Okay. We have a number of issues before the committee right now. What is the wish of the committee? Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is the wish of the committee today to begin with the Department of Human Resources for the Main Estimates for 2008–2009.
Any comments? General comments? Okay. No general comments at this time. Does the committee agree? Mrs. Groenewegen.
Call for a break.
It’s not really my place. It’s the prerogative of the Chair whether to call for a break or not. But general comments on the Department of Human Resources’ Main Estimates would be the first order of business.
Okay. Apparently the normal procedure is to do general comments first, but I’m quite happy to take a break at this point in time, so that’s what we’ll do. We’ll take a break.
The Committee of the Whole took a short recess.
I’d like to call the Committee of the Whole back to order for review of the Main Estimates for the Department of Human Resources.
Does the Minister responsible have any opening remarks or comments? Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m pleased to present the Main Estimates for the Department of Human Resources for the fiscal year 2008–2009. The department’s 2008–2009 Main Estimates propose O&M expenditures of $32.253 million. This represents an increase of $662,000, or 2.1 per cent, over the 2007–2008 Main Estimates.
The department has reduced expenditures in areas such as travel, salaries, contracted services, and fees and payments, but the overall budget has grown due to collective agreement adjustments and increases to the cost of medical travel assistance.
The Department of Human Resources Main Estimates include funding for 167 positions. This is a decrease of four positions from fiscal year 2007–2008. One hundred and twenty of the department’s positions are located in headquarters with the remaining 47 located in regional service centres.
As the Department of Human Resources continues to adapt to its role as a provider of support and services, the Government of the Northwest Territories is experiencing greater consistency in the management of its human resources. This is evidenced by across-the-board use of interdepartmental job evaluation committees, independent reviews of open competitions by contracted staffing review officers and ongoing labour relations training for supervisors and managers.
Gains have also been made in the areas of recruitment and retention of essential staff. In the 2007–2008 fiscal year the health recruitment unit hired more than 150 health care professionals on a term or indeterminate basis. The growth of the casual nurse float pool by more than 150 nurses in 2007 reduced the GNWT’s reliance on agency-supplied casual nurses by an average of 10 per day from the 2006–2007 fiscal year. This represents a reduction in agency nurse fees of 70 per cent, or $1.5 million.
The government remains committed to building a strong public service that is representative of the population it serves. Each year hundreds of northern post-secondary students are given valuable and relevant work experience in the territorial public service. Staffing practices such as transfer assignments and under fills afford northern residents the opportunity to build on their skill sets and advance in their chosen careers.
Consistent management of our human resources and fair and equitable treatment of our employees are integral parts of an effective and efficient public service. This budget will help with the delivery of essential human resource services; the recruitment, retention and development of staff; and the provision of timely and reliable advice and support to all departments, boards and agencies in all communities of the Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. Minister. I’d like to call on the chairperson of the Standing Committee on Government Operations, which has responsibility for reviewing the Department of Human Resources, to make comments on the committee’s review of the departmental estimates. Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to turn the committee’s attention to Committee Report 5-16(2), which was read into the record earlier today, and I’ll provide our opening comments.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. What is the wish of committee? Is that acceptable to committee?
Agreed.
Does the Minister wish to bring in witnesses?
Yes, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you. Does the committee agree to bring in witnesses?
Agreed.
May I ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to bring in witnesses. Mr. Minister, when you’re ready, I’ll ask you to introduce your witnesses.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With me I have on my left Sharilyn Alexander, acting deputy minister of Human Resources, and on my right I have Shaleen Woodward, the director of Human Resources Strategy.
Thank you. Are there general comments on the departmental estimates by members? Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Just with respect to general comments on the Department of Human Resources. It was when we were sitting with the Minister in the briefings that we tried to convey from the Regular Members’ side that we had some grave concerns over some of the plans for proposed cost reductions. Particularly for me, I come from one of the regional ridings and am conveying that if there are going to be cost reductions that they be proportional to the regions.
One of the things is that because I’ve got a small riding of people in my community, I thought and I still feel to this day that my riding suffers a lot more reductions proportionately. That’s something we tried to convey to the HR Minister as something to watch for. That is a concern.
As well, some of the other things that we discussed in our committee is the Affirmative Action Policy and that it really makes sense, Mr. Chairman, where if we are going to lay off and reduce from our workforce that it not be disproportionate as well, meaning that people that have jobs in their communities and regions should not be the first ones to suffer loss because they are there. They are in their home field, they’ve taken the time to get their training, to get their education, to get a good job to serve their people, and they should not be the first ones to be gone, because they are, I can tell you for sure, the biggest contributor to their community, to their region, to their families and provide lots of assistance and volunteerism to help all their communities run. That’s something that should be first and foremost in HR’s mind. We tried to convey that to them.
