Debates of August 23, 2011 (day 16)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I noted earlier in my comments, the government is suggesting looking at three additional issues for consideration. Can the Minister elaborate on those three particular areas for consideration for changes in the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act?

I’ve indicated what our request to the federal government is. There has been a number of initiatives underway. There has been our view, starting back with Mr. McCrank. There’s been the federal government at work. We have pressed the federal government Minister Duncan to hold off on any changes to the regulatory regime while we have these other processes underway and given the fact, as well, that we are going to be soon in the middle of an election process. At this point that is where we are with the issue of the regulatory reform and any proposed or possible changes.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment and are in follow up to my Member’s statement earlier today.

On March 23rd I attended a meeting between industry and government on the NWT film industry, and at that time the GNWT, or the department committed to a number of items with respect to the film industry. One of them was to encourage greater cooperation between ITI and ECE, one was to dedicate some seed funding for film and media arts, one was to invest in a website, one was to invest in the formation of an association for the industry, and one was to establish a mandate for the NWT Film Commission. I’m happy to say that most of this has been done by the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment and I’m very happy with the progress.

I do have a couple of questions. I know that a website has been developed. I have had an opportunity to go on line and see it. It’s really quite good and it is early days. My question is, at the beginning stage of this website development, I’ve gone in to look at it and in one section it’s called Suppliers Guide and it basically outlines all the different organizations that are available to help the filming industry. Animal handlers, carpenters, caretakers, directors, equipment rental, these types of things. I’ve gone through and opened each one of them up to see what’s on there. Right now, unfortunately, it appears that all of the people identified within these lists are from Yellowknife, which is great, but a film industry for the Northwest Territories is supposed to be NWT-wide. I’m curious; is the department committed to going out to the other communities and regions of the Northwest Territories to gain some professionals that are providing these types of services and get them included in this territorial website?

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are talking about an NWT film industry, so it’s our intention to go across the Territories and we’ll probably do it on a regional basis and update our website as we go along.

I was hoping that would be the answer and I encourage the Minister to have his staff at the Film Commission start to go out and research the other communities. I do know that there are a lot of filmmakers in the other communities, people who can do duplication and things like that.

The other area -- and this is an area that came up an awful lot during the consultation -- was the relationship between ITI and ECE and how these two departments really need to work together in order to really enhance the film industry in the Northwest Territories. They do have similar mandates, but they do have different mandates. I’m wondering what the department is doing to encourage their relationship with Education, Culture and Employment with respect to the NWT film industry and arts in general.

We do work very closely with the Department of Education. As a matter of fact, our offices are right next door to each other so we interact on a regular basis. We work together very closely on a number of these strategies. We developed the NWT Arts Strategy and we all participated at NWT House. We’ve been working on a cured show, and it is our intention to work very closely on promoting and developing the NWT film industry. We will be meeting as we go forward and work together to promote this.

One of the items that was discussed at that March 23rd meeting was the possible need, or need, in fact, of an industry association. At that time there was a lot of talk about the department working with some key individuals in the film industry that exist today about trying to find a way to create an industry association in the Northwest Territories. I was wondering if the Minister could tell me if there’s been any progress on that front.

I would say that without the involvement of the different filmmakers we would never have gotten this far. They have been working with us every step of the way. Now that we’ve identified funding, they’ve been working with us to develop the criteria. Certainly I would want to continue to work with them and I would certainly like to see such an organization be developed, so we’ll work on that area.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank the Minister. Clearly it’s the commitment of the film industry, representative of the film industry and the departments of both ITI and ECE that have led to the success in this area. One of the areas that they talked about or the Minister has touched on is the funding that is now available to the film industry through SEED. It’s $100,000, which is, clearly, great. I’m wondering what kind of mechanism they have to assess the value of those dollars that we’re spending, how we’re going to track those dollars to make sure that they are in fact bringing back benefit. Is there any plan in the future, if we can prove clear benefit to increase that money so that we can get greater benefits?

I believe, personally, that $100,000 spent by the GNWT in the film industry will allow us to help the industry circulate hundreds and hundreds of thousands if not possibly millions. So I’d like to see in the future that increase, but before we do that, I’d like to know if there’s a mechanism to assess the effectiveness of that spending.

In the past when we looked at developing the NWT film industry, we had concerns that we wanted to make sure that the Northwest Territories benefitted. Through the work of the consultant, we were able to identify that NWT filmmakers were causing the Northwest Territories to benefit to the order of magnitude of $9 million, and that was without the government investing any money.

