David Ramsay

Mr. Chairman, just because an employee accesses stress leave or other leave doesn’t necessarily make them a bad employee, and I wouldn’t want anybody to think that. I think in many cases it’s bad management, and it’s the employee feeling victimized in the workplace or harassed or intimidated or whatever you want. There are many reasons employees seek stress leave and extended medical leave.

I also wanted to ask the Minister…. If that type of analysis hasn’t been done, I think that’d be something worth providing to Members of this House — which departments have more employees who have accessed...

Mr. Speaker, I’d like to recognize a constituent and all the good work he does in the community in the area of addictions: Mr. Bern Richards.

Mr. Chairman, in the absence of a comprehensive human resource strategy or plan government-wide, I'm just wondering again how the government could make decisions in the area of staffing without a model to follow and how it is that they could just rely on deputy ministers and departments to come back with possible reduction scenarios. That's got to contravene some type of policy. It contravenes good judgment; I know that. But it's got to ring some alarm bells somewhere when we don't even have a comprehensive human resource plan for the future and we're out there hacking and slashing positions...

I’m not going to challenge your direction, Mr. Chairman; however, if the answers were sufficient, we wouldn’t be asking questions in this forum. It’s your prerogative, and perhaps we will ask those types of questions in question period.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll try to keep the question related to the estimates that are before us. The letters are the notification letters that went out to employees.

When we’re talking about the Main Estimates, Mr. Chairman, we’re talking about a reduction in staffing. Fundamental to that was the decision to either send the letters out or not send the letters out. The question I have for the Minister is: what advice did the Department of Human Resources give to the Minister and, in effect, Cabinet to either send the letters out or not send them out? That’s germane to the whole discussion we...

I’m happy to provide some opening comments under the Department of Human Resources. I welcome the Minister and his staff here with us this afternoon.

I do want to ask a number of questions when we get to the detail. One of the things I’m interested in knowing was what advice the Department of Human Resources gave to the government when we were dealing with the notification letters that went out to employees. I’d be very interested to know what the corporate take from HR was on whether or not those notification letters should have gone out in the manner that they did. Some of the blame, I guess...

I’m not a mathematician, but there are 380 employees, or thereabouts, at Stanton. With 12 payrolls that’s probably about six months’ worth of payroll that the department has been paying. That’s about $20 million. How is this transaction recorded between FMBS and the authority? How does it appear on the books? And where is this $20 million coming from?

Did the Department of Human Resources give any advice or recommendations to Cabinet prior to Cabinet making the staffing reductions? Mr. Chairman, I think that’s the crux of my question.

Mr. Speaker, I want to continue in my line of questioning for the Minister of Health and Social Services. It gets back to the $11.5 million accrued deficit that is currently at play at Stanton Territorial Hospital. I find it very disturbing to hear the Minister’s comments that FMBS has been stepping in to assume responsibility for paying the payroll at Stanton.

Mr. Speaker, this $11.5 million doesn’t accrue overnight. It builds up over years. I’m wondering: what has the Minister done and what has the government done to address the deficit at Stanton Territorial Hospital?

If the department is responsible for the legislation and the policies and procedures that govern Human Resources, you know, as a corporate entity, the GNWT, then it would just make sense to me that, you know, whether it’s a stamp of approval or not, the proposed staffing reductions see the experts at Human Resources to make sure they pass some kind of test, whether they pass the procedures and policies that are in place — or the government just rushes out and does what they want.

Again, I think what’s happening, Mr. Chairman, is I’m getting a picture that this reduction exercise wasn’t well...