Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I do.
Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Sergeant-at-Arms, would you escort the witnesses into the Chamber, please.
Welcome, witnesses. Minister Abernethy, if you would introduce your witnesses, please.
Thank you, Madam Chair. With me today on my right is Sheila Bassi-Kellett, deputy minister of the Department of Human Resources; on my left is Michelle Beard, director of policy. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Minister. I will open the floor to opening comments on the Department of Human Resources. Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to begin by congratulating the Department of Human Resources for the GNWT being named Top 100 Employer in Canada. I think that’s hard work from the department throughout, I guess, but HR being responsible and one of the main leads on that.
My other opening comments would be about the job creation. The Minister talked about decentralization and devolution. We’ve also created a bunch of jobs this year. My indication is 56. I am just wondering what the process is from HR’s perspective on what different departments have to do when they create a new position. Are there justifications that are required? Regarding decentralization, is their focus on why this is being located in certain locations?
The other area that I would like the Minister to discuss a little bit is with the GNWT we are getting larger and larger and we’re seeing vacancies in positions. Those numbers seem to be growing as well. There is always a constant number of jobs/positions that we cannot fill. Whether we are in the transition or in the middle of filling them and some positions maybe have questions on whether we can actually fill them year after year. What is the Minister doing to reduce those numbers in filling these empty positions?
The other area the Minister discussed was whistleblowing. I’m just looking for more clarification and definition on whistleblowing. What is the actual definition of whistleblowing? I understand the concept of it, but are we talking about territorial employees being able to complain about their bosses or complaining about other departments? Typically now, that’s kind of frowned upon. I am just looking for more clarification.
Those are my main concerns right now, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. I will go to Minister Abernethy for his response.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The Department of Human Resources provides technical advice to the departments as they are establishing positions. We also provide job description training when a position is created. We facilitate job evaluation to determine how the position or what the position will be paid.
As far as decentralization of positions, that is a direction that Cabinet has given to all departments, boards and agencies in the Northwest Territories, following up on the commitment of Caucus and the priorities of the 17th Assembly. Each department is responsible for looking at their own operations and identifying which positions would be appropriate for decentralization. Technically, we provide advice on what the jobs will be paid, what the job descriptions could look like. We also provide advice and direction, where appropriate, on organizational design. We have the expertise in house to provide that information, but it’s ultimately up to individual departments to make choices that are right for them and their operations. I can say, in compliance with the direction of Caucus, Cabinet has directed each department to look at their internal operations and identify which positions can or would be appropriate for decentralization.
With respect to the GNWT getting larger and larger, and the larger number of vacancies that exist, I can give a snapshot. As of December 31st, there were 1,080 vacant positions in the Government of the Northwest Territories. That number is not static. It changes all the time. Positions continued to be filled on a daily basis, but at the same time, we have people leaving the public service so the vacancies tend to evolve. So 1,080 is not specific to individual positions. It does change.
There are a significant number of reasons that positions may appear vacant. For instance, if we have individuals who go on transfer assignments as part of a succession plan, their position, their home position may remain vacant and the department may choose not to backfill it while they’re gone. We also have seasonal positions that are vacant in the wintertime and filled in the summertime. Those stay on our establishment report and would show that way.
There are also positions that technically require deletion. They are no longer required. That may appear on the charges for some time until the departments have officially made a decision to permanently delete those positions. Then there are other positions that the departments may, as a result of our cost-saving measures, choose to leave vacant for a month or two as opposed to immediately fill. So those numbers do change.
I can say that it appears that on an ongoing basis, there’s about 37 percent of the vacant jobs that need or that we require to fill immediately, and that we are trying to recruit them. Usually, about 50 percent of those are outside of Yellowknife in the small communities and we have traditionally had some difficulties filling some of the positions outside of Yellowknife.
To that end, we’ve directed the department to develop a Regional Recruitment Strategy. That Regional Recruitment Strategy is going to attempt to address some of the challenges that we are facing filling these positions in communities outside of Yellowknife. It’s going to be informed, to some degree, by the Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee, and I did mention earlier today that I had an opportunity to meet with that committee and talk about some of the challenges we are having recruiting Aboriginal people and filling positions in some of our smaller or regional communities throughout the Northwest Territories.
We plan to have that Regional Recruitment Strategy done prior to the next round of business planning, so we can share it with committee and discuss it and start moving forward through the business planning process to try to aggressively tackle some of these challenges we are facing in the smaller communities to recruit and retain professionals, as well as Aboriginal candidates. This government is 100 percent committed to have a public service that represents the population that we serve. We are having some challenges.
Earlier today I was asked about senior management positions and the representation of Aboriginal people in senior management positions. There are challenges. I did indicate one of our challenges is the low turnover in those positions, but we do have programs like the Associate Director/Superintendent Program to help bring qualified and highly competent Aboriginal candidates into those senior roles.
With respect to whistleblower legislation, we had an obligation as part of the UNW Collective Agreement where we were going to sit down with the UNW and develop a Safe Disclosure Policy for UNW employees. That was going to form the groundwork of moving forward with whistleblower, or in this case, we’re going to refer to it as safe disclosure legislation. The Safe Disclosure Policy is done. I have written a letter to committee indicating I would be happy to meet with committee to walk through the good work that the department and union have done. The union fully supports it and stands behind the work that’s been done on a Safe Disclosure Policy. Hopefully, we will have an opportunity to discuss that in committee.
Whistleblower, or safe disclosure, is where an employee can bring forward allegations of wrongdoing, gross misconduct, abuse or misuse of resources and not have it adversely affect them as individuals or their careers. Many jurisdictions have this type of legislation. We are moving on our path to make that a reality here in the Northwest Territories. As I’ve indicated, the first step was the agreement we’ve made with the UNW and the work we’ve done and I look forward to taking that to committee.
Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Mr. Bouchard.
That’s good. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I welcome the Minister and the delegation here today. In line with my comments from the Member of Hay River North, I too want to congratulate the department on a job well done being named one of the top 100 employers in Canada. That’s quite an accolade and sometimes I think we forget to say some good things about what’s happening in government, so congratulations.
Keeping in line with what was said, and you might hear a common theme here a little bit, but we know we are faced with a lot of net out-migration of employees. This is nothing new. We have, at times, a lot of complexity in our public service jobs, and as indicated by the Minister, we have a retiring population to deal with. All three of those pillars, I think, are putting a strain on our current system to fill positions now.
