I guess there are a number of reasons for the backlog. Our government workforce is aging. I think 40 per cent of our employees are eligible to retire within the next ten years, so I would expect that is the reason for the backlog.

We can provide most of that information probably today. We just have to make copies of it.

Three of the seven were filled positions.

Mr. Speaker, our government is very supportive of pre-retirement planning. Generally, if the training is approved by the supervisor, we pay for their costs. If there is a cost associated with the pre-retirement training program — and I should point out that many of the courses we put on through our GNWT training calendar have costs associated with them — we would cover those costs if they’re approved by our supervisors.

The affirmative action statistics for the Government of the Northwest Territories has been flat-lined at 31 per cent for probably the past six or seven years. I think that of the potentially affected employees…. You have talked about Justice. There are 46, and they are split evenly between P1s and P2s, so my expectation is that in applying the Affirmative Action Policy, most of the P1s that are mobile I expect would likely be reassigned. The 31 per cent has been pretty…. It hasn’t moved very much, so I expect it would probably remain around that on this, unless we take other steps to increase...

There were seven in all.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I explained, I’m not saying it’s right, either. I’m just saying that when positions were transferred into the amalgamated Department of HR, they weren’t fully funded. A lot of them were funded at 50 per cent; a lot of them were funded at 75 per cent. In order to fund some of the positions that were at the top of their pay level, we couldn’t afford to fill some of these positions, so they’re vacant positions with no funding attached to them.

I’d like to recognize Joseph Lanzon. I believe he used to work here in the Legislative Assembly in a previous life and now lives in Ottawa.

Mr. Chair, of those three positions that the Member referred to, one was filled by an intern, the other one was used for filling a position through a contract and the third was an unfunded position where there are no resources available for it so that position would disappear.

I just wanted to clarify that although there may have been vacant positions that were put forward for reductions, the resources that were used to fund those positions would be removed from the HR budget as well.