Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my right is the deputy minister of Human Resources, Sheila Bassi-Kellett; and to my left is the director of policy, Michelle Beard.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. Bassi-Kellett and Ms. Beard, welcome back to the House. Committee, we are on general comments, Department of HR. Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. If you recall, I was the last speaker on this matter, but I wanted to identify a concern that has been expressed to me on several occasions and that’s in regard to summer students. I understand with the facts before us that we’re trying to promote and advance opportunities for Northerners, and for First Nations in particular, to join the GNWT for jobs and career opportunities. It’s always been, I think, the wish and the encouragement as parents and as people of the North to promote education that’s of value in terms of bringing changes to the overall society.
So, given that, it’s been quite discouraging to see jobs that are concentrated in regional centres, or else in larger communities other than the small communities. I mean, I could cite at least one example of students that returned back to small communities, and of course, in small communities there are limited opportunities for employment, and if you do get a job, there are challenges that get in your way in terms of whether you have to pay rent because you’re living with your parents. That’s one example.
As a comment, if there’s anything that I could maybe leave the department with is if they are going to advance and make steps to ensure that we have opportunities for northern students and First Nations students to aspire to be GNWT employees, it’s got to start at the community level. For this year if we could aim to change the system so that at least there are ample job opportunities given to the students at the community level. I know it’s far away, now it’s February, we’re advancing pretty close to May when students return from their studies. I would like us to ensure that they take the steps of starting our career planning and providing opportunities for students so that eventually they become employees of the government. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. With that, we’ll go to Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the summer of 2013 the GNWT hired 280 students. The hiring of students is the same as the hiring of all GNWT employees using the Affirmative Action Policy, except that for the summer students we have better numbers than we do across the board for the permanent jobs. Over 50 percent of the students hired in the summertime were priority 1 candidates.
Currently the system works where the departments and agencies determined where they wish to place the summer students and, in fact, not in the hands of the Department of Human Resources, but each of the departments will be asked to hire as many students as possible, trying to get up and around 300 students for the summer, depending on how much room there would be in our PY budget to hire summer students. So, often the process is that they will try to match the summer student with the studies that they are in school for as close as possible or with actually in the relevant subject and relevant field that the student is studying in the South.
I recognize that the Member’s issue has been brought up in the past and that we can, as a department, make contact with all of the departments, advising them that they should be looking equally at the jobs outside of the major centres as they do inside of the major centres and try to match some of these students in the smaller communities as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Committee, if I could just make recommendations if we could maybe shorten our responses and our questions today so we can move the agenda a little bit quicker. Committee, again, we are in HR, we’re in general comments. Does committee agree that we can proceed with detail?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. We will skip section 3.7 in your main estimates book as we conclude items for consideration in the future. With that, I’ll ask you to turn to page 3-8, information item, infrastructure investment summery. Any questions?
Agreed.
Seeing none, 3-9, information item, active position summary. Any questions? Mr. Menicoche.
Just in light of our discussion about vacant positions, perhaps I’d just ask the Minister specifically the first section there under regional allocations. How many of those are real positions, Mr. Chair? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The active position summary here is what is funded through this process, the main estimates process. So these positions go into the main estimates as positions that the department would need to fill. So all of these would be funded and hopefully all filled and that’s the intention today.
Thank you very much. So, just in terms of the 118 of the regional allocation, how many of them are currently filled?
Thank you. For that detail I would ask that the deputy minister provide the response.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. Bassi-Kellett.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. The number of positions that are reflected in the 2014-15 Main Estimates demonstrate and indicate the number of active positions that we are seeking budgetary funding for through vote 1, compensation and benefits for 2014-15. Currently, at this point in time, we have been coordinating analysis of vacant positions across the GNWT as of October 31, 2013. At that point in time, the Department of Human Resources had 14 vacant positions that we were looking at being able to be staffed. At this point in time, eight of those 14 are filled either permanently or with casuals or transfer assignment employees that are in them. We have six positions that are vacant at this point in time and of those, one is in the regions and five are in Yellowknife. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ms. Bassi-Kellett. Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much. Okay, so out of the six positions, do they need to be filled and where exactly is the department, what jobs are they and does the department need those six or have they been flagged anywhere where they may be not needed? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Minister Beaulieu.