We’ve heard various numbers of vacancies currently, and I know this is always a moving target, Madam Chair, but I believe the number – correct me if I’m wrong – about 360 job openings today in the NWT. That tells me, and I think it tells many people in this Assembly, that our NWT labour market really cannot meet the demand to fill the positions we have. So when we add more positions in a budget like we have before us, I think we may be adding more insult to injury moving forward.
I know there was some ITI funded initiatives about Come Make Your Mark to promote the NWT. The Minister may want to talk a bit about whether this was a successful endeavour, but more so what did it cost taxpayers. Again, these are issues that we need to look at.
Following that, we’ve talked about all these types of initiatives to bring people to the Northwest Territories. A lot of those are referred to targeted scholarships, bursary programs, specific placement programs, remissable loans, return of bursaries and return of service agreements. These are all catch phrases, but these are also very unique tools. I am curious as to what amount of tool use is being used by the department to fill the current vacancies that we have before us. So I would appreciate the Minister talking about that.
Although I indicated that I was congratulating the department for a job well done being top 100 employees, if one has to look at the recent employee engagement satisfaction survey by our service sector, it was interesting to see some of the trends in that employee survey. What I mean by trends is I look at top box score. These are your top percent responses in terms of completely being satisfied. When one looks at the results, Madam Chair, it’s very clear that although we are doing relatively well, those numbers or top box scores have now been slipping from one year to the next. In the eyes of an employer, whether it’s in government or in industry, these would be areas you would want to drive some concern in terms of what you are using to mitigate the perception out there.
I would be remiss if I didn’t talk a little bit about safety. The Minister is very much aware that I have been somewhat critical in our safety programs and the fact that this government has been fined and double fined in the last two years to the tune of about almost $750,000 in fines and double fines. I have some grave concerns about what we are doing to improve the safety profile. Again, there is only one mention here in the opening address that indicates rigorous occupational health and safety strategies continue to be critical in order to minimize the risk of our staff being injured on the job. Given the fact that this department has been bestowed with such a large penalty, I am curious and very dismayed that it only had one line entry in the opening comments and very little to show in the budget as to what they are truly doing for occupational health and safety in order to get on the positive side of WSCC so that our claims growth, our injuries, as well as our penalties are much more in line.
I know the Minister has made comments in the House about the injuries per 100 being at a value, I believe, of 1.8 of a value and the average in the Territories is 2.4. However, I crunch these numbers, and although this seems to be the hallmark or benchmark for health and safety for the department, I’m still very perplexed as to how these numbers are being calculated because my math does not add up to this 1.8. I may want to ask the Minister to comment on that as well.
I do have a lot more specifics that I’d like to do when we get into detail, so I will leave that for now. I did put a couple of questions on there for the Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. I’ll go to Mr. Abernethy for a response.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to thank the Member for congratulating the department on being the top 100 employer. I do have to say that HR can’t take the credit for that by itself. This is an accolade given to the Government of the Northwest Territories and it takes everybody, Cabinet, Regular Members, staff and all the departments. We’re very proud of this recognition and we think it’s fantastic.
The Member is right; we do have an out-migration from the Government of the Northwest Territories. We do run about 360 to 400 jobs on a regular basis that we’re trying to actively fill. I take the Member’s point that the market does not seem to meet the needs. We recognize there are some challenges out there. We are working closely with Education, Culture and Employment to identify some of the needs of the Government of the Northwest Territories. There are shortages in some administrative type skills, some financial type skills, as well as what would be statutory skills. We work with Education, Culture and Employment to try and identify some of the challenges that we have. We are also recognizing that we are the largest employer in the Northwest Territories. We are working with the Department of ITI on their economic strategy to make sure that our realities are taken into consideration as well.
I can’t provide you with any details on Come Make Your Mark. I don’t have that specific information in front of me, but I will talk to ITI to see what their thoughts are on the program and I’ll also look inside the department to see if we have any statistics on that as well. I’ll get that back to the Member and to committee.
We do have a number of programs that are designed to encourage northern students to come back and work in the Northwest Territories. Education, Culture and Employment has remissable student loans for any individuals who come back to the Northwest Territories who have been educated in the Northwest Territories. That encourages people to come back and I think we as an employer, as well as other northern employers, benefit from that.
We do have a number of bursary programs. We have bursary programs available for health care, students in health care professions or allied health professions. Nursing, social work, pretty much all allied health professions. Those funds come from Health and Social Services. We have been administering those programs on their behalf, but that is one of the functions that we will be transferring over to Health and Social Services as a result of the reorganization that we did talk about.
I can provide the Member, it will just take a little bit of time, with details on what type of dollars have been spent out, and a little bit of history on some of those bursaries. Some of them work better than others. We’ve had greater success in some areas. I think the nursing bursaries we’ve seen some pretty decent success. The medical bursaries are a little bit more limited. We find that some of the individuals who go south to pursue medicine as a career end up discovering a life in the South and not all of them tend to come back. It’s a challenge and we’re happy to work with Health and Social Services to see if we can address that.
The employment engagement survey, I think it still continues to demonstrate that most people are happy with their employment in the Government of the Northwest Territories. I’d have to take another look at the numbers. I’m not sure exactly what the Member means by slipping. I see them being more stagnant. Maybe a little down but, overall, roughly where they’ve been.
The GNWT provides really great compensation. We provide really great benefits. We’ve got fantastic leave provisions. I think most employees appreciate that.
With respect to safety issues, yes, the Government of the Northwest Territories has been fined. The Member did indicate that the department was hit with a large fine and I just have to clarify that comment. The Government of the Northwest Territories was hit with a large fine. Each department is responsible for their own Occupational Health and Safety Program within the department.
