Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. By September of this year, the Income Support Program will be changed to provide a better level of support for persons with disabilities. We are also looking at changes that will accommodate some of the issue that the Member has talked about in terms of long-term planning for families who have youngsters with disabilities in a similar vein to the approach taken by the federal government recently. So, yes, Mr. Speaker, that’s underway. I am hoping in June to be able to announce the specifics of some of the changes we hope to implement in September.

Mr. Speaker, I don’t believe that it was possible that this information could have been downloaded, but I will ascertain that and again make sure that that information is passed on to Members.

Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned that information that should not have been available to all of the employees in the public service was available. It is important to note, too, that this wasn’t a public breach. While it is right, the information should not have been available, I want to make sure that all employees understand that this information was not available on the Internet to the members of the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think it's a good point and we will make sure that we report to our employees on what happened, why it happened, how it happened, and what our response is and what will happen in the future. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member noted earlier this week, I informed her that there had been no problems with information access of the PeopleSoft system after the implementation of self-service function for departments. However, since that time, I have been informed that there were some problems with the information access during the initial rollout of the program in some departments. These problems were dealt with quickly as soon as they were identified. Mr. Speaker, I intend to follow up with my department on this issue and determine how we can ensure that these types of issues do...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will review the situation with the Premier and discuss what might be an appropriate response. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Good afternoon. On June 15th, NWT seniors will recognize World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, which has the theme of My World, Your World, Our World, Free of Elder Abuse. Sadly, 80 percent of abuse or neglect of older adults goes unreported. Many NWT seniors feel isolated and alone, even when they have family visiting regularly.

Also next month, we will celebrate Seniors' Week from June 16th to June 27th. Seniors’ Week is an opportunity for us to take some time to recognize the importance of seniors in our northern communities. The theme this year, Seniors Helping Seniors...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said, when I met with the deputy for Human Resources, I asked that she talk to the other deputies to encourage them to ensure that the departments were hiring summer students as much as possible. We will continue that work, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Subsequent to the Member’s first question on this issue, I met with the deputy and we have work started already to follow up with departments to find out what positions they are going to have and to find out whether or not there are going to be any fewer positions going to be offered this year compared to previous years.

As well, we have summer students who are employed in Human Resources actually phoning and contacting students this week, it started this week, to ensure that they are still looking for work and to find out if they have been contacted by departments. So...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said, both Health and Social Services and FMBS have those comprehensive plans now. An overall broad government plan can’t be comprehensive. It’s going to have to be the broad brush strokes, the high level plan, because you can’t say that all departments are going to work exactly the same way. So we want to set up some general criteria and say to the deputies, can your department work within this and then have each department work on their own detailed plan. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would agree with the Member that the best practice would be for the government to have a corporate human resource plan. In fact, the department has prepared a broad, high level plan to take to deputies here within the next two months. So we are hoping to move forward with that.