Tom Beaulieu

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. The cost of energy continues to be one of the leading contributors to the high cost of living in the Northwest Territories. This past winter a drop in wholesale prices for heating fuel and gasoline gave the Department of Public Works and Services the opportunity to pass savings on to the residents of some of our most remote communities.

Through the Petroleum Products Program, the fuel services division of the Department of Public Works and Services provides essential fuel services to 16 NWT communities where the private sector does not. Fuel is supplied via winter road to...

At this point in the transition planning, we are not working specifically on any of the budgets, departmental budgets; however, we would have an opportunity to maybe discuss some of the programs that are very well-utilized, some of the more popular programs, and we could have that discussion in the transition meetings as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That program is fully utilized all the time. It’s a very good program. All the communities like it and we’re going to maintain the program.

The Department of Human Resources tracks some students by the amount of applications. So, we start in December by holding open houses. We contact students. We go through a process of inviting students. We have a website inviting students to apply.

Last year we had 598 students apply for summer employment, and of that we hired 312, like I indicated. To date, we’ve had 558 summer students apply.

My understanding is that at the end of this month, a lot of the technical students will be returning to the Northwest Territories, so we’re expecting a little bit of a jump there. So, the next point where...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The departments try to hire as many students as their budgets would allow them to hire for the summer. But we do try to achieve a greater number than what we have been averaging, around 300. So, as of right now, we have hired 230 summer students and another 23 who are ready for signing. So, 253 summer students.

At this time last year, we had 217 summer students and we ended up hiring 312 last year. So, we’re expecting to beat that number this year. Thank you.

I cannot set up meetings for the federal officials. However, we can ask, so I will have the deputy minister from the Department of Transportation, GNWT, contact the officials that are responsible for dredging all rivers up here, mainly Hay River, and try to set up a meeting in Hay River with the federal officials responsible.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have written my letter to the federal government on dredging the Hay River. I have not received their response. Thank you.

We had recognized that it was the previous government that had tripled the budget from around $300,000 to just slightly over $1 million. We recognize that the budget is fully utilized and we are receiving applications well in excess of what money is available. We continue to have internal discussions in DOT to see if there’s a possibility internally to move some money around. So, we continue to have that discussion.

There are a lot of areas where there are pressures, of course. We have highways, we have marine services and airports and winter roads. So within those areas we are looking to see...

Those are real good ideas that I’m going to have a discussion with the deputy minister of Human Resources on.

One thing that was contemplated this year, it was interesting, it was brought up by another Member last year, and that was hiring students on a 0.7, 0.8 basis so that they have an opportunity to also work outside of their field of studies and maybe go into the private sector a bit and then give the private sector an opportunity to also attract the students. That was something that we looked at so that we would broaden out. If we were to hire all the students at 0.75 as opposed to the...

Of the 230 who are signed on, 120 of those students are priority 1 candidates and 106 of those students are priority 2 candidates and four students hired to date have no priority status. Thank you.