The Department of Human Resources provides some advice and guidance on how committees are supposed to work within departments, but we are responsible for things like the Duty to Accommodate Policy and other policies. We draft those on behalf of the Government of the Northwest Territories and provide individual departments with guidance and advice on how to apply them. The Duty to Accommodate Policy only came into place during the life of the 17th Assembly and we’re starting to see some positive results from that. In this budget we are putting more duty to accommodate positions in the Northwest Territories – one in Fort Smith and one in Inuvik – which we hope will help us return people to work quicker and more appropriately, which will reduce our claim costs to the WSCC. It’s no secret that we have some concerns with the Safe Advantage program. The WSCC does incredibly important work, and one of their mandates is to encourage safety in the workplace. They’ve chosen the Safe Advantage program as their method of doing that. We appreciate and agree with the intent. We’re not 100 percent convinced that the program meets its needs. The program is under its five-year review. WSCC has asked us for our input and guidance on where some of the difficulties lie, and we will be providing that information to them.
I do have to say we want and support a healthy and safe workplace. We don’t want our employees injured. It’s our goal to do whatever we can to make sure that employees are not injured on the workplace. We will continue to strive to meet that.
We do know, based on our analysis of claims for 2012, that our claims history for 2012 is significantly lower than previous years. Will we get a fine? Yet to be determined. I imagine we will. Given that our claims are significantly lower for 2012, I don’t imagine that it will be as extreme as it has been in previous years.
We will continue to work hard with our department colleagues and our department partners to reduce as much as possible. Many departments are doing really well. There are many departments in this organization that have virtually no claims. Some actually have no claims. We do have a couple of departments that struggle. The Department of Justice, one of the departments that I’m responsible for, does struggle under occupational health and safety and we do have a high claims history. Health and Social Services, two of the authorities – Stanton and Beaufort-Delta – have high claims history. We need to do more work. I know the Department of Health and Social Services, in cooperation with their authorities, is doing a significant amount of work in their authorities, and I do know that in Justice we have taken significant steps to identify the risks in our corrections facilities and work with our staff to identify ways to avoid injury in the future. We believe we’re already seeing some reduced injuries in the justice system. But we don’t stop. We have to keep going and we have to keep working with our employees, with our partners like WSCC, to identify ways to reduce injuries in the workplace. I am happy to say we have seen a significant drop in claims for 2012.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Dolynny, your time is up. Next on the list is Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to let the Minister and his staff know that I will probably be speaking to some of the topics that have already been discussed, so don’t feel obligated to answer them again. I just want to show my support for certain initiatives, as well as my concern in some areas. If you feel obligated that you need to answer again and reiterate some of your points, feel free to, but with respect to time and moving forward, you can just try to move on here.
What I’m glad to see in here is under the 20/20 program that the Minister mentions the recruitment, development and advancement of Aboriginal employees, but it’s not just the Aboriginal employees. What we discussed last time was northern indigenous. It’s people who have lived here in the North and are indigenous to the North, and working to advance them as well.
I didn’t get a chance to go to my second set of questions during question period earlier today, but just to touch on some of the challenges that we do have in the education system that sometimes, as a result, we find some of our people from the Northwest Territories in low-level positions within the government. Some of these people that are in these positions, sometimes are also long-serving employees and we know this because we give out the awards that are for 20 years, 25 years, yet there hasn’t been any advancement in there for them.
I’m really glad to see that you want to work on the development and advancement of these positions. That goes to on-the-job training, specifically for these long-term employees. How do we do that? How do we take people from administrative roles and start getting them into positions where they can start being programmers, working in programs and services areas, and slowly build them up?
As you know and see through your department, we are also a very transient jurisdiction where we get people coming up two years or three years at a time, get to know and understand the culture, area, demographics of where they’re doing their work, and then they leave. Yet you’re still getting some of these employees who are sticking around and continuing to see people come and go out of the office and those are the employees that I feel we need to target. Mr. Dolynny makes a good point of finding innovative and unique ways to adjust these. This is what we have to do. We have to look at ways we can start building our workforce with people here in the Northwest Territories, especially our long-term residents.
What I was also very glad to see was the work and advancement of the whistleblower legislation. Speaking to people back home, and myself working in the public service area, knowing some of the discrepancies, some of the job acts within government and how things are done, and policy, and how do we make those changes so that we can make people thrive and go and develop not only in the public service sector but in all of the Northwest Territories. There are some restrictions that allow certain Members that work for the department, I know there is the conflict of interest, but because we have such a small population, it does restrict some of our employees from going out and volunteering, being part of an NGO, and we have to learn how we can support those, because we do have a lot of really great individuals in the Northwest Territories who cannot be restricted to their workload and could be doing really good work for people of the Northwest Territories as well as their departments.
Speaking earlier in terms of partnerships and working with departments and hearing some of the stats of all the vacancies that we have throughout the Northwest Territories, that says to me that this department needs to work. I mentioned this earlier during my question period to the Minister of Education. He has a very big responsibility and important role here to start training and educating our youth and fixing the education system so that we can start filling these vacant roles with Northerners, with Aboriginals, and making sure that we have a great representation right across the board. With all the vacancies that the Minister had mentioned earlier, that just tells me that this department needs to work closely with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to see how we can start training in those areas that we see need positions filled.
What I was really surprised to see, as well, in just making reference to the budget dialogue that was taken on the road, there wasn’t very much mentioned in terms of human resources or retention and recruitment. I’m not sure if the Minister would like to maybe ask another Minister around the House if that was even a case brought up during these budget dialogues and whether more money needed to be put towards recruitment and retention of either nurses, doctors, educators. That is a possibility, but in the budget dialogue when I reviewed it and read the report, I didn’t see anything in terms of human resources, which just listening today, you heard a lot of concerns.
The Regional Recruitment Strategy, I’m glad to see that is on the horizon. It really needs to be supported. When that strategy comes to the table and to the committee, it needs to be implemented. Dollars need to go so that we can start getting our regional centres and our smaller communities up to par with what some of our bigger centres have. In terms of that, as I mentioned earlier in my Member’s statement where I said if you fail to plan, plan to fail. As a result of that, we have to start looking at our communities. Why are people going into communities?
Early childhood development, we need those programs. We need better education systems in our schools. We need schools. We need nurses. We need policing. We need the core and essential services in our communities to provide people getting into those employment rates.
When I listened to our Beaufort-Delta Leadership Council, there was a lot of really good discussions on how they felt that the government’s departments should work more collaboratively together, working together to come up with the best plans and strategies so that when we need those jobs, we need those services in the communities, they are there and that Human Resources isn’t trying to get people in the communities when families don’t want to go there because there are no early childhood development services. Those are some challenges, barriers that we are facing. As Cabinet and as the Minister that is responsible for getting people in those positions, those are some things that need to be addressed. How do we do it? It is a tough job. I am sure we will find ways and strategies.
