Tom Beaulieu

The campaign last year and all the years past to try to attract students usually attracts around 700 students, and the target is to try to hire about 300 students. Again, because the summer students are hired based on the vacancy rate that is in the various departments, the departments determine how many students they can hire with that type of budget. We think it’s fairly broad. Like I indicated, we recognize that about 700 students usually register for employment, 700-plus every year, actually, and then around 300 are hired.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is no policy for early hiring of students such as in March or February. The target group for the hire of summer students are the students that are finishing the courses down south. Usually these courses end, I think, at the end of April, and so the target for the summer students would be for May, June, July and August, so kind of a four-month program that runs during those four months, and that is the target group, and I think the majority of the students come in there. I’m not aware of students starting earlier than that.

Thank you. The Department of HR can start to communicate with the departments and discuss that with the departments, if we’re attempting to try to hire as many students as possible within the money that we have in our vacancies, so we can do that. HR, through the deputies, can contact all of the deputies to see if they’re able to maximize the amount of students that are coming in, not only in Yellowknife but in the small communities and the regional centres, because I recognize that that’s been an issue in the small communities as well. So, yes, I’d be more than willing to talk to the deputy...

Thank you. I just used an example, that wasn’t exclusive to the fact that we would only have one such position that nobody else would be eligible. There could be more than one position of any type. The students, if the Member is asking about feedback from when the students were hired and then as they go back to school we provide them follow-up feedback, we don’t do that. But we do, like I said in December, start to get the word out that we are going to be hiring summer students like we do every year. There’s a Student Financial Assistance e-mail blast that goes out and it goes into the GNWT...

Mr. Speaker, it’s occupational health and safety training that’s performed by GNWT, labour relations. Of course, I do recognize that there is some bullying that occurs in the GNWT workplace as well. I don’t think it’s frequent, but it is there. I will be prepared to talk to the department and look at specifically trying to incorporate bullying into some of our work that we’re doing to try to make the GNWT a more respectful workplace. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the GNWT strives to have a respectful workplace. The labour relations is a course that is a requirement for all managers in the GNWT and there are some more courses and programs that are going to be a requirement for managers in the GNWT that will address this particular issue. The individuals that feel that they’re being bullied have options to go to their managers if they think that their managers are the ones providing or distributing the bullying or they have the option to go to the next level. They have the option to go to union if they happen to be unionized. They can go to...

Mr. Speaker, certainly as time goes, the severity of punishment for impaired driving has continued to increase. Impaired driving is certainly something that’s not viewed like it used to be in years past. It’s considered to be a very serious offence and is treated as such. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I don’t have that data with me. We are assuming that we’re still going to go and put in programs like the driver’s licence merit point program, the Alcohol Ignition Interlock Program and things like that, that are designed to address individuals that do drive impaired. But not having the information here, I’m not able to provide that to the Member to indicate whether or not some of this works… In the past, some of the work the department has done has had a positive effect on the impaired driving rates. Thank you.

[Microphone turned off] …have very good numbers. When we’re hiring students, we’re hiring students that come back to the North to work. Over 95 percent of the students that do come to work for the GNWT are either priority 1 candidates or priority 2 candidates.

I can talk to the Department of Human Resources to track the students that are coming in. Like I indicated, we’re getting about 700 applicants and if 400 of those students are not hired, then we can track those to determine why they were not a match, why they were not picked by the various departments that they did apply for. Students...

The departments use various methods to attract students. They’re on the website, they’re advertised by posters and so on. I indicated yesterday that that type of campaign for this coming summer was started in December 2013. The plan is to try to match the students as much as possible to their studies, so more of what the plan is, is to try to take the students and match them into the departments that they’re eventually hoping to study, and based only on that, not based on people hiring people that they know and so on.