Our plan is clear. I have laid it out. We’ve agreed to the adjustment of 25 percent. That money will not be available to us as a government until late 2015. We will book that money. We will agree to the 25 percent on an ongoing basis. We will book that and have it reflected in the 2015-16 budget. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions will be for the Heritage Fund as well. The Minister’s statement indicates the Heritage Fund begins in 2015-16 when the revenue begins to flow into the government. I guess Mr. Bromley’s questioning about when that money will flow... Are we skipping a year of the Heritage Fund? Are we skipping the first year of the Heritage Fund?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, we’re not. We’re acknowledging that the Devolution Agreement kicks in April 1st. The resource royalties will start to accrue but the royalties will not be paid out and will not come into our coffers until the end of 2015. Once the appropriate business cycles are concluded and reporting cycles and financial cycles are concluded where royalties are ascertained, at that point we will honour the commitment and put in 25 percent in 2015-16 on a go-forward basis. Thank you.
I guess one of the confusions, then, is that we’re booking the revenue, we’re booking the expenses for the Aboriginal groups for the 2014-15 budget.
Can the Minister explain those if we’re not expecting them until the 2015-16 budget?
The $120 million is booked for accounting purposes. The $15 million is a sign of good faith, but you’ll notice in my budget address I indicated in there that that money will not flow until late 2015.
Mr. Speaker, are we sure those monies are flowing and if they don’t show up are we committed to the fact that we’re going to have to borrow that money to pay the Aboriginal groups?
As it has been pointed out, some of these figures are estimates. They’re based on the royalties posted on an average basis. So depending on how good a year it is and the coming year will depend on what we’re going to get, but we fully anticipate we are going to get royalties in the neighbourhood of $120 million, barring some unforeseen bad news, and if there’s good news, then it will be more. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to continue with questions towards the Minister of Human Resources, and again it’s about the GNWT vacancies. So let’s start with what we know. We know that there are 571 jobs that the GNWT is actively pursuing, and we all know that there are possibly 100 or 200 other jobs that they’re not pursuing. We can only assume that when you consider and extrapolate the numbers the Finance Minister has used that could be anywhere from $10 million to $20 million.
So let’s start with this: How many jobs out there are not being actively filled and sometimes are defined as dormant or inactive jobs? How much money is being allocated and where do we find these resource jobs referred to as dormant or inactive? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The dormant and inactive positions that are not scheduled to be filled in the GNWT as of October 31, 2013, was 161 positions.
I want to thank the Minister for laying out a clear number in front of us. So let’s work with 161 jobs that are not being pursued, of course. So we’ve ignored for just a moment the 571 jobs that are being pursued. Knowing that we have 161 jobs and we use the typical math of about $100,000 per person, that could now put us into the range of about $16 million are out there somewhere just sitting.
Would the Minister agree that some positions are not being filled by departments and that money is being used for other things that the department has on their wish list other than being directed for human resources as further directed by the Legislature itself? Thank you.
At this time many of the dormant and inactive positions are not funded. They’re unfunded positions or just PYs that appear in the PeopleSoft as dormant and inactive positions. We are undertaking an analysis with all of the departments to determine if any of these positions are funded and with the ones of the inactive, dormant positions that have funding attached to it, what is happening specifically with that funding and for what other personnel use is that money used for.
The Minister said many. Many could be one or two, three or four, maybe even 100. We don’t know, because in my first question, of course, I asked exactly and the question was how much money is being allocated to these jobs. So right now all I can do is use my traditional math provided by the NWT Department of Education, I want to thank them for those 12 good years, not discovery math, which we’re not sitting here guessing.
My next question for the Minister is, if there was a snapshot using the ever famous program called PeopleSoft, as of October 31, 2013, what would that snapshot say of how many vacant positions are there within the Northwest Territories government? Thank you.
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. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There’s a reason I keep saying traditional and discovery math and I’ll leave that up for the Cabinet to figure out. So we work with the number provided by the Minister, which is 1,150, we minus the 571 they call it actively pursuing jobs, we also minus the 161 jobs that the Minister says, well, they’re vacant or dormant, we don’t know what’s happening with them, that still leaves us 418 jobs on the table. We have 20 percent of our government unstaffed and certainly funded.
So where are those human resource dollars going? Who is spending them and who is providing the direction on how that money is being spent? If it’s not through the Legislature itself, it must be the bureaucracy deciding where human resources are being spent, overriding the will of the Legislature. Can the Minister answer that? Thank you.
The departments manage their own human resources. They do it using the vacant positions. Sometimes they maintain a home position for an employee that may be under an assignment. So that home position would be considered vacant. They may need other priorities that need to be met by not just by the Assembly but also the department priorities and they use the position by filling some casual positions to meet the mandate. They support other positions that are required, other priorities that are required and also sometimes if the department had some vacant positions, they may keep the positions vacant if they felt that if they’re filling the positions immediately could create a cost overrun in the budget. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s been just over three months since we’ve had a commitment to have RCMP overnighting in Tsiigehtchic. So I’d like to ask the Minister, how many times have the RCMP overnighted in the community of Tsiigehtchic since our last session? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. The Minister of Justice, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The detachment commander in Fort McPherson has met with the band council and the SAO in Tsiigehtchic twice in December. We continue to work out arrangements for RCMP officers to overnight in the community of Tsiigehtchic and our hope is that they would be there eight days a month. We continue to work out the logistics on exactly how that’s going to happen. We’ve identified accommodations, I believe. So the details are just being worked out today.