Before I continue, I just want to commend the continued support for members of the public service in all of the benefits and packages and working with UNW to reach those agreements and supporting the people that are in there. As a Member who has worked a very long service in different departments, and seeing some of the areas that need working, and being able to come in here and try to make that change and try to offer my expertise and my knowledge, I think that that offers a lot. I do know that employees within the GNWT system, as well as the managers, superintendents, supervisors, need the support from this House to ensure that we provide the best services and programs and the best packages so that we can retain our staff, and also make sure that our staff is up to par and that our communities are also all thriving. I mentioned a whole bunch of different things there.
If anything, I’d like to see more effort into the advancement and development of our employees, especially the ones that have been in the workforce for a long time and who continue to be in low-level jobs, and also seeing the development of the whistleblower legislation as we move forward, because that is really going to give us insight into what is happening to the departments and within our government system and making our government more effective as we move forward. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister Abernethy.
Madam Chair, I would like to thank the Member for his comments. I agree; we have a lot of work. We have a lot of things we need to think about as we move forward to try and engage both residents to convince them or encourage them to consider the GNWT as an employer. A significant amount of work has been done or needs to be done and is being done.
I have been in the House for five years. In those five years I have talked an awful lot about on-the-job training. When I sat on that side of the House, I must have made several dozen statements about training on the job and the value that it provides. This government has had fantastic success in the past, but as budget cuts have come through our history, some of that training on the job has gone away.
We do have the Assistant Director/Regional Superintendent Program is one of our on-the-job training programs. Some departments have some specific programs on-the-job training as well. The Department of Justice has our Corrections Training Program, which is an on-the-job training program. Health and Social Services has things like the Community Health Nurse Development Program, which is an on-the-job training program. So they do exist in pockets.
As we move forward with the Regional Recruitment Strategy, we are going to be following two streams. Much of this is going to be informed through the research and analysis which will be done, but also advice from the Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee. We are going to be following two streams, and one is trying to deal with non-regulated professions. What we are looking at here is exactly what you are talking about, which is one year on-the-job training programs and mentorships. We are talking about double filling positions to give individuals an opportunity to learn the skills or consolidate learning that they already have but haven’t been able to put into practice. This is a great opportunity. We have past success in this area and we think that we can make some significant success. That is for non-regulated jobs.
For regulated or trades jobs, we are also looking for on-the-job training, but it would be longer. A trade often takes two, three or four years to complete, so it’s going to have to be longer on-the-job training programs. We are going to have to work closely with Education, Culture and Employment as they are trying to address those. Then we can also look at our Community Health Nurse Development Program as a great program that transitions recent graduates or nurses without community experience, gives them the skills they need to work in a community health setting.
We are excited about the work we are doing on the Regional Recruitment Strategy. I am excited to bring that forward to committee. It’s still a little bit of time off, but it will be in front of committee. We will have discussions prior to business planning process so that the findings and the recommendations can be dealt with through the business planning process. I am happy to hear you say that you would support some money. I don’t know if Minister Miltenberger is looking, but obviously we are going to need some money on that. But we’ll have those discussions later.
---Interjection
He said yes.
As a Regular Member, and as a citizen, and as an employee who used to be in the public service, I have been a supporter of whistleblower legislation for a long time. I have been trying to push it forward. This House has supported that initiative. We agreed to move forward with the Union of Northern Workers, who was a good partner. We worked hand in hand on the Safe Disclosure Policy that we have in place and it is going to form the background of the legislation. We want to implement the safe disclosure April 1st. I have to bring it to committee first for their review, but that’s the target that we are setting. We would like to have it run for a period of time so that we can do an analysis to make sure it is working the way that the union and the GNWT hope and intend. From there, that will give us more information to make sure that any legislation we put forward is going to work. It will be done in the life of this Assembly. We have a plan and we will bring it forward for discussion.
I thank the Member for his comments. If he has any other questions, I’m happy to answer them in detail.
Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Next on the list is Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I know that many Members have raised many different issues, but I think I will take a different approach this time. I am going to try to be specific.
When you are an applicant, you can’t dispute something that you cannot see. Often, they are getting frustrated and they’re saying P1, P2 and non-residents are getting our jobs. In fact, I think earlier in our session last week, I posed a written question. I wanted to see how many P1 and P2 applicants are getting hired over the last couple of years. That might be a little bit of work for the department, but they have those stats and I want to see those stats too. So that’s my initial concern, is how come my constituents and how come residents that are P1 and P2 are failing to get into the jobs that they’re applying for. Granted, while there may be some not actually qualified, I’m sure there’s some that are qualified and should be working there, and that’s still the case in our smallest communities, Madam Chair, where the outsiders come to the communities and they are given those jobs that my constituents never got a chance to apply for. When that happens, since they’re already there, they’re training for three to four months and they know the system and when the job gets tendered out or reapplied, the person that’s been there on a temporary basis has a better chance than often those on the outside.
So as an MLA, in my role I’m the appeal guy and they’re coming to me and saying, well, why is that person getting that job. I’ve been applying on it, I’ve been going on the website, I’ve been keeping an eye on this job, that’s something that I really want to do, I know I can do it, but they’re not given a chance. So I just wanted to see if the Minister can focus his response specifically around that area. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Minister Abernethy.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The Department of Human Resources centralized a number of years ago, but with that centralization, the staffing procedures and rules that the GNWT is bound to did not change. Those are consistent prior to decentralization. What may have been happening prior to that is some departments may not have been applying the rules as intended.
I hear the Member and I’ve seen many of the issues come across my desk and I do see a significant amount of frustration out there, which is one of the conversations I had with the Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee. What is happening within our system that either discourages people from applying or eliminates people who probably could do the job? What is it in our system that is causing that? I’m looking forward to some advice and recommendations from the Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee on how we can overcome that barrier, but we’re also, and I’ve talked about it already, putting in the Regional Recruitment Strategy which is going to focus on those two sectors, non-regulated and regulated jobs. For the non-regulated, training on the job, bringing people in who appear to be on the right track, but maybe lack something in their resume or maybe didn’t score exactly high enough on their interview to double fill and give them an opportunity to train on the job. Those are the types of things we’re talking about and I think that will address some of the issues that these individuals have.
