Floyd Roland

The position would not be filled. The one the Member is speaking of is within this department down in Ottawa. The office manager wasn’t the manager of that position. The office manager ran the office and kept it open and ready for use by individuals in governments and departments who travelled down to Ottawa. As I stated earlier, we are revising, looking at how we operate in that area, and how we operate as a government for when we travel down to Ottawa. That will come forward as part of our ’09–10 business plan process. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, as I stated earlier, whether we are affected with our work environment, with our unions or, in this case of retirement, working with Superannuation…. If they have policies in place that could affect some of those areas, we’ll get some detail on that. One of the factors that could affect that, for example, is how high a level they are within the public service. That also has an effect on that avenue. Again, that is more a reflection of our relationship with Superannuation.

Mr. Chairman, there are, right now at the office in Ottawa, two staff. One is an office manager and the other, one of the individuals who is on transfer assignment, is also there. We know the transfer assignment is changing, so we will have one office manager in the office itself. Again, that office is open for all departments to use when they travel into the capital, Ottawa, as well as for other organizations and aboriginal governments for their use when they travel down there.

Mr. Speaker, I should say for the record that “mandatory days off” are in fact the official words that we use in our policy, going forward. The issue of what other areas we’re looking at — we do have to work with the unions that operate in the Northwest Territories, because the working conditions, the hours set, also work directly with those negotiations. So we’d be prepared to engage in a level of discussion to see if there are avenues of flexibility within that working arrangement. Once we get to the next stage and begin the next process of business planning for the remainder of the life of...

Mr. Chairman, the rest of the positions have been filled. We have one vacant position that’s there, and we’re using those funds to hire a contract negotiator on a number of our files.

Mr. Speaker, all I can say is that we have been sensitized by working with committee members and trying to do the best job we can. Hopefully, we can continue down that path and be as prepared as we are and responsive. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, it isn’t easy to make changes to our planning, but one of the things we had to do was ensure we met our mandate at the negotiation tables and implementation tables. So we’ve ensured that with the changes we’ve had in place, at those tables we still have representation. We’ve gone, in a number of cases, from three down to two, but we have our chief negotiator and one other at the table.

As I went through before, the majority of the positions identified, six of them, are vacant, so we’ve had to take positions from a number of areas that go on. We’ve had to look at administrative...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I did receive the e-mail. We’ve had a look at it. In fact, I do believe it is something that we have to put some attention to as we go forward — whether it’s limited copies where we go, or if it is just sending out the disk, as we see that become more and more used. Wherever we attend, there always seems to be a backup along with the document. Maybe we can get to that point where we just do a summary and then have the full package on a disk. So that is something that…. We will go down that path and start to make it happen as the Government of the Northwest Territories.

…on the fact that as the Government of the Northwest Territories, when you look at our stats, at the community and regional levels, we have good numbers. Headquarters itself has suffered, for a number of reasons, and it’s been through many of levels of government, or years of different governments, as the Member pointed out.

In fact, we recognize that the Affirmative Action Policy itself, government-wide, needs to be addressed. It’s been in place for many years, and we need to get to the next level.

I understand that the Minister responsible for Human Resources will be — if he has not already —...

In the tight financial frame we’re in, one of the processes that allows us to move projects ahead would be if there’s a cost-sharing arrangement. The only project where we talk about a 50/50 arrangement is, in fact, one that was discussed in this House, which is the Yellowknife bypass road. We’re looking for cost-sharing arrangements, and in fact, there’s been that discussion with the gravel-source 177 discussions with the community of Tuktoyaktuk. This one here, as the Member has highlighted a number of times, has been raised politically a number of times, but there hasn’t been that cost...