Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Madam Chair. The $688,000 increase is increases and decreases that appear in our business plan. The majority of that increase is the Collective Agreement increase which is $689,000. Also this year, we are going into the next contract so we have to bring some people in to negotiate the next contract and we budgeted $434,000 bringing people in for the contract.

PeopleSoft maintenance and support, we’ve budgeted $21,000. So those are increases of $1.1 million.

We also bring in French language communication services, as I indicated in my opening comments. We also are requesting more money...

I am pleased to present the 2015-2016 Main Estimates for the Department of Human Resources. Overall, the department’s estimates propose an increase of $688,000, or 2.9 percent, over the 2014-2015 Main Estimates. These estimates continue to support the objectives of limiting expenditure growth in order to sustain the long-term sustainability of the fiscal framework.

Highlights of the proposed estimates include:

the decentralization of a web technologies specialist position from headquarters to Fort Simpson;

the addition of one new position to help us meet our French language services obligations...

The details on position of decentralized positions can be best answered by the Premier.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m going to have a go at responding to as many of these as possible, then have the officials also assist me in that.

Regional Recruitment is a good program. I did anticipate more uptake. We are making some changes that the deputy minister is just going to touch on that we think will improve the uptake as a result of the recent changes that we’re going to be making to that program. Right now we’ve appointed three people and we’re in the process of various stages of hiring six more people and we’re looking at a total of 16 departmental applications. When we are able to...

Part of the reconstruction of the hospital is to add a wing or a section onto the hospital while we are doing the hospital. So the hospital will actually expand in size by an additional 30 to 40 percent. That does include a wing to the existing hospital, if that is what is most efficient. Thank you.

The department supports the other departments by trying to increase and implement opportunities in the decentralized positions. We work with the departments to attract and develop a labour market where it is needed, where we are decentralizing positions. We work with them to recruit those positions. We work with the departments in trying to develop excellent terms of employment to retain those jobs and we ensure that the division that is in the 17th Assembly is something that we try to reduce results by making sure that whenever there is a decentralized position identified by the departments...

I’ll have the deputy minister respond to that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It has been determined that the Stanton Hospital still has a lot of building left in it. It was built with the concept that at one point there would be a full mid-life retrofit, and we can’t shut the hospital down.

There have been many incidents where they have done mid-life retrofits to hospitals and they continue the operation of the hospital. It would be difficult for us to relocate the hospital while we’re doing a mid-life retrofit to it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Those position transfers where reflected in the ‘14-15 budget year. That was the year that those occurred. The removal of those positions from this process is proper accounting procedures.

I guess, then, we’ll take it from one year from the last PeopleSoft report going back a year.