Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister responsible for HR. As far as HR plans go, Brilliant North 20/20 is a pretty good document, in my opinion. It goes a long way to increasing the representation of persons living with disabilities in the GNWT public service. But as outlined in my example earlier today, clearly not all department boards and agencies are supporting the government direction on hiring persons with disabilities; in particular, accommodating those individuals. So I’m wondering if the Minister could tell me what he and his department are doing to ensure that everybody who is participating in a staffing action understands the policies and procedures related to accommodating persons with disabilities and increasing the representation of persons with disabilities in the GNWT workforce. Minister of HR.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can assure the Member that all departments are committed to increasing the representation of persons with disabilities in the territorial public service. 20/20: A Brilliant North public service strategic plan, which government developed with all departments, makes it a priority to increase the representation of persons with disabilities in the territorial public service.
Now our GNWT employability working group, as the Member indicated, in 2009 we invited the Yukon workplace diversity office to come and talk to us about best practices and we learned a lot from that and it is our objective to become something similar.
Now HR is working with all departments to establish human resource plans so that we can begin to work to increase our percentages. Right now it’s 0.5 percent of persons with disabilities working in our government and we’re going to start working to increase it to 0.8 percent, which will get us to having a representative public service. Thank you.
Thank you, and I appreciate that. I’ve read all that in the Brilliant North 20/20, which, like I said, I think is a good document. What I’m more interested in right now is already we’re including the reference on job ads to indicate that persons with disabilities should identify their disability and indicate that they need to be accommodated. We’ve also got this great diversity officer that this young man in question actually contacted and got information on how to apply, what to do, what to indicate in his cover letter, and he applied on the job at Stanton. At the end of the day, after he passed the interview, after he screened in, passed the interview, had good references, he was told by Stanton that you’re not getting the job because we won’t accommodate your need.
This is a job pushing a cart in a hospital, Mr. Speaker. So I’m curious what is HR going to do so that in the future this type of thing doesn’t happen again. What we want to make sure is that departments are abiding by our rules. So how do we as a department... How does HR enforce the rules? How are we going to make sure that people understand and implement them as intended? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We are working with all departments to establish the disability framework so that all departments will be able to follow this framework to increase our representation. Right now our focus is on employability, increasing the education and awareness of all departments with regard to dealing with persons with disabilities in the workplace with the sensitivity training. We expect that we will go a long ways to increasing the numbers of persons with disabilities in the workforce. Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, I appreciate the Minister’s response, but I come back to this example. The person was told that they weren’t getting the job after they passed and the references were good and they were told that Stanton would not accommodate this person’s disability. So we know it’s happening. Does the department have any recourse where a department clearly isn’t abiding by the rules? Does the department have any recourse or ability to make sure that departments do adhere to the policies and procedures of this government? Thank you.
Thank you. We have established a GNWT Advisory Committee on Employability that’s making its recommendations to the government so that we can increase the representation of persons with disabilities. What we’re trying to do is strengthen our relationship with not only our government, but with non-government organizations, and the Union of Northern Workers and other unions so that we can increase our percentage of persons with disabilities in the workforce. Right now we’re working on developing a communications strategy that will go out to all people in the Northwest Territories and advance to a disability survey that was developed by what we call GACE, the GNWT Advisory Committee on Employability. We have developed a disability awareness training module that we’ll be sending out an RFP very soon to finalize that so we can start awareness training in the near future, and we are also dealing with the recommendation to revise the definition of disabilities in our Affirmative Action Policy. So that will give us greater awareness and will give us more ability to deal with different departments when it comes to employability. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and once again I appreciate the Minister’s response. I know a lot of good work is done, but we’ve still got this situation where it seems to me that a department could ignore all the good work that the Department of Human Resources is doing in this respect if they choose not to accommodate, they just choose not to accommodate and they don’t hire, but we have a policy that says we’re going to accommodate. So what action are we going to take to make sure the departments actually live up to the policies and procedures that we have? What is the department going to do when those departments choose to ignore HR? HR is the gatekeeper, Mr. Speaker. What’s HR going to do to make sure that these departments who are choosing to ignore, choose to ignore? Also, what mechanism exists for a person who applies on a job like this when there is no appeal process because nobody filled the job? Ultimately, this job wasn’t filled by anybody. There’s no appeal mechanism for the person to say hey, I was discriminated against, what’s my recourse? To the Minister, thank you.
This is a process that will not happen overnight. As to what I’ve outlined, it will allow employees with disabilities to self-identify. We also have to work with all departments so that we can match people with jobs. We see this as a role of the diversity office and all of HR working in conjunction with the departments. As we go along we will identify jobs and people and do the matching so that we can increase our representation.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
