That’s, I guess, promising. I’m hoping to see some savings in the overtime area. For all the GNWT, time efficiency is what we’re looking for.
In previous information and in the vein of HR strategy involving information systems, there was supposed to be an ePerformance project that was supposed to be completed in this fiscal year. Can the Minister indicate to me if this ePerformance project is one schedule to be completed in this fiscal year? Thank you.
I don’t think that’s correct. The program was intended to start in ’12-13 and straddle into ’13-14. That was capital that we did in October for the upcoming fiscal year, not the current fiscal year.
Thank you. Mr. Dolynny, anything further? Thanks, Mr. Dolynny. We are on page 3-17, Human Resources, activity summary, operations expenditure summary, $6.774 million. Are we agreed?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Page 3-18, Human Resources, information item, Human Resource Strategy and Policy, active positions. Any questions?
Agreed.
Thank you. Committee, we’ll move on to page 3-21, Human Resources, activity summary, management and recruitment services, operations expenditure summary, $4.056 million. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to follow up a little bit here. MLAs, of course, are fearless when it comes to telling people how to do their jobs.
I’m just wondering, in terms of recruitment, it’s often a tough experience for somebody going into a community where the culture might be quite different for them, and they don’t know anybody and so on. It’s obviously challenging. What do we do in terms of helping them with housing, helping get their kids enrolled, maybe checking in with them one month after they get there and another three months later to see what their issues are in the community? Is there a role for HR here? I realize this would all take some commitment, but I’m just wondering, are we exploring those opportunities to help people and support our recruitment services for communities. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Abernethy.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Right now that’s something that our client service officers do, actually, through the hiring process. When individuals come in, we try to focus and guide them to the community leadership, who can answer some of those questions; you know, identify housing that may be available. Could more be done? Probably. I would say yes. But right now our client service officers are working with communities and individuals to get them the information they need to find the resources they desire.
I appreciate the Minister’s comments there. I don’t have anything specific here, but I imagine the Minister knows what I’m talking about and could try and get his finger on the pulse when he’s in communities, or his staff are in communities and so on. So it might be interesting to develop a bit of a sense there and see if there’s an opportunity for helping out in that front and letting us know what his impressions are. Thank you.
To some degree, some of the employing departments are doing that, where the people are going to work, their employer, their supervisor, are introducing them in communities.
We do have some orientation programs that are available as well. But I’ll certainly ask that question. I’ll have my department talk to some regional staff about what they think is necessary. In Yellowknife we’ve had a group approach us who is interested in doing kind of a Welcome Wagon program to introduce people to the community. I think that might be kind of what you’re referring to but in the community sense. It’s something I’d like to learn a little bit more about and have some more conversation. I’ll direct the department to have some conversations in that area.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. Bromley, anything further?
Nothing further. I don’t seem to know what employees’ experiences and issues are, but the Minister can probably find that out fairly easily and then focus on those areas. But nothing further. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. We’re on page 3-21, Human Resources, activity summary, management and recruitment services, operations expenditure summary, $4.56 million. Are we agreed?
Agreed.
Thank you. Committee, we’ll move to page 3-22, Human Resources, information item, management and recruitment services, active positions. Any questions?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. We move to page 3-25, Human Resources, activity summary, corporate human resources, operations expenditure summary, $9.163 million.
Agreed.
Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Is this the activity within which the WSCC is controlled? Would workplace safety with WSCC be considered in this activity?
Mr. Bromley, I’ll go to Minister Abernethy for clarification on that question.
Yes, Madam Chair, this is the section that we work on some of the policies and try to encourage the departments to utilize the policies that have been developed.
On the workplace safety aspect, I know we’ve got the new policy. The Minister mentioned we’ve got occupational health and safety committees popping up all over the place. I missed whether we heard is it a requirement. Is it every department must have one, every division must have one? I’m wondering what the requirement is there and what the monitoring is revealing in terms of getting those established. Do they all need to be established within a year, and are we 50 percent there? What’s our status on that front? Thank you.
