Jane Groenewegen

I’d like to call Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of committee? Ms. Bisaro.

I would like to ask the Minister of ITI to share with the Assembly the risk-benefit analysis that the department has undertaken to determine how this territory would gain from allowing hundreds of non-resident harvesters to pick mushrooms on the land who will not pay income tax to the GNWT and, at the same time, will put the territory at great risk either for rescuing them or dealing with their emergencies or, as I said, starting fires that we know costs millions of dollars to suppress. What is the cost-benefit analysis of that being done? It’s a great idea. Come on up here and pick mushrooms...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I missed the name of the young man for whom we applauded, but I just want to say there is a leader. As soon as Minister Ramsay started calling out the names, he pointed at every single person that was being introduced. They maybe were shy to introduce themselves, but he did that. Hey, you need one in every crowd. Way to go. Welcome.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Does committee agree?

I agree with all that. Thank you to the department for all of the workshops and all the awareness they’ve brought to this potential remarkable industry for the Northwest Territories, renewable resource industry. But the fact is, we have many, many non-residents who have come to the Northwest Territories. It’s like a mushroom rush out there. There is no registry. There is no place to sign in. We don’t know their names. We don’t know where they’re from. We don’t know who their next of kin are. There are all kinds of dangers in the bush and that’s where these people are going to be operating and...

That is very welcome news, because I tend to hear more from the priority 2 students who are out studying, and when they come home, for some reason, they get screened out. So, it’s very good for the public to be aware of that breakdown between P1 and P2 students. So, I’m glad we’ve got that out there and on the record.

However, we have more than this number who are out taking post-secondary education. We have a recruitment and retention issue in the public service in the Northwest Territories. I still think it would be better if there was an initiative to hire more summer students and try the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I talked about this government’s opportunity to provide post-secondary students who come home to the Northwest Territories to work for the summer. I don’t know what the statistics are right now on whether that number has been growing. I’m not sure what the statistics are with respect to how many of those students are priority 1 hires and how many are priority 2s, and I’d like to know, also, how many of those positions that are made available are made available here in the capital and how many are in the regions, and I’d like to know if the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps in the past, and I’m not too sure of the details of this, this government collaborated and cooperated with the private sector to expand the number of students employed back in their home Northwest Territories for the summer months who are involved in post-secondary education.

I’d like to ask the Minister if his department has recently contemplated the idea of doing a top-up to the private sector for hiring post-secondary school students in their workplaces and is that a way that we can expand the number of opportunities? We don’t want to lose our students to the...

I’d like to ask the Minister, do you have any idea what the breakdown is? Obviously, they’re hired for our Affirmative Action Policy, which would then employ priority 1 and priority 2 hire candidates, and I’d like to ask the Minister if he has any kind of a breakdown on how many of each of that category are hired by these departments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I would like to point out an irony, as I see it, with respect to hiring summer students to come and work in the Northwest Territories. Post-secondary students at southern institutions, we are supporting them, we are paying for them, and many of them who want to come back to the Northwest Territories for the summer cannot get a job with the public service.

The irony I speak about is that this government, on the other hand in another department, spends I want to say millions. I don’t know the exact number, but millions of dollars to go out and promote a program...