Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Sergeant-at-Arms, would you escort the witnesses into the House. Thank you.
Minister Abernethy, could you introduce your witnesses to the House, please.
Yes, Madam Chair. With me today are Sheila Bassi-Kellet on my right, the deputy minister of Human Resources, and on my left, the director of human resource strategy and policy, Michelle Beard.
Thank you. Committee, I now open the floor to general comments on the Department of Human Resources. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to say to the Minister comments to his staff and his department. I really wanted to express my appreciation for the Minister and staff coming to the Sahtu and visiting us in the Sahtu and coming to all of the communities. I know you split your tour with the Minister of Health and Social Services portions, but I appreciate the two Ministers making it into the Sahtu region and listening to the people and seeing things first-hand as to how we operate and how we deal with things and what some of the challenges are that we have in our smaller communities with the Government of the Northwest Territories.
One thing I would like to say to the Minister is that I appreciated your consistent message of the government’s Secondment Program policy, and some of the leaders were hearing for the first time how we could get involved with the secondment of GNWT employees or we lend you our employees for training because of funding. It is very challenging in terms of can we pay them enough. So that was good for me to talk to the chiefs after and say, well, you didn’t really quite understand it or maybe because they were so busy they didn’t really get to know it. It is something that you consistently said to the people in the Sahtu communities about this program. I think once you say it enough and keep saying it, that it is starting to stick. I do want to say that to the Minister. I appreciate him coming to the Sahtu.
I do want to say that with the Human Resources, the Minister is embarking on a new trail on how do we put together a plan that respects the different diverse cultures in the Northwest Territories, that the government senior bureaucracy, deputy ministers, associated assistant deputy ministers, directors have the opportunity to understand and to learn about the people that they are serving. In Tlicho, in the valley, Sahtu, Gwich’in, that they get to understand the culture and understand their way of life and that we have that exchange. I look at that partly as a learning mission and also a reconciliation of bosses, if you call it that. However, the government is on the right track. We are doing this. I appreciate your struggles and moving this policy forward.
Sometimes we don’t always have willing partners and sometimes it is a challenge, so I admire your strength and your commitment to keep this vision. Really you are serving the people in the community and in fact paying our bills, because we are here to represent them. With that, I wanted to say to the Minister.
I am also looking forward to where the government will now start moving some of these positions in the earlier orders of the day that we talked about decentralization of Human Resources, and one of the biggest ones is the post-devolution negotiations to a final agreement. How do we move some of those much needed positions into our regions and our smaller communities? If we did a cost-analysis of those, the smaller communities and regions sometimes will not always win. In a similar type of analogy, if we did a cost analysis of all the schools and arenas we put in our communities, you will see if that makes sense, but we do it anyhow. Hopefully you take that type of view and position when we look at positions in the small communities if you’re looking at a cost analysis. Because if you do that, Yellowknife will always… Our larger centres always win. It’s cheaper, it costs more and we can stretch our dollar more. But if we start moving the positions into our communities in such a way where we start building arenas and schools, then we will be okay. If we can strengthen the communities and regions, we will also strengthen Yellowknife and Yellowknife will strengthen us. You will see it when you start seeing our people not coming to larger centres. Right now they’re coming to Yellowknife or Hay River or Inuvik. They’re coming here. What do we have to offer these 20 graduates we have one year, or 10 grads?
There’s only so much that can be offered in our community or in the region. There are many factors and we need to support each other, especially when we have the devolution on file and there are discussions on the post-management of devolution. There are discussion papers out there. They are talking about it. They are talking about how we’re going to move these positions from Ottawa. It’s not a secret to us. They are talking about it in ENR, in Human Resources, it’s happening right now as we’re sitting here. I don’t know what you have planned right now for the Sahtu. No one is telling me anything. All I know is that after I looked at the whole budget book, the main estimates, that Yellowknife is getting a lot of added positions in the various departments. You times that by X amount of thousands of dollars, they’re getting a boost in the economy. Let’s not kid ourselves. I mean, it’s all about economics sometimes and these positions are added here and added there and so forth. You’re going to get extra hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hence you guys need a new school in Yellowknife; you need more houses in Yellowknife. Why don’t we have that in our regions, in our communities?
