Robert Hawkins

Thank you for recognizing me, Mr. Speaker. My questions will be directed to the Minister of Human Resources. I won’t go on at length, but we all know about the 1,150 vacancy snapshot information provided by the Minister a few days back. We also know, and I’ll remind the House, that the Finance Minister is being quoted quite eloquently about the 571 jobs they’re pursuing. Mr. Dolynny put on the record today that, of course, he made note that the Department of Health and Social Services has now suspended their human resource campaign to get more people there.

My question for the Minister of Human...

The Minister continues to talk about these wonderful platitude solutions. At the end of the day, they’re wonderful. Yes, I agree. But, frankly, they do nothing for the everyday taxpayer and certainly working families trying to get by. The Economic Opportunities Strategy, again, recently said that the power rates are holding Yellowknife back. It’s a negative, not a positive.

What is the NWT Power Corporation doing to ensure that we can keep our power rates low, because right now, as we all know, there’s a new application before the PUB to further increase them. We should be working to push these...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When mortgage costs are certainly eclipsing the costs of running a household when it comes to heat, power and certainly water, something has to be done. Furthermore, we have to find a way to help our northern people because there’s just, frankly, no way we’re going to ever attract anybody and it’s hard enough to keep the people we have here.

My first question to the Minister is: What can he do, as Power Corp Minister, to help reduce our power rates that continue to rise at the direction of the NWT Power Corp?

Mr. Speaker, I don’t care if it’s a team effort to answer the question. The point is the questions need to be answered, and the question is this: How many vacancies do we have out there that are not being filled? We’ve all heard this great number of 1,150 positions been vacant for various reasons, 571 actively pursuing. We have a website now that says, by the way, hiring practices are now suspended.

How many positions are out there vacant, not being pursued, and are we putting Northerners at risk whether in a big community or small community? We’ve got people fighting for people in their...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, we’re not going to let the Human Resources Minister off that easy because, quite frankly, I don’t think that these goals are being achieved. Often I hear people apply for jobs who have years if not, in some cases, decades of experience, but because they don’t have that actual certification, such as a university degree or a college diploma, they get screened out.

Let’s start off with a simple question by asking the Minister, how often does someone get hired on the principles of they have a university degree, versus the people who’ve brought real life decades of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate your generosity there. The Minister says that people follow up, I can provide examples where people don’t follow up on grants and contributions given to individuals where they’ve applied to the department. All I want to know, and I think the public deserves to know right now, is where is this all reported? It’s great we know we can go to, say, group X or business X or NGO X and they got so much money, but we want to know to make sure that they did spend the money as they said they would. So we just need to make sure that that’s the case. That’s the issue...

Thank you. I’ll certainly make sure the Minister receives those particular details, but one of the problems that I’ve seen with the Growing Forward Program is that the department doesn’t do a follow-up evaluation and certainly sort of a measured context as opposed to reporting back to find out how the money was spent and how it was enabled to do more as it always promised.

What type of screening, evaluation monitoring and management of the information and certainly the investment of the money is done by ITI and how is that distributed back to the public? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If it’s difficult for the Minister to answer this question, quite frankly it’s difficult for the public wanting to apply for jobs if we don’t know how they can get opportunities that they rightly can do and they’re being blocked at the front door by this little sticker that says if you don’t have the university degree, don’t apply, if you don’t have the college diploma, don’t apply and in some cases, unfortunately, some people don’t have the high school, but they’ve got the 20-plus years’ experience.

I’m going to ask this question: How is the Minister going to fix this...

Maybe the Minister is starting to grasp the complication behind this particular problem. I’ve got people who have applied with 10, 20 or more years of experience, but they’re screened out and the competition is awarded and they don’t know until after the appeal period is gone, but then again their rights don’t really matter. Of course, they feel they don’t matter because their experience is weighed directly against credentials of the university. So let’s go with this group, and by the way, the footnote I’d like to add is quite often I hear of this complaint, and it’s a good complaint and it...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to support my colleague Mr. Menicoche in this little micro theme day statement here.

Often I hear from people who are trying to apply for jobs and they’re screened out for various reasons, some that make sense and some that just want you to bang your head against the wall. In some cases, we hear they’re screened out and they only get the news long after the job has been awarded and the appeal period is long past. At this point, of course, they have no rights to appeal because they weren’t screened in, and often these people are screened out. Why? Because they didn...