Jane Groenewegen

I don’t know, I got an e-mail from somebody the other day who told me they saw me on TV and said I should go see a hairdresser. Seriously.

---Laughter

Oh, the feedback we get.

Anyway. Our public service is aging. It is prudent for us as a government to do succession planning to find out how we can take people who are interested in careers in the public service and provide them with the professional development, the training, and the opportunities they need to advance in the public service. I have had an inquiry from a constituent who was concerned about an individual who was direct appointed to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My colleague Mr. Abernethy talked about gatherings, conventions, the capacity of communities to accommodate people, and the appropriateness of some communities to accommodate certain discussions and dialogues. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to report to the House that on October 16th and 17th, last weekend in Hay River, a group of representatives of community organizations interested in preserving the cultural and historic heritage history of their communities gathered together in Hay River. They held their meetings at our little Hay River Heritage Centre, which is a very...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. How are people in the ranks of the public service made aware of these types of opportunities that the Minister has outlined? How do they access information to that if they want to get the candidate that’s going to advance into some of these programs? Thank you.

In years gone past there were programs that were well known to people in the public service. My colleague Mr. Beaulieu, for example, entered the public service under a trainee program, where a trainee for a position was paired up, so to speak, with somebody in senior management and was sent out also for professional development to enhance their skills to become managers in various aspects of government service. What programs exist today? That was called a trainee program. I understand there’s been a MAP program in more recent years. What other opportunities are there that public servants can...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the Minister responsible for Human Resources some questions about this government’s succession planning.

Our public service workforce is always aging. I guess we’re always all aging.

---Interjection

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that we report progress.

---Carried

I just wanted to find out, Mr. Chairman, what time is it now.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Not to be unkind where there are other parks, but we are the southern part of the Northwest Territories and obviously have, usually, the weather on our side for the greatest amount of time. I don’t need to compare it to the campground in Inuvik, for example. Geographically, we do have a few things going for us in the South Slave. One of them is a longer warm season for those parks, the three parks that Mr. McLeod refers to. I would ask the Minister if he would undertake to get a costing for us on what it would cost to expand that into the shoulder seasons a little bit...

Mr. Speaker, as I said, we’ve had an unusually nice fall this fall, the nice warm weather. As a matter of fact, I think there isn’t any snow in Hay River today, and even going a little further south towards the border, I think it’s been 10 and 12 and even 15 degrees recently. Mr. Speaker, the reason that the Minister gives that the program for the facilities there cannot be expanded because of limited resources, what is it that does not allow or precludes the GNWT, ITI, from just leaving the gates to those facilities open so that people can enjoy them whether they are staffed or not? Thank you...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to take Members on a little virtual tour upon entering the Northwest Territories at the Alberta border. You get to the border at the 60th Parallel. We still have our nice polar bear sign, although I understand the new sign has no polar bear on it at all, just a compass. The old polar bear sign is still there. Then you come across our new tourist information booth, which we spent a lot of money on. And thank you for that, ITI and tourism, for that beautiful new facility there.

However, we have to have people manning that tourist information booth who are...