Statements in Debates
As I indicated, at this time we don't actually have any recommendations from the committee. The membership on that steering committee does include the NWT Pharmacy Association, and we already collaborate with pharmacists across the territories on a number of initiatives. They are a critical and a key component to making this a reality here in the Northwest Territories. We will continue to consult and work in collaboration with the pharmacies across the Northwest Territories to ensure that a program, when it is put in place, is both effective, efficient, and responsive to the needs of both...
I'm going to go to Michelle on this one for the detail. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the budget in the area was reduced to reflect historical expenditures, what we actually spend in that area. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
No, we have not. Technically, they are outside the public service. They have their own collective agreement; they have their own terms and conditions of employment. I'm happy to reach out to Hay River. I'll talk to the public administrator to see how they're proceeding with summer student hires. If they want access to our database, I'm certainly happy to allow them access to our database.
We do have the strategic plan, the 20/20, for the Government of the Northwest Territories, which is focused on building a public service that is responsive, respectful, but also representative of the population we serve. I will commit to working with each of the departments to try to find priorities and activities we can do within the individual departments. As far as individual human resources plans, I believe much of that work is already begun, or has existed in the past. We will look to see if we can revitalize any of that, but also need to focus in on: what is it really going to take to...
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, this is going to sound like a really repetitive answer, but in this particular area we really dug deep into the department trying to figure out what we're actually spending, and compare it to what our budgets were, and realign our budgets with actual expenditures rather than historic budgets. And this is one of the areas that, you know, we felt we needed to align in order to capture the fact that some of the fees and payments that we're making out there with respect to some of our software, our human-resource-specific software, have escalated and changed over...
Thank you, Mr. Chair. If you look onto page 213 you'll also notice that there's a position reduction within the directorate, and one of the positions that was eliminated was the assistant deputy minister of Human Resources. Some of those costs are directly related to the reduction of that position.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a good question. I couldn't say 100 per cent what the reason is. But I can say that in all the other community and region numbers they do include numbers for Health and Social Services. Whereas, in Hay River and Hay River Reserve, they don't because the Hay River Authority currently is outside the public service. They're bound by the same terms and conditions of our collective agreement and, I mean, we don't crack their summer student hires, so we have no numbers here for any summer students being hired within the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority. That...
The Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee is made up of Aboriginal employees of the GNWT, and their role is to provide some guidance and advice to the Minister and the department on how to have a more responsive system, a system that is hiring more Aboriginal people, where appropriate. I do believe they have a pretty solid role; I think they're doing some good work. As we move forward and get some of the statistical information and have a better sense of where we are and how we have actually responded over time, I will have a conversation with committee and we can talk about the advisory...
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chair, there are three positions being eliminated within the Department of Human Resources, all of them were vacant, and they are a result of the reduction. As a result of eliminating some of these positions, especially the area around strategic human resources, we've had to do some reorganization within the department. The re-allocation of the marketing and communication budget from the strategic human resources section, which was about $212,000, as well as some internal re-allocation of budget from purchase services to better align us with historical expenditures...