They are a requirement. Not every worksite has one yet or department has them yet, but they are required to have them and they are getting established.
There’s some overlap. We’ve got a department requirement but we’ve also got a worksite requirement. So there is some overlap with some of those committees. It gets a little complicated at times. But like I said, we’ve got the terms of reference that the individual committees can use to help develop their own and expedite that process. So we continue to work at the deputy head level with the departments, encouraging them to get this done, and at the ministerial level as well.
Thanks for that information. I assume that has to be done, sort of, this fiscal year. I don’t know where we’re at in terms of getting all the entities up and running of the number that we have, but I’d appreciate that information. So any more details before I ask my last one here. Thanks.
Madam Chair, in October/November we pulled reps from across the Territories together to give them some training on what expectations there are, providing them with the terms of reference so they can go back to their committees and do some work.
As far as which departments don’t have them yet, I don’t know off the top of my head. But I’d be happy to go back and see if we can get that information and provide it to you in committee.
Thanks again for that information. I guess I would at least ask that the Minister check in with Justice and Health and Social Services, and make sure they’re up and running right away.
There’s been a great concern about WSCC rates. Again, I don’t have the terminology; the Minister will know what I’m talking about. There are significant increases for our businesses and that’s a big concern. I’m wondering, what can we do about that. What is the Minister doing about that?
I have collected some information. I realize WSCC has spent a lot of money on legal fees and so on. I know with the Giant thing, it was in the tens of millions of dollars. I just want to know that what we’re charging our businesses is really related to what they are experiencing or engendering in terms of cost. It’s not fair to ask them to shoulder costs that should be shouldered by somebody else. If they are GNWT costs, we shouldn’t be asking our businesses to pay for those costs, obviously.
So what’s the situation from the Minister’s perspective and what are we doing to address this rather alarming jump in personnel rates that have been charged by WSCC? Thank you.
Honestly, Madam Chair, the Member is asking the wrong Minister. The Member should be asking the Minister responsible for the WSCC. We, as an employer, share the same concerns. Last year our rate was, I think, 67 cents or something like that. This year we’ve had a significant increase in the rate as all employers have. Last year, as an example, we paid $2.3 million in premiums is really what they are. They are really like an insurance premium. We paid $2.3 million in insurance premium. The WSCC paid out $1.1 million in claims and on top of that we paid just over $600,000 in penalties. So in total we paid almost $3 million and there’s $1 million that went back to compensate our employees.
The WSCC, from my understanding – once again it might be best to ask the Minister responsible for the WSCC – has a process where they review their bank accounts and they have actuaries come in and they dig through their books to see what kind of money they have available, and based on what’s in their account, they determine a rate schedule/rate fee. We, as with all employers, don’t really have input into the rate schedules or the rate fees. We can say we think it’s too high, as I think many Members and many businesses have said, but as far as having an ability to impact their rates, we don’t have a voice there. At the end of the day, we pay our premiums, they’re like insurance premiums, and we had a million dollars' worth of benefit out of $3 million in fees and penalties.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. Bromley, your time is up. I will put you back on the list if need be. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to continue on the same line of questioning as my colleague from Weledeh. This government has been known to have a very poor track record in the filing of claims for WSCC. Maybe if the Minister can elude as to how many penalties have been in the late filing in such claims in the last year.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Minister.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I think definition of poor record is maybe not completely accurate. We have had some late filings. In 2009 there were 18 late filings; in 2010, there were 11 late filings; in 2011 – actually this might be better if I just provide just a touch more information. In 2009 there were 293 claims, 18 of them were late. In 2010 there were 343 claims, 11 of them were late. In 2011 there were 378 claims, 23 of them were late. In 2012 there were 279 claims; nine of them were late. So we’ve had a total of 61 late claims in the last four years and the total cost on late penalties was $56,000. There’s a wide range of reasons why a claim might be late. In shift work, if someone worked on a Friday and they don’t return to a shift until Tuesday, technically they would be late in filing.