That’s why I ask the government to look not only at the economic feasibility analysis of these positions, look at what it means for us in our regions. So I’ve come to the conclusion, Mr. Minister, that you have a task ahead of you, and I believe you’re up to it and I believe your staff are up to it, to look at the financial fiscal restraints of our government. It does make all logical sense to have these positions come to Yellowknife if we want to pay for an ITI program or Aboriginal field program or a treatment program who have those reasons why.
So I’m hoping that the government will increase its Aboriginal hire in senior management, that there will be some strong candidates for leadership programs. I’ve seen the summer student list and we’re not doing too badly in that. I really appreciate this government’s stance on getting our people to work. I’ve, again, asked the Minister that when you look at the overall budget in here, you look at the positions, you see too many of the positions going into Yellowknife. If you add them up in the departments, there’s not too much going into the regions.
I guess I’ll have to continue my messaging through the departments of what I saw. I know the Ministers give justifiable answers to my questions and I question the post-devolution position. We need to help each other out here, otherwise it’s going to be us against… I really don’t want that. That’s how it’s rolling out in the paper, and other kind of ways, but that’s what is laying down in front of us. Too much is going to Yellowknife. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Next on my list I have Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to welcome the Minister and the delegation, and congratulate the Minister on a very obviously complex couple of months in his honeymoon period. He’s done very, very well in ratifying a lot of our workers out there and I congratulate them and their team.
In terms of general comments before we get into the department, again, earmarking a little bit what was said by the Member for Sahtu, but I’ll try to put my spin on it as well.
Again, depending on how you look at it, cost of living might be the variable here, but we’re seeing an obviously net migration out of the Territories here and we’ve had that happen for a number of years now. I guess whether or not this is due to the complexity of the public service jobs themselves, whether we’re seeing more retirees, we know that’s a factor that we’ve built into the program. But there is an apparent, a very obvious, apparent statement that one can see very, very easily, is that the NWT’s labour market cannot meet the demand to fill the GNWT positions. So this is a critical element in terms of strategy, I’m sure, for your department, one in which I know was addressed in your opening comments to a certain degree. But really looking at the full mandate in terms of dealing with that, it seems to be lacking some specifics in nature. I would probably like to see some comments regarding that.
So what is the department doing to ratify that situation? What is it doing in its communities? What is it doing to prepare Northerners for public service jobs specifically? Where are these schools? Where are these programs? Where are they going to be delivered and how are we going to lure and attract these people from the communities, especially Aboriginal involvement from the communities to seek public sector employment? I think these are very, very key comments and I believe, again, somewhat touched on in the opening address, very little touched into this budget. So I think this is a global position statement, but I believe the Members here deserve to know and I think the people of the Northwest Territories are keenly listening to what’s in store for them in public service jobs.
Last on my list of opening comments, and again touched on, is obviously post-devolution, hopefully a successful post-devolution environment. It mentioned a decentralization of jobs into the rural and remote communities. Again, we continuously ask these questions in committee structure. Again, we get a variable myriad of responses: it’s being worked on, it’s in the works. But we know that there is a plan, we know that there’s something that is being discussed behind in departments and the membership here would love to hear what those ideas are so we can debate them in the House so we can be a fully able participant in the final draft that will be shared with Northwest Territories residents and not an afterthought. I think this is something that needs to come forth sooner than later. We know how many jobs potentially are created and we’re hearing again from the smaller and remote communities. They need to prepare and plan, they need to plan housing, they need to plan business and office space for these jobs. So there’s lots that has to happen behind the scenes other than just saying so many jobs are going here.
I’ll leave it there, Madam Chair, but again, those are my opening comments for this department. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. I did forget to mention to the Minister we’re going to go through all general comments and have you respond at the end. Thank you very much. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a few brief comments here. First of all, I’m very happy to see this department has been very fiscally responsible and I know that they’re making decisions when they do that and I appreciate that. I acknowledge that there’s a lot of work coming up with respect to devolution and challenges to work within budgets. I think our budgets are going to be pretty slight for when that comes up. That’s going to take some planning to be effective and so on.
A new four-year plan underway, under development, I’m wondering if there’s been a report on the success or failures and where we could do better, based on the first three years. Is there such a report? Maybe I missed it and I’d like to see it be critical, a critical look.
