Tom Beaulieu

The government does try to fill all of the positions. Sometimes the money for positions – and it’s not a whole lot of positions – does get used for other O and M requirements. It’s not like it’s wide open that the Ministers or deputy ministers can move money around from out of the O and M fund for salaries back and forth. It’s targeted for that and we try our best to fill those particular positions. Like the Member indicated, there are about 500 positions coming and going out of the public service on an annual basis and the rest of the vacancies are in other categories that are being filled by...

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. The responsibility of the budgets lies with the various deputy ministers for each of their own departments. The vacancy is across the government. It is a reality of the public service right across the country. We do have a bit of a higher vacancy rate, I would say, than some of the other jurisdictions, but it’s fairly even with the smaller jurisdictions across the country. So, we don’t consider it to be anything unusual, but we are working with the vacancy report to ensure that we are actively looking at the vacancy report as we’re trying to fill the positions in the...

Human Resources does work with other departments. We have a program now where we were anticipating filling quite a few of the positions in the departments called the Regional Recruitment Program, which is essentially a training program where an individual doesn’t meet all of their tasks, a candidate doesn’t meet all the tasks or functions of the job that are necessary to complete the job can be put into a regional recruitment position and then within that position they would get the training necessary to get them to a fully functioning position.

Again, the responsibility lies with each department; however, there has been some progress. In the last vacancy report as of April, we had we had over 1,200 vacant positions in the various categories. Actually, there are 11 different categories that we look at for the vacancies, and the last report as of October was just over 1,000, 1,038.

Many of the functions where we have difficulty recruiting full-time, we do hire casuals. We have, as of the snapshot on October 31, 2014, we were carrying about 183 casuals across the government. As the Member indicated in the Member’s statement, we are...

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to return to item 6, on the Order Paper.

---Unanimous consent granted

It is an odd-looking bridge and sort of in the middle of nowhere. The bridge was put in and then they had some issues on the approach of the bridge. It’s quite high and so on. The department is looking at it now. It’s been there for quite a while, but what we are talking about is trying to go to… I think we were initially advised by elders to move it I believe it’s 1.8 kilometres up that creek, and then that would be where we’d have to realign the winter road. So we’re looking at the cost of that. The cost of that is fairly substantial, but at the same time if we don’t do it, then we would...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In previous years we did get some additional funds to do the winter road from industry. So when there was some activity in and around Norman Wells, we received an additional $400,000 annually from industry to support us with a road that led from about where the road gets rough where the Sahtu/Deh Cho line is up to Norman Wells. This year we didn’t get that money until we were able to negotiate a separate deal for less than that from industry. Thank you.

I’m just trying to get up to speed on the situation over there. The senior citizens home has gone through some review and there has been the determination that more services could be provided. The Housing Corporation has issued a request for a proposal for a design required for the changes that are necessary. At this time, the Housing Corporation is looking at the RFP submissions. We were hoping that sometime close to the end of last month they would be able to review those proposals to see how they were going to proceed with any design changes that may be necessary to accommodate the people...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Fort Providence Senior Citizens Home is definitely in the inventory of government; however, it is in the inventory of the NWT Housing Corporation. I believe that the Housing Corporation does work with the Dehcho Health and Social Services Authority to provide some services. The senior citizens home in Fort Providence is not a long-term care facility. It’s an independent living facility. I’m going to have to get some information from the Housing Corporation on what type of security is provided to the residents there. Thank you.

I would like to introduce a couple of people in the gallery. Steve Loutitt is director of road licensing and safety for the Department of Transportation, and Anita Merritt is his friend visiting us from Alberta.