay on top of it, but I don’t think we...

That would be something I’m sure all departments are interested in.

The Hackett Report was funded at the time when Human Resources was still under the Department of Financial Management Board Secretariat. There was more flexibility with resources, and one of the issues with Human Resources is that we don’t have that flexibility, so if we wanted to do something similar now, we wouldn’t be able to.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Generally, the overtime is tracked by the departments. We work with the departments to develop policies that would apply across the board so all employees are dealt with consistently and fairly. For example, we have a government-wide policy that restricts the amount of overtime you can carry and also how much you would be paid out. We’ve run into problems in the past with people leaving the government who have carried a lot of overtime with them. We track it on that basis.