I just want to mention, too, the 20-20 Brilliant Plan, whatever it was, had an element of greening the workplace. That’s important. It’s important for retention, employee retention these days because most young people are very environmentally aware citizens. That’s an important aspect of the job place. Unfortunately I only saw the Green Teams ever develop in one department. I will be asking the Minister questions on that as we get into detail and looking forward to how we can do better on that front.
I really appreciate the Minister’s commitments in the terms of the interim whistleblower process and I look forward to working with the Minister to establish legislation to that effect. I also am keenly interested in effective and partnership work with MACA that the department is committed to in an ongoing way on capacity building of our public service and particularly in communities. I just wanted to point out that as an interest and I think a fundamental aspect of being a successful public service in the Northwest Territories and I’ll leave it at that. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Are there any further general comments? Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that we report progress.
---Defeated
We are at general comments. Are there any other general comments? Is committee agreed there are no further general comments?
Agreed.
Okay. We will move on. Before we move on I will allow the Minister to respond to general comments. Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Madam Chair. First off I’d like to just talk about visits to the Sahtu. I had an opportunity to get into the Sahtu. I’ve made a commitment that I’m going to get into every community in the Northwest Territories to meet with residents throughout the Northwest Territories. I firmly believe that it’s important for all of us as Ministers to get out and meet the people who ultimately benefit from the services and programs that we provide by the Government of the Northwest Territories. In doing so I have also committed to taking staff with me because I also think that in addition to just having the politicians get out, it’s really, really important for the senior bureaucrats to get out and meet the clients as well. It will give them a better perspective and I think it will help strengthen the public service as a whole.
One of the things that I have been pumping and pushing as I have been going to the communities is the secondment policy that we have here in the Government of the Northwest Territories. We do acknowledge that it’s going to be difficult. We haven’t had any uptake. We are going to be trying to get secondments with community organizations and Aboriginal governments which have radically different pay structures and benefit structures, so there’s going to be a little bit of work to be done as these organizations come forward. Recently I sent a letter to every Aboriginal community government organization outlining the secondment policy and asking them to consider it and to work with us on that. I do believe it is an important program and as I get to the rest of the communities in the Northwest Territories, I will absolutely be continuing to highlight this program as an opportunity to work together with Aboriginal and community governments.
Mr. Yakeleya did reference the Cultural Awareness Training Program. I was asked some questions on that earlier this week and we are in the process of developing that training. We have gone out for RFP. We want to develop a program that can be tailored to suit different areas throughout the Northwest Territories but have enough standard aspects that it can be delivered with some consistency, recognizing the differences in the different regions. We do hope to have our piloting of that done in the fall and make any tweaks that are necessary and then make it available for all GNWT staff who are hired today and tomorrow.
There has been a lot of talk about moving positions outside of Yellowknife and making sure that some of the devolution positions that come to the Northwest Territories do not stay in Yellowknife. This was actually a mandate of the 17th Legislative Assembly, exactly what we’re talking about. The Premier has been asked questions and others have been asked questions and we have committed to working on this. There is a committee of deputies under the responsibility of the Executive who are actually digging in and doing the research, that you and other Members have been talking about, such as figuring out where the houses are, figuring out where the spaces are, figuring out what jobs can go out. This isn’t just devolution jobs that are being talked about, this is existing jobs. We have to ask questions of ourselves and all of us. Is it divisions? Is it individual positions? How are we really going to determine which ones go out? They’re having that debate and as that debate moves on, and that discussion moves on I know that colleagues and Members will be included in that discussion. Your input is valuable and it will be heard.
You’ve indicated that you want to see an increase in Aboriginal hire at the senior levels. We agree absolutely and we do have the Superintendent to Director Program that is being utilized. All the training positions that we have are filled in that program. As people transition out and move into senior management, we will be continuing to fill those positions. We’d like to see those positions full all the time. When one person moves on, we’d like to backfill it immediately with another person. We’d like to keep that moving.
You also mentioned summer students. Summer students are important. We’ve been having conversations in Cabinet about the importance of hiring as many summer students as we can. I’ve committed to you and all the other Members of the House that I will provide you with weekly updates on the status of the summer student hires and I’ll continue to do that. Cabinet is agreed to work in the best interest of the government by hiring as many students as we can. The individual hires are departmental responsibilities but we are working as HR to help facilitate those hires.
