Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, if a P1 candidate applies for the job and is the most qualified and isn't offered the job, it would have to be based on something, either procedural error or the person did not pass a component of the competition. The person would have the appeal rights if they failed the competition or failed the interview. I am not sure what the Member is getting at. We want to be fair. We want to be open. We want to be transparent. We are encouraging people to be ready. We are happy to help them be ready. When it comes to a competition, every individual still has to meet the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the elimination of that position is part of the reduction exercise. The position was vacant and has been vacant for some time.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, all departments either have them or are developing them, and I can't tell you the exact number of the variance, which ones are done and which ones are still in process. I will commit to getting that information and sharing it with the committee.

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.