We do have the approach to collecting this information. We’ll continue to do it. We will collect it on a regular basis. It’s our intention to continue to invest, and invest more money as we go along and as our government financial picture continues to improve.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I talked about the importance of preschool. I have questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. There seems to be a lot of people not only in the Territories but outside the Territories, in the country, that believe in the positive impacts of preschool. I’d like to ask the Minister if his department has done any studies or reports or looked at any sort of best practices to look at the success on high school graduates as a result of preschool.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. With respect to preschool in the Northwest Territories, there has been some work in different areas such as the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative. We visit all forums and all regions in the Northwest Territories. We’ve heard from people the importance of having these early childhood development programs. Not only that but there’s also a framework that has been in the works since last year, the Early Childhood Development Framework for Action. The report is currently being drafted. With that in mind, there is all this different research that has been initiated and part of the discussion will be within this framework as well as the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative. Those are the tools that we will be having for the next government to consider. Mahsi.

I’d like to ask the Minister if in the early childhood development work that the department’s engaging in, if there has been some discussions with the teachers and the principals of the schools where there are preschools available and in schools where there are no preschools available. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I can definitely find out the actual detail of who they’ve talked with across the Northwest Territories. My understanding is that they’ve initiated discussion with educators in the Northwest Territories and those communities with or without the daycare or the preschool, because we needed to hear their perspective as well. But I can provide more detailed information to the Members. Mahsi.

Mr. Speaker, I’d like to ask the Minister if there are any early indications that the attendance at preschool is helping the students as they enter into primary school, secondary and high school. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, part of the research that we’ve done does reflect on that where a child learns at the early stages and does well and is successful as they grow into secondary and postsecondary studies. Those are areas that we’ve highlighted and captured into our ASAI, Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative, and also the framework that I’ve referred to. Those are the important pieces of work that have been discussed and have been captured within the agreement as well. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Your final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Minister ensure that all early childhood development studies or reports or anything that pertains to preschool and the positive impacts of preschool are placed in the transitional documents for the next government? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Definitely, that’s one of the priorities that we have with the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative. That’s a first priority as early childhood development and also child care development. Definitely, this is an area that has been the prime focus in the childhood discussion among the forums in the Northwest Territories among the regions. We’ll keep the Members posted as we move forward. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, Mr. Speaker, this is regarding services provided by the health centres in the small and remote communities. Mr. Speaker, has the government addressed any medical services professional staff shortages all across the Northwest Territories, not just in Nunakput, in the Beaufort-Delta, and what solutions are being implemented to try to fix the problem? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is an ongoing search and recruitment for doctors and nurses especially to provide service outside of Yellowknife. The challenge is, of course, filling the positions, finding the staff that is trained. There is work being done in terms of trying to better coordinate and centralize the decision-making so that we can look at the coverage with doctors.

We’ve invested millions of dollars in training northern nurses. The issue is to get them trained up enough to work in the small communities so that they can provide the services and that we don’t have this issue of gaps in services because there is no available staff. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, exactly how many positions in the Northwest Territories that are related to medical services, especially in the small and remote communities, are vacant? Committing and expanding the staff, pumping more resources is one thing, but hiring is another, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

The issue is not so much, in my opinion, the need for additional resources. It’s to try to fill the positions that are already there to avoid the circumstances, that the Member talked about in his statement, where there’s lack of services. The small communities tend to not get the services that they’re expecting on a regular basis, which is a gap that we try to avoid. Thank you.

The Minister said it himself that we’re not getting the services. Mr. Speaker, the policies when dealing with medical conditions and regular checkups are so vulnerable for our elders and our youth, especially for dental and elders for checkups, you know, causing cancer. In cases such as doctor and other staff shortages, the regular procedures should not apply. What is the government doing?

We are making, as I indicated, constant and significant efforts on the recruitment side. We are recruiting from a number of different sources, from the various Internet sources that are available, by word of mouth, looking with ads, we go to fairs, and we continue to train up nurses, as I indicated. But we continue to struggle, as does every jurisdiction in the country, with adequacy, especially when it comes to services in small communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Your final supplementary, Mr. Jacobson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know that the communities bear the brunt of all shortages across the territory when it comes to doctor shortages and nursing. What are the government plans? Is it possible to hire nurses in the communities for long term, and the second part of this is, the checkups are a big thing because they’re sending too many, like Mr. Menicoche said, we’re sending too many people home with just aspirin and they’re not being properly assessed. That scares a lot of people, Mr. Speaker. It’s not, first of all, but it should be taken care of. Is the Minister willing to try to implement to the nursing staff that in the small communities that proper checkups should be done and not just sent home with aspirin or Tylenol? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I indicated to the Member for Nahendeh, I will raise this issue not only with the deputy minister but I’ll be talking to the board chairs about the concern and who, in turn, can talk to the senior staff to deal with the issues and pass on the concern and ensure that every effort is made to provide all the services necessary and that we avoid these types of circumstances. But recognizing, as I said earlier, that over the course of any given day thousands of Northerners successfully go through the doors of health centres. We have to be concerned about those situations that the Member has mentioned and we will take those steps. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I cited a number of concerns with the summer student hiring process. The process is more than just how many students we’ve hired; it’s about how we hire them and, of course, what type of promise and opportunity we provide them. I think it’s quite understood that we have an obligation to ensure that our future workforce is certainly prepared for the opportunities before them, and I think it’s an important role.

