Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is the appropriate section. This is the section that that responsibility would fall under. The Department of Human Resources continues to lead the development of the GNWT Occupational Health and Safety Program. A work plan is currently being developed to improve health and safety practices within the GNWT workplace.

Ultimately every department is responsible for their own occupational health and safety plan or program. We provide guidance and advice on what works in other jurisdictions as well as what works well within some of the departments within the Government of...

We do have an ex-employee of the Department of Human Resources who is working in DAAIR on this file. He’s not our employee currently, though. He is on a transfer assignment, which makes him their employee right now.

We can wait for the division.

Mr. Chair, I look forward to working with the Member over the next three years as we try to develop training that is both appropriate and cost effective. The trick is that we do want to respect and appreciate the Aboriginal cultures, but we also have to do that in the fiscal realities that we’re faced with, which is one of the reasons we are starting the eRecruit. We figure we could get the greatest amount of access to GNWT employees in all communities – Yellowknife included – at all levels, anybody that has access to a computer, so that is a starting point.

I don’t want anybody to think that...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Not necessarily. We do a cost analysis on a case-by-case basis to see what the addition of these improvements will be. If the cost exceeds the benefit or the cost benefit of doing it, then we wouldn’t necessarily go up to that standard. We don’t build to 40 percent. We build to achieving the 25 percent, but we have been working to go beyond that and we have gotten higher. As an example, the school in Inuvik. But we had to do the cost analysis on it to show that the benefit over time would pay for those improvements, and that’s what it showed and that’s what we did.

Yes, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I am pleased to present the Department of Human Resources’ main estimates for the fiscal year 2012-13.

For 2012-13 the department is proposing an operations expenditures budget of $42.796 million. This reflects an increase of $375,000 from last year’s main estimates, or slightly less than 1 percent. Of this amount, $9.692 million or 22.6 percent of the total budget is allocated in the form of direct supports to employees, including dental benefits, medical travel assistance, recognition awards and the Employee Family Assistance Program. As a shared service...

We recognize that although this needs to be beyond just government, there is going to be some government responsibility and action required at some point. We have pulled together a committee of the deputies of the social programs departments who will be working on this file on behalf of government. But also, I happen to be the chair of the Social Envelope Committee which consists of the responsible Ministers and we are talking about this, monitoring the progress and providing direction with support of committee and committee’s input as well. We are working across departments as well.

The first part is obviously to get the framework done and the strategy done. We will be working with our partners. This has to be done with partners. For anti-poverty to be successful, we do need to work with organizations and agencies outside of government. Once we have the framework, then we will be able to have the discussions on next steps, which would include action plans. Those action plans will involve actions from individuals outside of government, so we will have to work with them to come up with that.

These are two separate programs. They are facilitated through the RCMP. The first program, the Aboriginal Community Constable Program, is in its second year pilot. We don’t know if that program is going to continue to exist after this second delivery. We would like it to and we continue to work with the RCMP and encourage them to continue this program because we see it as valuable.

The second program, the Aboriginal Pre-Cadet Program, that’s an ongoing program and the intake is actually completed for this fiscal year, but it’s an ongoing program so there will be intake in future years. We...

Ultimately this is an RCMP pilot and it is the RCMP’s advertising. They are aggressively, actively advertising both the Pre-Cadet Program as well as the Aboriginal Constable Program. Recently I’ve had an opportunity to travel to some of the communities throughout the Northwest Territories, and every community I’ve went to I’ve mentioned that this program exists and I’ve encouraged people to apply. I’ve talked to the community justice committees in a number of communities, as well, and encouraged them to have people apply. The RCMP is actively marketing this program. It’s a good program and I...