An interesting statistic for people to consider is since 1999, the GNWT workforce has grown by about 36.9 percent. The growth in Aboriginal employees in that same time within the public service is 39.6. So where we have the workforce growing like this, we have the Aboriginal representation growing at a faster rate. We haven’t got where we need to be, we’re not even close. I think we’re at about 37 percent right now and the population is 50. So a significant amount of work is still needing to be done, but we are seeing some successes in the things we are doing. We have to capitalize on our successes. To you and to all Members and to residents-at-large, if you’re applying on a job and you feel that something was wrong in the process, you have the right to appeal. I encourage employees to appeal when, in fact, they feel that something was done incorrectly in the process or that they were unsuccessful for a particular reason. So I encourage people to appeal because that helps us learn where there may be gaps in the system as well.
So we do have work to do. I hear you, and I think we’re making progress, and I look forward to continual recommendations and suggestions from committee, from the Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee and from the public-at-large to help us overcome some of these challenges that we’re facing.
Just in closing, I’ve been strongly advocating within the department and directing the department to tell candidates, you know, come to us and we’ll give you feedback on what you could do better, where you might have gone off the rails a little bit during this competition. We want to help people learn from the staffing process, we want to give them advice on how they can better the process, and we’re also going to be looking at the possibilities of providing training outside of Yellowknife to individuals on how the process works. Sometimes I fear that it might just be a simple lack of understanding about how a competition works within the Government of the Northwest Territories and I think we can do a better job of helping people understand that process in the Northwest Territories on behalf of the GNWT.
Just with that whole aspect of scoring, I think that’s where residents are getting frustrated. Even though they feel that the tests are subjective and not transparent at all because they’re appealing it and the managers are sitting there and withholding information and not showing them how they scored. How can you defend yourself if you’re not allowed to see that? I guess that’s happened time and time again, and some applicants and some constituents have applied, like, 10 or 15 times with the same result. So, of course, they’ll get frustrated and I do want to see this Aboriginal representative workforce increase to our goal, which is well above the 30 percent mark, throughout our whole departments.
Just in response, as well, maybe the Minister can briefly tell me about the appeal system, because the appeal system, too, is just as frustrating to the applicants applying. The ones that are screened out don’t even get a chance to apply and find out why they weren’t able to get to the interview stage, and those that do get interviewed and fail it and fail and fail the interview, it’s like it’s a blow to their self-esteem, as well because they’ve failed. One resident was telling me about 12 times in a row. So that’s kind of frustrating. I don’t know if the Minister has any thought on that or if the department is going to try to revamp that type of appeal with the system that we currently have. Thank you.
I hear you on the scoring frustration. I believe we’ve already had conversations on this and I understand the frustration that some of your constituents are having, and not just your constituents, but others across the Northwest Territories, and the barriers that our system may be actually putting in place unknowingly, which I’m going to go back to my comments on the Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee. We’re really looking forward to some suggestions they have on the process. I mean what barriers we may be unknowingly be putting in and how we can improve those. So we look forward to their input.
Once again, please, anytime you have an opportunity or a constituent who comes to you with concerns, have them talk to HR, have them talk to some of the HR practitioners about what happened in the process and where they went off the rails and why they were not successful.
I did already talk a little bit about How to Apply for GNWT Jobs. That’s a program that we’re going to be piloting. I think we’re starting with piloting that in Fort Smith, but as we move forward, we’d like to see that program get out across the Northwest Territories and that’s for non-GNWT employees. That’s for people who want to become an employee of the Government of the Northwest Territories. So I take all your points, I hear you clearly. The department is listening and taking notes. We have some work to do and we will try to find the solutions to reduce any barriers that may exist for people across the Northwest Territories to apply on jobs.
Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Moving on with questions, I have Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. A few quick comments here. I want to start off by adding my voice to the congratulations to the Minister and all his staff for the Canada’s Top 100 Employers Award. That’s really great.
So, briefly, I have similar concerns to what the Minister has heard on whistleblower, and I’m looking forward to that legislation being brought forward. Succession planning, I’m very interested in that. I’m finding myself sort of in that category here. What’s been done to date we’ve been talking about since the 16th Assembly. How do we change the statistics would be good to know.
We’ve talked a lot about decentralization, devolution and regional recruitment in terms of the HR challenges. I guess I’d like to refer the Minister to my colleague Mr. Moses’ statement today. I was very impressed with that. That’s the fundamental thing we’re dealing with here. It’s no surprise to the Minister the information we’ve received, that even local, long-term community residents are moving to Yellowknife for the additional services and extraordinary benefits they can get here. The challenge is clear and it will take a very comprehensive approach. I would be interested in hearing, you know, that the Minister recognizes that and how he’s working with his colleagues to address that and refer to that. Put it on the wall in front of your desk, that checklist that Mr. Moses has supplied.
Greening the workplace, something that comes up regularly when I speak on HR. Some great promises have been made but, again, I just still see the Legislative Assembly and ENR as the ones that are committed to this sort of thing. Looking for some leadership and real change there. Evidence can be seen in the failure to use double sided in departments except for, like I say, those two in the documents I see unless they’re coming to the Ledge black and white copies. Heating with renewable energy, such as the Ledge and so on. Composting. These sorts of things that can engage our younger people who recognize the importance of the environment.
Also, on the safety front, I think the Minister has done a good job of stating the situation where we’ve been recently, where we are now. There’s one clear barrier I haven’t heard expressly stated, explicitly stated. I will be asking questions about that when we get into the details. I’m going to leave it at that just to move on to the details.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to complicate things, when we move forward with the union on what was often referred to as whistleblower legislation or whistleblower policy, through discussions with the UNW and how we were moving forward, it’s changed its name. It’s now a Safe Disclosure Policy. It will be safe disclosure legislation. When I’m referring to Safe Disclosure Policy and legislation, it’s really the evolution of the whistleblower discussions that we’ve been having.
