Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Auditor General’s observations can be summarized as follows:

In 54 percent of plan of care agreements, compliance with conditions was not properly monitored.

Annual reviews were not performed in 81 percent of the files.

Develop and implement a comprehensive action plan

The committee is alarmed by the number of deficiencies identified by the Auditor General and the degree of inaction displayed by the department following the 2010 report. During the public review, departmental witnesses were unable to explain to the committee’s satisfaction why so little has changed...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the past year I’ve been very vocal about my concerns with aspects of the Education Renewal and Innovation Project as proposed by ECE. I’ve questioned the Minister with varying degrees of success. In some cases I conducted my own research and then questioned the Minister. It has been a frustrating experience for both me and my constituents because good information has been hard to come by.

Today I will give voice to the words of numerous constituents who have contacted me and other MLAs, expressing their concerns about reduced funding to the Yellowknife school boards...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. In accordance with Rule 6(2), I move that we continue to sit beyond the hour of daily adjournment to consider consideration of Tabled Document 87-17(5).

Thanks to the Minister. If I understand this correctly, as of October 1st the cost for our ads went down because we were placing fewer ads. So from a year ago, so I guess from the 1st of April of 2013 to the 1st of October of 2013, we had a cost for ads. After October 1st our cost went down. So now, if I understand the Minister correctly, he’s telling me we’ve increased the number of ads, so that presumably has increased our cost, but we haven’t gone over the cost that we incurred as of April 1st of 2013. Is that right?

So, we reduced our cost in October; now we’ve cranked it back up, but we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Human Resources. I want to follow up on my Member’s statement. On October 1st of 2013, some eight months ago, we had a grand change in the way that we advertise for GNWT jobs. We weren’t going to advertise specific jobs any more, we were going to have generic ads, people had to have an e-mail address and they could apply online, and so on and so on. It was a grand improvement, we were told.

I’d like to know from the Minister, if it was such a great improvement, why the change that we’re now seeing in the newspapers in...

Thanks, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister, I think. I guess I would like to ask the Minister if he could provide some kind of analysis of the numbers of what the costs were prior to going to the big online ads and what we’re now incurring in terms of cost.

The Minister mentioned that there was reason for the changes, that we weren’t reaching a certain number of people. What kind of analysis was done by the department before they made the change to put job-specific ads in there? Who did they speak to? What kind of consultation or analysis was done? Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for that response. I know this is why we went to the one big ad, having people access jobs online and so on. I’m pleased that there’s been a recognition that obviously some jobs need to be advertised specifically.

The Minister mentioned that there’s been no increased cost to have what I’m seeing as twice the amount of ads that we had before, so I’m finding that very difficult to understand.

Can he explain to me how we have gone from one ad and now we have one ad and sometimes six others? How is that not an increase in our advertising costs? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Some months ago we had discussions in this House about changes in the way GNWT jobs were advertised. As of October 1, 2013, the Department of Human Resources stopped putting individual job ads or listings in print media publications. Instead, they opted for a half-page or larger ad promoting the GNWT as an employer. The substance of the ad told people to go online, go to the HR website and look there for available jobs in our public service. This change was touted as an improvement in how we advertise for GNWT jobs, a way to reach most job seekers and so on. But...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will try to make it short, but I want to say to the Minister, I am not saying don’t implement junior kindergarten. To my colleagues, I am not saying that junior kindergarten should not go to small communities. I am saying we have communities where we have a program that is viable, that is successful and why are we forcing another junior kindergarten into those communities where we already have Aboriginal Head Start where it is active and viable and would be happy to take on more four-year-olds? Thank you.

I am very glad that the Minister knows those programs exist, and I hope he knows how valuable they are. I’d like to ask the Minister whether he knows how many four-year-olds live in each community where junior kindergarten will start in September of 2014.

Does the department know how many spaces will be needed in those 29 communities where junior kindergarten will be started? Has there been any analysis of the number of four-years-olds that exist in each community, and have they considered using the Aboriginal Head Start programs to offer junior kindergarten instead of starting a brand new...