Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m going to follow up on where Mr. Dolynny left off for a bit. I may have mentioned in my general comments about passive restraint and that I don’t think it’s working. On top of the fact that there’s an increase to this budget, and I see in this department or this section alone under directorate it’s about $100,000. But there was a transfer from HR to Finance of a number of employees. So in spite of the fact that we had a section transfer out of this department, the department still went up overall some $680,000 and in this particular section $100,000.

I really have to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We would like to continue with consideration of Tabled Document 188-17(5). We would like consider and conclude general comments and then get on to the departments of Human Resources and Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations, time permitting. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the deputy minister. My other question has to do with retaining employees. There’s been a fairly large emphasis, I guess, from what we hear from the department and what we sort of see in the budget, an emphasis on recruitment, but I would like to know what we are doing in terms of a retention strategy. Do we have one and what efforts is the department making to keep people in the workforce as opposed to losing them? Thank you.

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What is that time frame? Eight weeks? Six weeks? Ten weeks? Twelve weeks?

I guess I would suggest that it sounds as though what’s in the best interests of a policy is going to be followed through, never mind the best interests of the employee and/or their families, and I have a problem with that.

Last question has to do with the length of time for us to complete competitions. I believe that the department has an eight week target length of time to complete competitions. I’d like to know from the Minister whether or not they have been improving on the length of time to complete competitions in the last year or if they have actually had an increase in the length of...

To the Minister, then, maybe unfilled is the wrong term. What is the policy for decentralization? Do we decentralize positions without somebody in them? When the PY is moved from one community to the next, does the person not go with it? That’s why I’m asking if it’s a vacant position, or if it’s a new position that would then suggest to me that it needs to be filled. What is the policy for decentralization?

Okay. I am not quite sure how to get around that one, but I will ask a different question. This department, I presume, is involved in the issue of decentralization, a policy that this government has put in place in the last couple of years. I would like to know how the Department of HR is involved in the decentralization process. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank for the explanations. Just a comment, I am pretty much floored by the fact that the numbers that we have in front of us for this department were not comparing apples to apples basically. These numbers have been fudged, so to speak, to remove the 71 positions from the previous year’s estimates so that the numbers can look good. I’m having difficulty following this, so I can only imagine what somebody in the public is going to be doing in looking at this. They are going to think everything is just grand.

There’s no reference in here to the fact that the numbers have...

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to Ms. Beard for that info. I guess I would be interested in knowing when this review of the Public Service Act might be done, when we the Assembly could expect to see some kind of concrete either Public Service Act LP and/or stand-alone Safe Disclosure Act LP.

To the Minister’s comments, I’m a little confused. The Minister talked about adjusting mains. I have to say, when I look at this document in front of me, I see that the budget for HR – and this is just in the directorate – in 2013 was $3.78 million, in 2014-15 it was $4.4 million and in 2015-16 it’s $4.5...