As I’ve indicated, I’m really excited to bring this good work that the union and department have done in collaboration, and both groups are very happy with the product. I’m looking forward to bringing that to committee for some discussion and implementing that on April 1st. Like I said, we’re going to let that run for a little while to see how it works, to see what the challenges are, to see what parts are good and what parts might need a little bit of tweaking before we move forward with the legislation, but I and my Ministerial colleagues are committed to getting this legislation done during the life of this government and I will continue to push that through.
Succession planning, there are experts within the Department of Human Resources who can provide advice and recommendations to individual departments, as well as individuals who are looking at moving through the public service, but one thing does need to happen from that. We need individual HR plans from individual departments, boards and agencies. They need to look at their operations and figure out what they’re going to do. Most departments, if not all departments, are currently working on human resource plans and most human resource plans actually include some succession planning information. Hopefully, we’ll see more human resource plans individualized to departments come as we move forward.
As far as changing the statistics, it’s the planning and recognition of the challenges that we face that’s going to help us change the statistics over time. The Regional Recruitment Strategy is going to help us address some of our shortfalls in the communities.
I was clearly listening to MLA Moses, as I’m sure my colleagues were, and I’m pretty sure I said it, as well, that I agree with pretty much everything the Member was saying. We have a lot of work to do and it’s not going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination. I look forward to the partnership with the Social Envelope Committee, with Government Operations committee, with EDI committee as we move forward trying to recognize and identify and find solutions to some of the challenges that we face.
Greening the workplace, the Member is not wrong. ENR is taking the lead charge on this and we are working with departments to facilitate creation of a green committee, but for more detail I am going to go to the deputy to talk about some of the specifics that are out there. ENR is taking the lead with government staff on many of those initiatives.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. We’ll go to Deputy Minister Bassi-Kellett.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the Minister pointed out, the Department of ENR is taking the corporate lead with a committee that’s set up with representatives of all the different departments. I believe 12 of the 14 representatives now work with ENR’s Green Team, which does provide best practices and knowledge across government of initiatives that are underway. Departments are doing a number of really interesting things. Clearly, the recent Winter Walk to Work Week that happened last week was something that ENR participated in on behalf of GNWT with a number of other departments. We had a lot of word of mouth out around the government with the public service to really take advantage of that, weather notwithstanding. There’s a lot of work going on with double-sided copying, as well, as the Member pointed out, that’s pretty much a given in most departments, as well as the various recycling programs that are underway that staff take ownership of themselves. The bottle drives, the cans, everything that goes on within the office, people are really working and setting that up within their teams themselves under the oversight of this overall government-wide Green Team.
Thank you, Ms. Bassi-Kellett. Moving on with questions we have Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a number of issues and comments in no particular order. The first one has to do with, and I think it’s referenced in the Minister’s opening remarks, and that’s the number of senior managers that are nearing retirement. This was something I think we talked about last year during business plans. I’d like to know from the Minister where the department is in assisting other departments in planning for the loss of our senior managers and that corporate knowledge that is going with them. I’m curious to know what percentage of our senior managers is going to be lost to us through retirement over the next five years.
With regard to persons with disabilities in the workforce, there was a survey done. The Minister didn’t really reference it, but I guess I would like to know whether or not we are improving in our percentage of PWDs who we have in our GNWT workforce or if we’re staying static. I’m hoping that we’re not going down.
I’m pleased to see that the Service Partnership Agreement has at least been completed with Health and Social Services and that we’ve got a pilot going on there. I’d like to know from the Minister when we’re going to expand beyond the pilot, how long this pilot will go on and when we will move on to other departments where service partnership agreements are required.
I don’t think it’s referenced in the Minister’s opening remarks, but I believe I heard somewhere that there will be a number of policy reviews within the department over this next year, and I’d like to know whether that policy review will include a review of the Affirmative Action Policy.
One of the things that we discussed, I think some time ago, was that each department is developing their own human resources plan. I presume that’s falling under the auspices of the Department of Human Resources to assist them and help them with that. I’d like to know from the Minister if he can advise us what departments have yet to complete their HR plan. If he has that information, that would be helpful. I think we were, maybe, halfway through the last time we talked about this.
One of the concerns that I think Members have and that I have certainly, grievances are a fact of life for the Human Resources department, but we have quite a few at any one time, from what I understand. I’d like to know from the Minister whether or not we are reducing the number of grievances that we have to deal with at any one time or whether that’s going up and if there is anything that the department is working on, if there is a plan that the department has to try and reduce the number of grievances. I know we can never get to zero but I would hope that there’s a concerted effort and there’s a focus to try and reduce the number of grievances that we have to deal with.
I’m really pleased to see that there are two regional duty to accommodate officer positions that are going to be instituted in this next budget year. I think that’s great. This is kind of a bit of a new focus, I think, for the department, so I would appreciate a comment from the Minister on whether or not the one officer that we have had has had an impact on the work that we need to do to accommodate people back into the workforce. Has it been a positive thing or do you see that it’s too early to make any kind of a judgment?
Lastly, I’m really happy to see that the Safe Disclosure Agreement with UNW has been finalized and I look forward to seeing that sort of be tested out. The Minister may have said, and I may have missed it, but I’m just wondering, in terms of legislation, what kind of a time frame there is on safe disclosure legislation. When will we expect that this legislation will come before the House?
That’s all I have.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t have statistics on the number of senior managers we expect are approaching retirement. I’m not actually sure if we have a concrete figure on that, but I will have the department go back and look and provide committee with anything that we might have. We do know, anecdotally, that we have a number of senior managers approaching retirement, which is one of the reasons the Associate Director/Regional Superintendent Program is a positive program that’s helping us develop people who are on the right path but maybe need a little bit more opportunity or experience before they would be able to enter those senior roles. Like I said before, we have six at any one time in that program, three complete and three go in on a rotating basis. We usually have six going at any one time. We think it’s a good program. I think we’ve seen some results. If you look at the deputies that we have today, some of them have, clearly, gone through the program and, I think, are performing quite well. They’re showing they have the skill and ability to perform at a senior level, including that of deputy head.
Persons with disabilities, the survey that went out we had 1,800 respondents; 6.4 percent indicated they are persons living with disabilities and are employees within the public service. That is a significant jump in the numbers that existed before. We think it’s fairly representative. We do still have work to be done to accommodate individuals where appropriate.
