Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up to my colleague, Mr. Hawkins from Yellowknife Centre, his questions to the Premier today on direct appointments. Recently I put in a request to research asking for a department-by-department count of recent, in the last year, direct appointments. We talk about the loss of the population in the Northwest Territories, about our students who are born and raised, educated in and after they’ve lived here, going south. We have medical doctors who have gone from the Northwest Territories, been trained, and could not beat their way through the bureaucratic red tape to get a job in the public service in the Northwest Territories. I can tell you of case after case after case.
I think we should be using the direct appointment tool more. I think that if there are priority 1 and priority 2 hire candidates that are looking at getting to work in our public service, they get vetted by this Cabinet. If we don’t trust this Cabinet to vet those direct appointments, we’ve got a bigger problem than direct appointments.
I am sick and tired of hearing of the children and the people who have come here and who have been born and raised here, who have invested their life in building the North, and their kids cannot get jobs in the public service of this government.
I’d like to ask the Premier if he will expand on the direct appointment policy, which is decided on by this elite group here across the floor, and make sure that more of our Northerners get to work in our public service and they do not go south so our population continues to decline.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m glad to hear the question from a Member that understands the challenge that we’re facing. We have set ourselves a goal of increasing our population by 2,000 within five years, and in order to do that we have to have a better process than we have now. Since we went south, we went public, we’ve had a lot of e-mails, tons of e-mails from people that want to come and work here, and we are faced with a process that’s very cumbersome and we need to find a way to improve it. One of the best ways to do it is to increase our emphasis on direct appointments.
I think we need to be unapologetic and absolutely unabashed about getting northern people, priority 1 and priority 2 candidates to work in our public service, and just to confirm, for the record, I’d like to ask the Premier to confirm for the public that this is a process which is vetted by more than one person. If people are worried about people picking, as Mr. Hawkins said, you know, family members or… Hey, you know what? What’s wrong with family members, you know? I mean, as a parent, as a grandparent, do you think I don’t speak for a whole lot of people in the Northwest Territories who want their kids and their grandkids to live in this territory, and not ship them, export them south somewhere else to work? Let me tell you, there are a lot of people out there. I hear from them all the time.
Will the Premier confirm for this House that in fact that this is a process which is fair and aboveboard?
I would just like to confirm for the Members that between January 1st and December 31, 2013, there were 1,605 public service appointments. One hundred three of these, or 6.4 percent, were by direct appointment. Affirmative action candidates make up 67 percent of direct appointments in 2013. Graduate nurses, social workers, interns and teachers constitute 15 percent of all direct appointments.
As the Member indicates, direct appointments are only one tool. It is a very rigorous process it goes through. All of our deputy ministers have been delegated staffing authority and in order to get a direct appointment, you have to have it supported by a Minister and it goes through Cabinet. For someone like myself, who has a lot of relatives, it makes it very difficult because they have to declare a conflict of interest whenever that happens. So it is a very good process. It is one that is based on fairness and merit and we will continue to use it. I agree we need to expand it if we are going to meet our targets. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Short, final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are at an exciting time in the evolution of the Northwest Territories on the eve of devolution and taking on more power, and for those of us that are out there somewhere, we need to bring our people home to help us build and continue to evolve as a territory and build this territory.
I don’t really have anything else to say, but thanks for the opportunity for this rant and I thank the Premier for his answers. Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