I’ll ask the deputy minister to respond to that.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. Bassi-Kellett.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Of the six vacant positions, we are actively seeking to staff at this point in time. They are very important for us in being able to maintain the levels of programs and services that we need to deliver across the NWT. The first position we’re working to staff is our advisor on French language services. Very important for us to be able to uphold the role that we have to play under the French Language Strategic Plan in ensuring that we’re able to provide French language services where we have an active offer as a government to people of the NWT to be able to receive services in French.
The second position we have is a benefits officer and medical travel in Behchoko, and that’s one we’ve been struggling to fill for a while. We are providing some support from our headquarters office for that work at this time.
The third is a compensation analysis and design officer. It’s very important for some of the preparatory work that we do around preparations for collective bargaining and for tracking our compensation analysis as part of our labour relations work.
The fourth is a help desk supervisor position. We’re really working to support and enhance the level of support we’re able to give to employees through our help desk, which is where employees are able to call when they have any questions on their specific pay, benefits or terms of employment.
The fifth one that we’re working to staff is an intern of a benefits officer. We’re big believers in internships to be able to give young Northerners who have graduated recently with work opportunities, and we do know there are number of interns that come with general administration and business degrees and diplomas where this would be, potentially, a very good fit.
The sixth position we’re looking to staff imminently is a policy analyst position, which we’ve been working on for some time.
Thank you, Ms. Bassi-Kellett. Mr. Menicoche.
I noticed the increase of seven positions over last year, and it looks like all seven went to Yellowknife. Can the Minister explain why Yellowknife got seven more positions this coming year?
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Minister Beaulieu.
Five of the positions were devolution positions being added to a department. Human Resources provides, as the House knows, a service to all of the departments, and the increase of the positions as a result of devolution meant that we hired in strategic human resources a manager, a labour relations advisor, and three people in management and recruitment services, client service and two human resource officers. Those were five positions. Also, one position was transferred from the Department of Finance, financial shared services, as a senior financial planning budget analyst also here in Yellowknife, and then one position was created through internal reallocation of resources of corporate affairs.
There will definitely be an increase in the workload for Human Resources staff and headquarters, I guess. Why is there not an increase in the workload in the regions? Why are they all posted here? Also, because of increasing the workload for the need for devolution, are these positions being paid for from the devolution funds or are they all just new money from the government?
For further detail, I’ll ask the deputy minister.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. Bassi-Kellett.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Yes, the location of the new positions, we looked very hard and very long of where we locate the new positions, and what we are doing here is we are reflecting, as a service provider for other departments when it comes to hiring, when it comes to managing the terms of employment, and when it comes to ensuring a workable, functional organizational design. We needed to establish these five new positions as part of devolution. With a number of the positions coming to Yellowknife, because that’s the commitment that was made in the Devolution Final Agreement, to keep positions where they were located, we then had to respond to be able to support positions with the staffing that will need to go on now and in the future where the new positions are located elsewhere in the public service.
Thank you, Ms. Bassi-Kellett. Committee, we are on page 3-9, Human Resources, information item, active position summary. Any questions? Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to be sure, I’m not sure that this information was included, but in addition to these active positions, are there unreported inactive positions and if so and they’re not funded, is the intent to delete those so that we’re not having to continue to manage those empty and apparently nebulous positions?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. As a government, we’re going through the process of responding to the overall vacancy positions, dormant positions and the positions that have been identified in the House. What we’re presenting here are the main estimates and the changes that we’re going from one main estimate to the other main estimate and not which PYs are being reported through PeopleSoft. What we are providing to the Members as the overall from the government was to indicate and respond to the questions of the dormant positions, positions to be filled, and then a full report that we are going to be responding to. I did not come with the detailed report here. Essentially, coming here with the main estimates and what we are requesting, but this is separate from the information that has been requested that we will respond to, I think, within the next day or two.
