Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It was an issue of choice and having to make disciplined choices to try to meet all the objectives that we have as a government and as an Assembly, in a way that allows us to be sustainable, stay within our borrowing limit and still move forward.

There was a very diverse range of opinion across the territory. For example, the community of Hay River, they were supportive of the 5 percent when we met there and when we did a wrap-up at the end of the day. In Fort Smith there was a significant debate, 25 percent at the end of the day. Inuvik said they thought it should be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If you used the ballpark figure of, on average, $100,000 per position, the math would be $80 million. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this particular moment, I understand we are recruiting actively for 571 positions.

Where there are no incumbents, that is not an issue of concern. Where we are taking over responsibility with incumbents, there is a two year, I believe it is, guarantee of job certainty in the position in the community where they currently are, which in this case would be Yellowknife. After that, the opportunities for longer-term planning would kick in and potential decentralization opportunities may flow.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Phase 1 was completed last year and we laid it out in the budget last year. Phase 2 speaks to some of the things we are looking at in the more immediate term in terms of devolution and reorganization, the lands, departments being set up in the regional centres and those types of things. Then as we look at our devolution and post-devolution organizational structures and then the longer-term phase 3 is going to be a bit more in-depth as we look at some of the things that are once again impediments to moving positions outside of Yellowknife, which the two main ones would...

Thank you. Once again, this is a short question that would require a very complicated answer if we wanted to cover all the issues. But there are positions, the money is used in some cases to help cover off a gap in benefits, there are casual dollars, there are contract dollars, there are staff that may be on transfer assignments. So there’s a range of reasons why some positions may be empty.

The issue, though, is one of concern to the government that we need to find a way to make sure… We have a couple of competing issues here. We have northern graduates that don’t come home and we have...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In any given time there are about 800 vacancies. There are about 400 that we’re actively trying to fill. Those numbers are split between Yellowknife and outside of Yellowknife.

Thank you. I think there have been briefings with the Members. We’ve offered all the existing employees in Yellowknife that are in federal positions that are transferring. We’ve had, as the Premier indicated yesterday, nearly 100 percent take-up. So you’re going to be at 150 positions, roughly. I mean, I don’t have the exact number, but all the jobs that are currently in Yellowknife, job offers were made, all of them were accepted and they have a two-year commitment to their positions and stability here in Yellowknife. Thank you.

As we went around the North and travelled to the regional centres, we talked about not only the Heritage Fund but we talked about the vision of the Assembly and of the government with the grid build out to the road completion from Wrigley to Norman Wells, the need to look at things like natural gas expansion, the need to put infrastructure into our communities. The only way we can do that is if we get a bump-up to our borrowing limit, which I would point out we haven’t had finalized yet and we haven’t borrowed a cent yet. We painted that picture for folks for the road ahead on what we need to...

Mr. Speaker, we are doing things like regional recruitment. We are looking at the way we are structured as a college and supporting post-secondary students. We are now doing things, as indicated in this House, like job fairs. We have the initiative that’s going to put market housing in the small communities, which we hope will allow us to staff long needed positions in the smaller communities. There are a lot of things being done not only by us but by industry.

The issue is, are we doing it, as the Member herself said, well enough. Clearly, when we look at our territorial population statistics...