Mr. Speaker, HR at present doesn’t have the official coordination powers and authority to, in my view, fully manage the summer student problems. So in other words, they’re the gatekeeper. They get a big pile of resumes and it’s almost like they reach in the bucket, grab 10 and give them to the department. I think that better coordination and management of these types of resumes needs to be done.

Before I get into the lengthy types of questions that I’d like to get some really good detail on from the Minister, the first question I’d really like to ask is how is the Minister going to assess this year’s hiring process of summer students, and is the Department of Human Resources working towards true authority about hiring summer students with that type of authority and coordination. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s our intention to review the Summer Student Program the way we do every year. We’ve discontinued the hiring of students as of August 15th. We’ll review our practices. We will review the exit interviews that were done with summer students and we’ll assess how successful we have been. We think we’ve been successful this year, considering our fiscal situation. We’ve increased the hiring of the number of summer students from last year. We’re not aware of any significant staffing issues when it came to the hiring of summer students and we will incorporate that into next year’s Summer Student Hiring Program. Thank you.

As I’ve said many times, our staffing in the Government of the Northwest Territories is based on merit. If the Member has any incidences where he’s seen hiring done because of who you know, well, we certainly want to be made aware of it so that we can investigate.

In every instance we try to follow the merit principle. As far as hiring of summer students, if he wants to hire only the most experienced summer students, only summer students that are in the fourth year of their programs... We try to make sure that we have a mix of summer students and we try to make sure that we hire as many summer students as we can. Thank you.

I want to thank the Minister for that particular lead in to my next question because he’s right in the context of how do we balance that fairly. We’re well aware of students being hired by the same departments year after year, not giving a break to new students. Some never even get opportunities at territorial government jobs and we’re all well aware of students being hired in February and March, even before the summer student application process begins. So in other words, they’re all scooped up, the old returnees continue to return to the same jobs and I’m concerned about fairness.

Will the Minister of Human Resources, in his exit interview and sort of 360 positions where they examine the whole process from start to finish if that’s going to be the detail they do as a wrap-up, will they be investigating on how this works? I think it ties rightly back to the authority issue; departments will do what they will do. So, Mr. Speaker, will the Minister address those types of concerns I’m raising? Departments will just keep hiring the same people they just want to.

Thank you. I think looking at the statistics, in this year we hired 286 students. Fifty-nine percent of the summer students hired were Aboriginal students or P1s, 40 percent were non-Aboriginals that lived more than half their life in the Northwest Territories, what we call P2s. So I’m not sure what the Member is suggesting the problem is. Is he suggesting that we should only hire high school graduates for one year so that we can hire the most students without any experience? I’m not sure what the objective of his line of questioning is. So maybe if he could clarify that, we can make some better recommendations going forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Mr. Speaker, I think it was amply clear. I think the answer was not amply clear. To put it in a different way, I’m well aware and I have no doubt that this Minister is well aware of many people who are summer students who keep coming back to the same jobs. They’re being given job offers in February and March even before the summer student season starts.

Mr. Speaker, the whole line of questioning is about trying to ensure that there’s fairness here, and if it smells funny, that tells me that something should be investigated. I’ll tell you when people are told that folks already have jobs in February and the summer student season hasn’t even started, something tells me something’s awry here and there’s not fairness. So, Mr. Speaker, that’s the whole line of questioning.

I’d like the Minister to see what he can do to make some recommendations for the future years that we ensure we have a full accountable process that shows students we’re being fair and honest with them. Thank you.

Thank you. I guess the reason summer students are hired in January and February is we ask summer students to put in their applications by the end of December of every year. So for 2012 we ask the summer students to put in, those interested in getting summer employment, to put in their applications by December of 2011. So we’re quite prepared to look at the process. If it means that we should wait until April for summer students to put in their applications and have everybody compete for every job and if we think that works out in the best interests, we’ll be prepared to look at that and see. To me, I don’t see where there’s a lot of unfairness in the system, and if it does come out that it’s unfair, then we would certainly look at different ways of trying to improve it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.