Member Dolynny talked about the labour market and some of the challenges and asked what are some of the things that we are doing to encourage people to come to the GNWT. We have a great Interim Program. We are utilizing summer students. We do have the Senior Management Superintendent/Director Program as well as other management-type training opportunities within the Government of the Northwest Territories. There are some challenges. It can’t just be internal. We have to look outside. A lot of jobs in the Government of the Northwest Territories are legislated. They have certain legislative requirements. To that end, we need to continue to work with Education, Culture and Employment to help enhance the number of individuals that are coming to us with law degrees, and engineering degrees, and nursing degrees, and doctors and social workers; the legislated type professions. We will continue, and we are continuing, to work with Education, Culture and Employment to identify the types of professionals that we need here in the Northwest Territories, in particular in the Government of the Northwest Territories. Those conversations will absolutely continue.
One thing that we’re trying to do a little bit different and I mentioned it in my statement – is we are looking at using other sources of media to help highlight the jobs that we have and the opportunities that exist. To that end we are using Facebook and we are using Linked-In and other sources that exist as they become available. We need to be flexible. We know that. Using newspaper ads is not proving to be as effective as it once did.
With respect to devolution positions, that’s the same discussion that’s being had at the executive level with the deputies trying to figure out what are some of the next steps best shared with us in Cabinet, and we’ll be working with committee, obviously.
Mr. Bromley talked about the four-year plan and asked what’s been done in the first three years. We have an annual report every year that sort of gives us the highlights of what’s been accomplished and we’ll share those with you. They will continue to come on an annual basis, sort of outlining what progress has happened in each of the years. If those haven’t made it to you, I’ll make sure that they make it to the Member and to the rest of the colleagues and Government Ops as well.
Greening the workplace. I’ll get more information to you on that. Hopefully when you ask questions we’ll be ready to go into a little bit more detail on that.
We will and we are continuing to work with MACA on community development, developing professionals in the different communities.
I think I’ve covered everything. I’m happy to move to detail and answer specific questions.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Are we agreed to move to detail? Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that we report progress.
---Carried
Could I have the report of Committee of the Whole, please? Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Your committee has been considering Tabled Document 3-17(3), Northwest Territories Main Estimates 2012-2013, and would like to report progress and that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Can I have a seconder? Minister Lafferty. He’s pretty quick today.
Colleagues, I have brief comments before we adjourn for the weekend.
The 15th Legislative Assembly unanimously adopted a motion on October 20, 2005, to formally observe May 26th as the National Day of Healing and Reconciliation throughout the Northwest Territories.
With that motion, the 15th Assembly declared that each year May 26th would be observed as a way of supporting our communities, our families and all individuals who continue to endure the impacts of the residential school system.
Members are only too aware of the pain caused by the residential school system often affecting up to three generations. In spite of this legacy, the NWT continues to be a land of strong and resilient people. We as MLAs see that every day across our territory.
I encourage all NWT residents to take a moment tomorrow to celebrate that strength and resilience, to continue the positive, collective healing and reconciliation process that has been happening in the NWT.
As individuals, as families, as communities and as Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals, acknowledging the healing reconciliation process will only make us stronger.
Orders of the day for Monday, May 28, 2012, at 1:30 p.m.:
Prayer
Ministers’ Statements
Members’ Statements
Returns to Oral Questions
Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery
Acknowledgements
Oral Questions
Written Questions
Returns to Written Questions
Replies to Opening Address
Relies to Budget Address
Petitions
Reports of Standing and Special Committees
Reports of Committees on the Review of Bills
Tabling of Documents
Notices of Motion
Notices of Motion for First Reading of Bills
Motions
Motion 1, Referral of Commissioner’s Opening Address to Committee of the Whole
Motion 2, Setting of Sitting Hours by Speaker
First Reading of Bills
Second Reading of Bills
Bill 1, An Act to Amend the Student Financial Assistance Act
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Tabled Document 3-17(3), Northwest Territories Main Estimates 2012-2013
Report of Committee of the Whole
Third Reading of Bills
Orders of the Day
Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until Monday, May 28, 2012, at 1:30 p.m.
---ADJOURNMENT
The House adjourned at 1:58 p.m.