So, late penalties are unfortunate. We think we can work with our employers and employees to try to reduce that. We insist that our employees file and we will work with them to try to reduce that number, but I don’t think 61 in four years out of 1,293 claims is an indication of excessive late fines or late submissions.
The Minister is correct; this is a cascade approach. I think the first fine, $250; second fine, $400; and it’s a $1,000 fine for every claim thereafter. That’s according to WSCC guidelines.
I beg to differ, Madam Chair. I think $56,000 is $56,000. I’m sure anyone who said $56,000 is on the floor over there, don’t worry about it, it’s a small number... I believe it’s a large number. More importantly, the fact that it won’t go away because, as we continue, even with one more claim tomorrow, that’s another thousand bucks. It will just continue like this and snowball until such time as we go to zero and get that reset, but that’s something that’s going to be ongoing.
I guess my question, Madam Chair, is I think it’s significant enough. Why are we submitting late? Do we not have the mechanism? Are we not providing the tools, the rationale for the employees to say if you are injured, you have 72 hours, please contact person X? Do we have those tools or measures to allow that to happen to reduce that amount because it does affect the budget at the end of the day? Thank you, Madam Chair.
Obviously, we don’t want to see any late submissions. That’s not our desire. We’d obviously like to save the $56,000. There are some challenges that we face and there are times when late submissions do occur. Sometimes there are time delays when an incident occurred and when the employee reported the occurrence to the supervisor. But as soon as the supervisor becomes aware, you get them to submit a form. There have been delays between when an incident occurred and when an employee sought medical attention. They may not have thought they were injured or that they needed attention. Then the condition or the injury got larger or more obvious later on.
There were situations where employees and their supervisors were not aware that there was a requirement to report all workplace incidents, and this is something we are trying to deal with and we’re doing it through the workplace occupational health and safety committees, making sure employees are aware that every and all injuries must be reported. We don’t want this to be an excuse. We think we can work on this and we are working on that one.
There was a situation where there was an understanding between an employee and a supervisor on the process to be used to submit required WSCC forms. This is one, again, an area we can work with our occupational health and safety committees to make sure they are providing the accurate information to supervisors and employees. So we want this to go away. We want this number to drop, and hopefully we will see some results on that as we continue to move forward and help educate our staff and our managers, senior managers, on the requirements for reporting across the Northwest Territories.
It’s promising to hear we are going to be dealing with this. As I said earlier, $1,000 penalties that we claim we are going to look at in the year to come or two years to come will add up with time.
I want to ask a question in line with what the Member for Weledeh started to ask about rates. Currently, the Government of the NWT pays a 79 cent per 100 dollar rate. There has been discussion and debate out there whether or not that rate is relatively too low given our claims growth, our claims experience, our penalties and the fact that the business communities have been supplementing that so-called claims growth on the backs of businesses.
Now, I don’t expect the Minister to comment on the setup. That’s something for the other Minister, and I agree those are questions for WSCC in the future. But the point of my questions, Madam Chair, is we have a number of – I will use the term loosely – very poor performing departments, as the Minister indicated, we’ve got opportunity to improve. If we looked at comparing those very same departments in the private sector, our rate, our WSCC rate, would be well within the two or three dollars per $100. Yet, we couch those departments and wrap those departments, so to speak, with other departments that have zero claims, as the Minister indicated – congratulations – but we are the benefactors of a relatively low rate. Vis-à-vis, the rest of the business world and the business community, I believe, is very upset.
