Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we all know, summer students have been returning to the Northwest Territories and certainly the summer student hiring window is very short. Many of the summer students strive and work as hard as they can to get an opportunity so they can bank enough money so that when they go back to the school in the fall they’ll have enough funds to get them through the year without any hiccups. But, Mr. Speaker, a parent brought forward a concern to me the other day and they were concerned about how the hiring process goes for summer students. In short, they said that they have found out that summer students are sometimes set aside for casuals. So in other words, the list goes from hiring a P1 summer student over to the casual list and they go to the P1 casuals and back to the summer student list, the P2s, then back to the casual list of P2s, and so on all the way down to P3 from thereon.
Mr. Speaker, the concern is quite simply this: why aren’t summer students put as a hiring priority by this government to ensure that they have the best opportunity to make some money so when they return to school they’ll be put on the best foot forward as we can certainly hope for them? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Summer students are given that priority. Thank you.
Thank you. Well, I’ve been to the Minister’s office and it’s the process as I described before just earlier here today. So maybe the Minister can clarify for the record that summer students hired in the priority 1, 2 and 3 are priority over casuals whether they’re P1s, P2s or P3s. Thank you.
Thank you. P1 and P2 summer students are a priority. We then go to aboriginal casuals and then we go to P3s. There’s really no issue here because every summer there is less than a 5 percent likelihood of an aboriginal casual employee being hired between the summer because we do give direction that all departments should be hiring summer students. Thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate the Minister for clearing that up on the record, especially because of the confusion both brought forward to me by the parent as well as the information I received from the department. Mr. Speaker, would the Minister commit to this House that he’ll make sure that all departments are clear on the hiring process to make sure that we follow the priority process he described here today to make sure we give our P1 and P2 summer students the best chance at getting a job? We want to make sure it’s clear to these departments. Thank you.
Thank you. The Department of Human Resources endeavour to make sure exactly that happened. We have Human Resources staff meet with all departmental staff on a regular basis to review their requirements for summer student hiring, and every department is aware of the process and also the priorities for hiring students. We will be continuing to monitor the summer student hiring as we go forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I didn’t hear the Minister would make sure that he sent out an e-mail or an information blast to departments who do manage this file. I mean, the point I’m trying to make is the information I got even from his department seems confusing and perhaps wrong, and he’s cleared it up for the record and I appreciate that. I just want to make sure that that information gets out to all the departments to make sure they’re hiring in the same manner the Minister has described today, because if that confusion is out there, people will be missing opportunities that they rightly deserve. Thank you.
Thank you. We have sent an e-mail to every department, we’ve sent it to every Cabinet Minister and we’ve sent it to every MLA. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