I’d just like to ask the Minister, when can the community expect to have the RCMP overnighting in that community? Thank you.
If the details can be worked out, it should happen. Hopefully by March we can have RCMP officers overnighting in the community of Tsiigehtchic. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Many of the community residents in the community of Tsiigehtchic would like to see more of a presence from the RCMP, so I’d like to ask the Minister, will he ensure more of a presence in the community of Tsiigehtchic? Thank you.
In addition to looking at having RCMP officers overnight in the community of Tsiigehtchic, we’re also looking at the establishment of a contact location in the community of Tsiigehtchic so that community members are aware when the RCMP are on patrol in the community and they have a place where they can meet and bring any concerns that they might have to the RCMP that are on patrol in the community of Tsiigehtchic. We do look forward to the success of that. We’ve identified policing priorities for last year. We’re looking right now to establish the policing priorities for the community of Tsiigehtchic for the upcoming year.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to follow up with questions to the Minister of Human Resources here. It’s been brought up many times with the vacancies that we have within our government system. I talked to people back home and some of the concerns they bring up is they constantly see a job posting but it never gets a hiring.
I’d like to ask the Minister, for all the GNWT jobs that we have in the Northwest Territories, who writes the job descriptions? Because we’ve also heard with the college students that a lot of these job descriptions ask for two, three, four, five years’ experience. That already takes them out of the equation and doesn’t help them out when we’re trying to get our own northern workforce in.
I’d like to ask the Minister, who writes these job descriptions that go out into the public?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The job descriptions are written by the department that will be employing that specific person once the person is hired.
Going off some of my colleagues’ questions here, because we have all these job descriptions out there and we also have job postings that aren’t being met. You look on the website and there’s, I don’t know how many there are, but I know they’re not all being filled. We talk about the main estimates and the budget process where we approve these funded jobs for the government and the departments but they’re not being filled.
I’d like to ask the Minister, and he already alluded to this earlier, but what happens to these dollars that we approve for these job positions? What happens to the dollars within the departments that we go to the positions and they’re not being filled?
As I indicated earlier, there are various uses for the money that goes in with the positions. The departments still have the mandate to perform the tasks that are assigned to them as a department, so sometimes when they’re unable to fill a job and after a job description is completed, and the job is advertised over the period and they are, for some reason or another, unable to fill a job, then some of that money would go to a term position perhaps. It could be going to a casual and also has been used for relief workers. Sometimes when you don’t have all of the positions filled then there’s a requirement to pay overtime, so sometimes there is overtime paid, and sometimes the departments also go through a process, I guess, well, all departments go through a process or passive restraint and sometimes the management of the human resources is part of the passive restraint.
The Minister mentioned that for different reasons jobs are vacant and the money is used for other areas.
With some of the challenges that we have within our departments possibly filling the position, would the Minister agree or would the Minister allude to our positions within some of our departments deliberately left vacant so dollars could be used for other areas. Can the Minister please confirm or allude to that question?
Yes, I can confirm that that does occur to meet other priorities, to support other positions that are required and also to take pressure off budget to avoid over-expenditures.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. He did confirm that some positions are deliberately left vacant to offset some of the O and M operations stuff, so why don’t we see those operations in the budget process right from the start and not put these positions out that we agree to? It’s ridiculous how we approve this budget here.
My last question is: Based on the job descriptions that departments write, how does the Minister or what is his goal or his strategy to get our educated students that have no job experience into the job system and into public service knowing that the job descriptions ask for two years’ experience plus?
With the students that are trying to gain experience, the Government of the Northwest Territories uses a couple of methods to give the students experience. One is the Summer Student Program. We try to track some of the students that are going to school down south and we try to employ them during the summer giving them some experience each year. Also, at the end of that, when some of the students are finished school and want to get into a job to gain some experience, we use the Internship Program to bring students into the GNWT.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement today. When you do a search result on our GNWT website under Fiscal Responsibility Policy, you’re whisked away to a two-page pamphlet with the good looking Mr. Floyd Roland’s picture on it. Now, I like simplicity in design as it makes the complex more palatable to work with; however, with our current debt wall and with this guiding policy consistently being used to prop up our financial future, I must ask, where is the meat on this bone? My questions today are for the Minister of Finance.
It appears that the fate of our financial future lies in a two-page document which appears to be a bit dated. Can the Minister indicate to the House here what recognized authority or professional body approved the parameters of the Fiscal Responsibility Policy?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The very experienced and capable staff in the Department of Finance, vetted through the appropriate processes and signed off by FMB.
I guess we’re hearing from the Minister that this was an internal policy, possibly vetted with some people with criterion in financial management, but we’re not quite certain.
So, I guess, when was the last time this policy was thoroughly reviewed to address the growing debt load that we’re about to incur and with such negative revenue growth?
The issue of the debt to revenue number, for example, 5 percent, a maximum 5 percent can go to interest payments out of revenue. It’s not 1 percent; it’s 5 percent, so the Member’s statement earlier in the day was wrong, just for a point of clarification. But that number, we looked across the fiscal landscape across the country and it’s something that is manageable, and at the 5 percent of revenue, yes, we could manage the additional cost should we get a borrowing limit of a billion dollar bump-up and should we decide to invest that money, and yes, that money would be targeted to economic infrastructure and we’d have to look at the full financial impact.