Even though we did get a maximum 20 percent increase from 66 cents to 79 cents, are we paying our fair share? Is this government paying their fair share, is an extremely valid question, one in which we’ve asked many times here in the House before, and I will ask that question to the Minister. Given our claims growth, given our penalties, given everything that we’ve talked about today in WSCC opportunity, does $0.79 equate to what would be deemed what we’d see in the private sector for equivalent performance?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. I’m not sure this is a question for this Minister, but I’ll go to Mr. Abernethy for a response.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I don’t think it is a question for this Minister. We pay what we are required to pay under the schedule that was established by the WSCC. If they change the schedule, we’ll pay what we’re asked to pay.
We pay a significant amount of money. Last year we paid $2.3 million. This year, at 79 percent, we’re going to pay 20 percent more than $2.3 million. So we’re going to be approaching $3 million just on our fees.
We already know that for 2012 our claims history has gone down noticeably. Last year when we paid $2.3 million, they paid out $1 million. I would say that we’re not costing them significantly. Between what we pay and what we got charged in fines, we’re significantly ahead of what they paid out, but at the end of the day, we don’t set the rates. It’s the WSCC that sets the rates. I would say the Member should be talking to the Minister responsible for the WSCC on how they determine the rates, how they calculate what different organizations and businesses must pay, how they do that, because, quite frankly, that’s out of the bailiwick of this particular department.
I will take the advice of the Minister and I will bring the appropriate question to the Minister responsible for WSCC at a future time during the budget process.
My last question in the same relationship to the issues of claims growth and safety, the Minister has talked today about numerous tools and resources that the department is working on and everything. Just so that we’re very clear and understand all the variety of resources out there for our employees to have access to, could the Minister provide to this House all the tools and resources that this division is developing to support the accountability of employer and workplace health and safety?
I have provided that information to committee once before and I actually listed off the list of tools that we have developed and/or are working on, but I’m happy to provide it in writing to the Member and committee if they so choose or desire.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Dolynny has no further questions. Mr. Moses, do you have a question?
Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that we report progress.
---Defeated
Mr. Moses, do you have a further question?
Yes, I’ll move on to this question here then. In the opening comments I’ll refer to some of the discussions that we had with the Minister and the department, but he says that one of his focuses on his actions for 2013-2014 is in recruitment, development and advancement of Aboriginal employees. I also mentioned that it should be focused on northern indigenous employees as well.
When I look at the program delivery details, there is a total cost of $614,000 decrease from last year in the three areas of Maximizing Northern Employment, human resource planning and development, and staff retention, which we always have issues with. Can the Minister give us a description of why there is a decrease in there when it’s one of his priorities, and how does he think that’s going to affect us moving forward for retention and recruiting our staff?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Under the Maximizing Northern Employment, the total budget isn’t actually changing, where it’s located is changing. We have removed or, rather, transferred some of the health recruitment positions that were in the Department of Human Resources to the Department of Health and Social Services, and some of the Maximizing Northern Employment dollars go with those positions and those particular responsibilities because they were health-dedicated funding right from the beginning.
The HR planning developments and staff retention dollars, staff retention is a slight reduction but some of the HR planning development resulting from some of the reorganization in the department we’ve created a stand-alone labour relations unit that is taking some of the dollars and moving it around. At the end of the day, there isn’t a significant reduction, but the Maximizing Northern Employment to the Government of the Northwest Territories has not changed.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Moses, nothing further? Page 3-25, Human Resources, activity summary, corporate human resources, operations expenditure summary, $9.163 million. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Madam Chair. With pleasure, I would like to weigh into this discussion a little bit. The opportunity before us here really comes down to something simple, which is one of the challenges about coordination. Through our corporate focus here, who is going to take charge of some of these WSCC fines and coordination and, certainly, safety? Wouldn’t this now be the time for the department to say we’ll approach the Premier and Cabinet to find a coordinating role and this could be the opportunity? Clearly, we’re hearing several Members, I was glad to hear Mr. Bromley speak up to that issue earlier today and I want to give him credit for that. Fundamentally, what’s being missed here is a coordinating role and all I’m hearing is that it’s somebody else’s problem. What is the Minister willing to do today on this particular issue?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Abernethy.