We have the duty to accommodate officer and I’m happy that you mentioned that duty to accommodate officer. This is an incredibly valuable position. It’s one of the reasons that we feel we need more duty to accommodate individuals to help us outside of Yellowknife and in the regional centres of Fort Smith and Inuvik. In 2011 and 2012, the individual helped to accommodate 20 permanent accommodations, 20 permanent placements. Fifteen are currently in process that the individual is working on. We have 50 employees on long-term disability requiring placements. A lot of work needs to be done. There are 106 cases requiring frequent follow ups. Just even when a person is accommodated it doesn’t end. There’s follow-up on-going, review, monitor. This is important and goes to some of the safe advantage stuff that we were talking about before. Sometimes the claim costs tend to be high because we haven’t been able to get them back into the workforce in a timely manner. These positions are making a huge difference for us and we’re very excited about the work they’ve done, we’re very excited about the possibilities, and we’re very excited about moving forward and getting these positions into the regional centres so that they can have a more timely response out there.
Safe disclosure legislation. I didn’t give a date specifically. We will have it done in the life of this Assembly. Right now, if I was to speculate, I imagine late in 2013-2014 we would be coming forward with an LP, but I ask for a little bit of patience because we really want to make sure that what we have done as far as the Safe Disclosure Policy is working and we’re going to work closely with the UNW on the implementation of the policy for UNW employees, and monitor it closely so that we can identify what parts might need tweaking, what parts may not need tweaking, what changes we have to make. We would like to make those changes in the legislation as we move forward. We don’t want to rush ahead and write legislation based on the policy and then find out later there are problems with the policy. We think this is a great opportunity to make sure we have legislation that is really good. So possibly late in 2013-14, definitely within the life of this government, but we would ask for a little bit of patience as we implement it. There is bound to be some growing pains; there often is. This is a new policy.
To date, there are four HR plans done. There are five underway, which means there are a number that aren’t been started at this point. With respect to grievances, I would like to go to the deputy minister for some specifics on grievances.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. We will go to Ms. Bassi-Kellett.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The grievance process is one that is, obviously, on-going with a number of cases at any given time. We find our labour relations team works very closely with the departments and with the Union of Northern Workers on this. We’ve had upwards of about 300 grievances at any given time heretofore, before we started a monthly case management process, where representatives of our labour relations group sit down with the UNW to have monthly case management meetings. We have been able to address a lot of the grievances that way, through a really hands-on, collaborative process. It has brought our average down now. We have it relatively consistent, around 200 grievances ongoing, at any given time. We are proud of that number. We think it has brought it down and we will continue to work towards bringing that down even more. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bassi-Kellett. Ms. Bisaro.
Mr. Chair, that’s all I have.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. We are moving on with questions, I have Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, would like to commend the department for being recognized as the top 100 employers, here in the Northwest Territories. That is quite the achievement.
I understand that staff or human resources is just one part of a system of the organization of the GNWT that we operate. I think staff and the workforce play a key role in the sole machine that operates here in the North.
I have a couple of comments. I would like to focus on a few specific questions. For the most part, in my mind, in terms of decentralization, in terms of seeing some of the shift from headquarters to regions and then down to communities. I am very interested in at least trying to understand, on behalf of my constituents, in terms of ensuring that it is done fairly timely, and, at the same time, very transparent, so we understand the process and we can have at least some input in those discussions and trying to realize some opportunities at least for some of the small communities.
What I am strongly concerned about is just the ratio of First Nation employees for northern indigenous people that live up here in the Northwest Territories. I understand that there are some policies to try and enhance the recruitment exercise of being able to hire more First Nations employees so that we have the workforce fairly reflective of the population that we have in the NWT. I understand there is the Affirmative Action Policy. I think there are a couple of incentive policies that are in place, including the Bilingual Policy in terms of trying to promote people to be bilingual in the official languages. I understand that, perhaps, there could be some placement on the importance of cultural need, things of this nature that have been done.
What immediate steps is the department considering to ensure that the workforce of the GNWT is reflective of the population?
In another instance, I am obviously concerned that despite having the bridge completed, operating for the next 50 years, we have an ice bridge work crew plus the ferry crew that have been laid off or they have been shifted. I would like to have an understanding of how the department has played or is playing a role in terms of providing support and counsel to these employees or past employees, whether there has been some discussion of reassignment, whether there’s been discussions with them in terms of severance pay, whether there has been at least some discussions in terms of, perhaps, repositioning or reclassifying some of the positions so that they can continue to work in their home communities and, at the same time, be productive in the workforce. That is my other question.
The other question is has there been some emphasis or initiatives in trying to enhance or at least have employees be more conscious of safety guidelines of trying to curb accidents and mishaps in the workplace. I would like to know whether the department is playing a hand in trying to enhance the fire department’s training. I know that fire departments, for the most part in small communities, are on a volunteer basis, but yet, at the same time, the focus seems to be right now to have them play a defensive role in terms of defensive tactics of working within communities and, at the same time, on building structures. There are some instances where there have been some fires along the highway. Whether HR has played a hand in terms of trying to enhance the training and preparing for the eventual reality that we come across an instance like that and they will be better prepared.
My last question is in terms of the effort towards decentralization eventually. What is most important is I understand that we are trying to enhance the workforce to be more reflective of the population of the NWT. This is really a critical question in terms of trying to prepare small communities. What is the department doing to make working in small communities attractive for existing local candidates but, at the same time, potential candidates that might want to move to small communities? What is HR doing to basically help the small communities to keep a workforce but, at the same time, make it attractive for people that perhaps might want to move from Toronto or Montreal to take up a position in the North, especially for small communities? I understand that there is no housing incentive and that housing is a high cost factor in small communities. Those are my questions that I had. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Minister Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Safety in the workplace, I already talked a bit about that and our duty to accommodate officers and working with WSCC, occupational health and safety committees in departments that are being put in. HR is helping by providing advice and guidance to each of the individual departments of the types of things that are needed to be done by occupational health and safety committees. We are trying to work with departments to create some flexibility around those, because we sometimes have buildings where there are multiple departments in it, and having them work together for building support and things like that. There are a lot of things being done around that front. There is training that we offer. We partner with WSCC, who provides a lot of training for us to help people recognize some of the challenges of safe workplaces.
