Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am pleased to present the Department of Human Resources’ main estimates for fiscal year 2014-15.

The department is proposing an operations expenditure budget of $23.6 million. This is a reduction of $18.5 million for 2013-14, a decrease of 44 percent. This reduction is largely the result of the transfer of employee-specific services such as pay and benefits, including regional roles, Helpdesk and human resources information systems to the Department of Finance. The transfer includes the compensation and benefits for 78 Department of Human Resources staff who are...

I would be pleased to provide that information to the Member within the next couple of days.

The money that will be used to continue to upgrade the road is from the regular maintenance budget. We could look specifically into the access road budget, as well, this coming year since that is all done by proposal. We would look at the Jean Marie road through the DOT Access Road Program as well. But there is no plan that I’m aware of in the immediate future to upgrade it to the regular highway standards that we have on Highway No. 1, for example.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member brings up a lot of really good ideas for us and to add to some of the initiatives that we continue to work on, some of the strategies, some of the frameworks that we put together to bring people, to recruit people and also to retain people. I think some of the ideas would be difficult to do in the GNWT, and I know that the Member only brings that up as an example, but many of these ideas of job shadowing, being creative and innovative and making sure that we have the right jobs out there that can be filled by the individuals out there. Going to high schools...

An individual that goes on assignment would still have the home position held for them. However, they do need to do that job that he or she was doing in the home department. So, on a transfer assignment they will backfill that position. That position stays vacant and they will backfill the position with most likely a casual or a term position until that person returns to the job. So the position is vacant. The money is used to continue to do the job that the position would do back at their home department.

With the students that are trying to gain experience, the Government of the Northwest Territories uses a couple of methods to give the students experience. One is the Summer Student Program. We try to track some of the students that are going to school down south and we try to employ them during the summer giving them some experience each year. Also, at the end of that, when some of the students are finished school and want to get into a job to gain some experience, we use the Internship Program to bring students into the GNWT.

As I indicated earlier, there are various uses for the money that goes in with the positions. The departments still have the mandate to perform the tasks that are assigned to them as a department, so sometimes when they’re unable to fill a job and after a job description is completed, and the job is advertised over the period and they are, for some reason or another, unable to fill a job, then some of that money would go to a term position perhaps. It could be going to a casual and also has been used for relief workers. Sometimes when you don’t have all of the positions filled then there’s a...

The departments manage their own human resources. They do it using the vacant positions. Sometimes they maintain a home position for an employee that may be under an assignment. So that home position would be considered vacant. They may need other priorities that need to be met by not just by the Assembly but also the department priorities and they use the position by filling some casual positions to meet the mandate. They support other positions that are required, other priorities that are required and also sometimes if the department had some vacant positions, they may keep the positions...

At this time many of the dormant and inactive positions are not funded. They’re unfunded positions or just PYs that appear in the PeopleSoft as dormant and inactive positions. We are undertaking an analysis with all of the departments to determine if any of these positions are funded and with the ones of the inactive, dormant positions that have funding attached to it, what is happening specifically with that funding and for what other personnel use is that money used for.

The job evaluation process is used to determine what qualifications are needed to do this particular job, so if this particular job is out, has certain qualifications that are required, those are the qualifications that must be met. So if there is a priority 1 candidate that meets the qualifications, then those are the individuals interviewed. Once we have a number of priority 1 candidates or even one priority 1 candidate eligible, regardless of whether or not priorities 2 and 3 have higher qualifications, we do interview the priority 1 candidate and attempt to try to increase the affirmative...