Tom Beaulieu

The positions are vacant for various reasons. Two of the position categories that are vacant are the dormant and the inactive and also the to-be-staffed positions, which we use the number or 571 for that specific date as a snapshot. Counting that plus all the other vacant positions in October, no, I’m sorry. I do have a number that is from December 31, 2013, and that is 1,150 positions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That is our mode of communicating with individuals. A careers website is what we’re using to advertise for the people that are looking for jobs in the NWT. The departments, various departments are constantly trying to advertise the jobs on the career website. If there are 100-and-something jobs on there, I can check with the department to just determine why there are not more jobs on the career website at this time.

The Department of Public Works will advise the group of areas where spaces would be available for art display. Like I indicated, there will be a policy developed, and I think that’s going to guide us on whether or not we are displaying art, in which buildings and what pieces of art that we will be displaying. As I indicated, at this point it appears as though the group, the NWT Arts Council, that we’re working with were happy with the display appearing on the television and the TV display system, but because the policy is not finalized, it would be difficult to indicate at this point what art...

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. After the commitment was made to do this work, a working group consisting of four departments, ECE, ITI, Transportation and Public Works, was put together to work with the NWT Arts Council on making this display of art in GNWT buildings possible.

Mr. Speaker, even though the position is vacant, the job still has to be done. Often the positions are filled with a casual, and also when we have some vacancy rates, we create some money for summer students so we are able to hire summer students. It is very important to us as a government, when these kids are out at university or college, when they come back to the Northwest Territories that we try to employ them so they have a better chance of success when they go back to school. Last year we employed 308 summer students. If we had every position filled to the max all the time and there was...

Mr. Speaker, they are not a secret, so it would be difficult to answer a question that leads with why is it a secret. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, it does matter; I agree. This is a reason why we are trying to put infrastructure into the small communities.

In some of the larger centres, we do have very good employment rates. An example is the employment rate in the city of Yellowknife is over 80 percent; across the country it is 69 percent. The issue is not really because we don’t have infrastructure here, we don’t have infrastructure in the small communities. The low employment numbers in the small communities are due to education and housing and other office space and other infrastructure that’s needed to attract people...

The Department of Human Resources does work with all departments in trying to fill the vacant positions in the small communities. We are well aware of the employment rate in the small communities, that they are very low.

If we could fill all the jobs in the small communities, we would do that, and we constantly work with the departments to determine which jobs can be filled, which jobs we’re having difficulty filling and so on. In the small communities, I recognize, as a Member from a small community, we need to have jobs in the small communities, and we are doing everything possible to fill...

As far as the new building goes, I don’t know what will be available, but one of the things that we have determined as the group of departments working together that it was very important for us to do our communications to the NWT Arts Council. They seem to have their membership communicating with the memberships right across the territory throughout the arts community, so any communications that this government has in order to determine what would be displayed and which buildings will be communicated to the NWT Arts Council.

The first thing that had occurred was the two content management TV display systems were created and put out. Essentially, a TV screen, one at the Yellowknife Airport and one in the Public Works office in Inuvik, and they display art. They have had discussion with the NWT Arts Council. This group of departments had discussions with the Arts Council and are working on what will be displayed, for what type of period they’ll be displayed, how many different things would be displayed and so on.

In as far as the policy goes, ECE will be developing a policy, working with Public Works and ITI, and...