Like I said before, we’ve had a bad claims history, but I think, for 2012, we will all be happy to see a significant reduction in our claims history. I don’t know what that means by way of fines. I am still pretty confident there will be a fine. I just hope, given our significant reduction in claims, we will see a smaller fine, but that will come from the WSCC. We will see how that pans out.
With respect to decentralization and devolution, the Department of Human Resources is providing technical and administrative support to departments that are working on decentralization and helping them address their affected employees, by way of an example. The lead on that is the Department of Executive on decentralization. They are out trying to figure out capacity in communities, where houses are, where office space exists, where we can flow some positions sooner rather than later, and what we’re going to have to do long term. HR is providing technical advice with respect to job descriptions, organizational design, job evaluation and how to address affected employees, and there’s a range of affected employees. There are GNWT employees who might be in Yellowknife and their job is decentralized. They become affected and we have to work with the employing department to address them.
We’ve also got a number of federal employees who will be coming over to the GNWT public service, and we have to make sure that that transition is fair and reasonable, and that those employees are protected as well. So we’re providing technical advice and administrative support on that.
You talked about fire department training and fire training for fires on the road. It’s my understanding that is actually the responsibility of ENR and is done by MACA. I don’t have any information on that, so you might want to ask ENR and MACA on that.
With respect to things that we’re doing to increase representation of Northerners in the workforce, particularly in small communities, I’ve talked about our regional recruitment plan. As I’ve indicated, that is going to be informed and helped along by the Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee who is going to provide us some advice on how to break down some of the barriers, like Mr. Menicoche was talking about earlier. We will have that in front of committee prior to the next round of business planning so that it can inform the business planning process.
There are a number of things that we’re doing, and we’re looking forward to working with committee on taking some of those initiatives forward and getting advice and some input from committee as we move forward.
Has there been discussion? I know right now we’re under fiscal restraint in terms of ensuring we control our revenues, but at the same time we control our expenditures. We’re trying to do more with less, so we’re at such a point it will probably make it necessary for us to cooperate and work together. There's more than likely cross-departmental initiatives to try to advance some major initiatives and do it so that it’s effective but at the same time it’s strategic.
One of the key things that I mentioned is just trying to ensure that we have a fairly reflective ratio of First Nation or northern indigenous workforce. Has the department considered working in partnership with regional governments to try to reach that reality and, at the same time, look at some long-range human resource strategies in terms of trying to acknowledge some of the existing initiatives that are out there with the federal government? Trying to at least work in partnership and trying to develop some concrete strategies. Mahsi.
A couple of things. We’ve put together some Aboriginal cultural awareness training programs that are available to new staff as they come into the GNWT. Also – and I’ve talked about this every opportunity I’ve had to get outside of Yellowknife and into the regional settings – we have a program where we’re willing to facilitate secondments either way with Aboriginal community governments. Where individuals who are working in the Aboriginal community government could come on to the GNWT, give them an opportunity to have some cross-training and learn a little bit more about different areas, but we can also send our employees there to some of the Aboriginal governments or the community governments. It’s an opportunity for them to learn a little bit more about different organizations and different perspectives. We are starting to see some uptake on that. I’m really happy to finally see that some people are approaching us and wanting to do these secondments.
We also are absolutely willing to advertise positions for Aboriginal governments across the Northwest Territories. Unfortunately, we haven’t had very much uptake on that. I keep referencing it and sending letters out to the different groups, letting them know that we’re willing to do that for them. We haven’t had as much uptake.
We want to work with our partners. We want to find solutions. The Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee is going to provide us with some sound advice on some of the challenges that we may have created within our system outside of Yellowknife in some of the smaller communities. Things like Mr. Menicoche mentioned previously.
So we’re trying to work on these issues. I take your point and I’m looking forward to working with committee on trying to address some of these issues. Any input that any Members have, we’re open to anything to help us find some solutions.
Right now, representation changes as employees come and go, but I think we’re about 37 percent Aboriginal; I think we’re… Sorry. Thirty-two percent Aboriginal, about… Yes, about 32, 33, 34 percent Aboriginal in the public service right now, which is significantly lower than the population. Interestingly enough, it’s pretty close to the workforce.
Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Next on my list is Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The Department of Human Resources is going to come into a lot of challenges. Most that I’m looking at is when the Devolution Agreement is signed and we start of our implementation of the devolution chapters and the focus on the decentralization of the government.
I want to ask the Minister of Human Resources with regard to the potential number of people coming in from the federal government to the GNWT, and the number of employees that we would have now because of the Devolution Agreement, and the big picture plan when they come to the North and how are we going to look at the numbers coming possibly into the North to the headquarters and then to the region and then to the communities. Is there a plan with his other colleagues to prepare for those potential employees, and what type of plans for human resources? We need to let the people know that these are some of the challenges we’re going to have. That’s the first one for me.
Is the Minister working on an overall, grandiose decentralization plan coupled with the devolution issues? How are we going to prepare the Sahtu or any other regions for the potential of moving positions into our regions and our communities? Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Abernethy.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The lead on dealing with the devolution is the Executive. There is a committee of deputy heads working with the lead deputy in the Executive to figure out what the organization is going to look like in the future, and what departments may exist, what departments may not exist, the roles and responsibilities of the individual departments. HR is providing technical advice on job description writing, organizational design structure, but it is being led by the Executive. We are providing solid HR advice and recommendations in that area.
When it comes to the number of positions, I think it’s over 300 positions that will be coming to the Northwest Territories. Speculation on how many individual people that might be, I’ve heard numbers as high as 170, but I think it’s a little premature to say for sure exactly how many employees will be coming over, because we don’t know who’s going to say yea and who’s going to say nay. But we need to be ready to bring employees in.
The Department of Human Resources has dealt with decentralized federal positions before. There are processes we have to go through, and through the devolution negotiations we’ve committed to protecting the employees that come over, to make sure that they’re not adversely affected by becoming employees of the Government of the Northwest Territories.
So once the Devolution Agreement is signed off and concluded, we’ll kick into high gear and try and process the individuals coming over. We have done a lot of initial research on steps that will need to be taken to protect those employees, without creating any undue or unfair systems within the Government of the Northwest Territories. We are providing technical expertise and we are facilitating the transfer of individuals. The design is being facilitated by the Executive on what the government is going to look for, and we are a partner in that.