Thank you for that, Minister. If we have questions with the information that’s been provided by the department, is this confidential information or are we allowed to ask questions to clarify what the situation is?
I think it would be my preference or the department’s preference if we would. We have a meeting scheduled, I believe, for 7:30 tomorrow to talk about the report we have provided to the Members, and that we would answer the questions on that specific report that doesn’t really correlate with the business plan that we are presenting here today.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Moving on with questions on activity 3-9, I have Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess I’ll follow along with some of the questions that my colleagues have asked. I’d like to ask a question about the devolution positions and, I guess, the number of positions that were out in the regions and, I guess, the lack of support for HR in the regions. I mean, all the positions have been added to the headquarters. Did we not deem that Inuvik was getting a good quantity of these positions and probably going to need some assistance with some of those positions as well as multiple communities in the South Slave. Would there not have been some sort of advantage to putting an additional position into the South Slave and potentially Inuvik to assist with some of the HR demands that those people are going to see from devolution?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will ask the deputy minister to respond to that specific question.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. Bassi-Kellett.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. When we started to look at the additional workload and file load for the Department of Human Resources front-line staff in supporting the additional positions that are included moving forward in the 2014-15 Main Estimates as a result of devolution and the organizational design that’s gotten underway, we took a very conservative approach on this. We ideally would have liked to have requested more positions. We were very mindful, however, that this was not an exercise in trying to expand our scope or expand our footprint.
We’re very mindful that the bulk of the new positions that are coming, a significant number are spread throughout the regions. I believe that there’s about 50 directly related devolution positions in the regions, plus another 50 positions that are going into the regions, as well, which is very good. We will look at the support that we need to provide for any of the staffing actions around that, at least initially from our devolution team, which is made up of a client service manager and two human resource officers outside of Yellowknife.
Again, with so many of the positions that are vacant being in Yellowknife, that’s where we ended up putting these positions to start with. It doesn’t mean that we won’t be looking, in the future, for opportunities as they arise, as we need to respond to supporting departments where they have the terms of most staffing and terms of employment work underway. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ms. Bassi-Kellett. Mr. Bouchard.
I guess I’m struggling with that issue, especially on a day like today when I made a Member’s statement on decentralization and the plan that we have going forward. I guess there are quite a few jobs going out into the regions through devolution, and to add seven more to Yellowknife, I understand some of them were through devolution but a couple were actually through an option that we had. I guess this is a priority of the Assembly to do decentralization and I’d like us to consider that, I guess.
The other area of concern that I have, and it’s more of a question, I think, we talked about the details of the vacancies that we’ve been asking more and more information on. We’ve been getting more of that and we’re going to get more options to that.
The Minister indicated he didn’t want to comment on that, but I think we need to get some of that information sooner than later, because this is a budget issue. I understand that the department is gathering that information with all the different departments. But for the Department of HR not wanting to discuss that at this budget time, which we know this is a priority, I think we need to look at all those options. We need to look at where those positions are filled, especially the ones that are funded. We have some vacant positions that are funded and inactive. There are quite a few that we need to look at in this budget process before I think we can move forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. I’ll take that as more of a comment. I didn’t quite hear a question in there. With that, committee, we are on page 3-9, Human Resources, information item, active position summary. Any questions? Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Page 3-11, Human Resources, activity summary, directorate, operations expenditure summary, $3.817 million. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a question here with regards to the advertising strategy that the department has adopted within the last six months or so. I talked about this the other day and asked some questions of the Minister, but one of the things that concerns me particularly, and I’d like to bring it up again, is this need for an e-mail address in order to apply for a job with the GNWT.
I’d like to know from the Minister, he’s mentioned that they’ve made some adjustments; they’ve changed a few things so that basically people will be able to apply. So, I have no computer, I don’t have access to a computer. How am I going to apply for a job with GNWT if I don’t have an e-mail address? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Beaulieu.