I think another important aspect, particularly at this time of year: we have a lot of northern students returning North and looking for work and that those jobs not be cut or reduced as well. Those students and part-time positions, Mr. Chairman, often don’t show up in the Draft Mains — I don’t know how they’re accounted for — but they’re a big component of the support system we have for our youth, for our adult learners, for our students that did take the time and effort to go out of the communities to learn and come back. We all know that providing them jobs in their communities or working for our government is a good way for our government to commend them, to give them a pat on the back and say, “Look, you’re doing good, and we’ll support you wherever we can; we’ll provide you employment for the summer to make money for the lean winter months,” when students have to strive their darnedest.
It’s just about supporting our expanding and growing workforce, Mr. Chairman. That’s something that we as Regular Members have been continually stressing to the Department of Human Resources and really look forward to knowing that they heard us in this case. I’ll just close my opening comments with that.
I’m happy to provide some opening comments under the Department of Human Resources. I welcome the Minister and his staff here with us this afternoon.
I do want to ask a number of questions when we get to the detail. One of the things I’m interested in knowing was what advice the Department of Human Resources gave to the government when we were dealing with the notification letters that went out to employees. I’d be very interested to know what the corporate take from HR was on whether or not those notification letters should have gone out in the manner that they did. Some of the blame, I guess, has been deflected back at the department for those letters going out, so I’d like to try to get to the bottom of that, if I could, at some point in time, Mr. Chairman.
The other thing I’m interested in is — and we had some discussions with the Premier and the Minister back in February when the reduction exercise was in play — what was the government doing in terms of hiring employees? Why was it taking so long for people who applied for positions to hear back from the department or hear back from anybody? In some cases, months would go by and they wouldn’t hear anything. The Premier said in February that we’re on a case-by-case basis; we’re hiring on a case-by-case basis; we weren’t hiring in certain areas. So these things are all a great concern to me and the people out there applying for jobs, obviously. I’ve got a number of questions in that area, Mr. Chairman.
I think we should look at more of a user-friendly approach to job competitions, Internet-based. I mean, most people have a computer nowadays, and we should go Internet-based so that people who apply for jobs have the ability to go online and check the competition status. They do this with the Government of Alberta. They have a system set up so that if you’re an applicant, you know exactly where that competition is at in the process every step of the way. It makes it much more, as I said, user-friendly to folks applying on positions with the government.
I’m not too sure exactly what role the department plays. In my Member’s statement earlier today I mentioned the fact that there don’t seem to be nursing positions available at Stanton, yet there are agency nurses there. I’m trying to figure out why we aren’t increasing our indeterminate pool of float nurses instead of hiring agency nurses. I’m not sure where the department is on that and how they’re working with Stanton or the Department of Health and Social Services on that.
A couple of other comments — and the committee spoke of it in their committee report — on affirmative action and not enough aboriginal people in senior management. That’s a concern, I think, if you look government-wide. It’s there, and we’re not doing enough, in my mind, to groom the aboriginal people that we have working for us for senior management. It’s obvious. This is a good example. If you look at the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, there’s not one aboriginal person in senior management there. If you look at their intergovernmental relations section, there’s not one aboriginal person there, and that’s shameful that the GNWT Department of Aboriginal Affairs wouldn’t have one aboriginal person working in senior management or intergovernmental relations. It’s ridiculous, really. So I think we need to address those areas.
To the department itself, what I see looking through the phone listings — again, I’ve said this before — there seem to be managers managing nobody. There are a number of managers with hardly any staff or no staff, and I don’t know why that’s allowed to happen. If you’re a manager, you should be managing something, and that would have a staff component with it as well. Specifically the client service managers: who are those managers managing? Themselves? That’s not to poke fun at them or say that they’re not doing anything. I’m sure that they provide a valuable service, but why are they managers, and why have we got six managers in that client services area with six staff?
Those are some pretty fundamental questions, Mr. Chairman. I’ve got a number of those as we get through the detail. I’ll certainly be asking a number of questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. General comments.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to provide a few general comments on Human Resources and the Minister’s opening remarks. I always have a concern with the number of people who are in HR headquarters. I look at 120 people in headquarters and 47 out in the regions. To me that just seems like there are too many chiefs and not enough of us. I have a great concern with that.
One of my favourite things back home when I’m talking about this is I’ll tell people to go on the government directory and go into the HR site. You go into there and you find an Employer of Choice department. I have no idea what they do. Mr. Ramsay said they provide a service. I’m just not sure what it is. I see nine people in there. Total Rewards Planning, another department that I really don’t know what they do. I see they have 18 people in there, so you’re looking at 27 people. I have a concern with that. To me it just seems like too many of the functions of HR are being centralized to headquarters in Yellowknife, and I have a real concern with that.
Mr. Ramsay spoke to the number of managers. I’ve always had a concern with that too. I look at one department where every name there is a manager. I’m not sure, as Mr. Ramsay said, what they manage. To me it seems like when you’re given the title of manager, obviously you’re given the pay of a manager. It seems like there’s just too much at headquarters. I was trying to do the math here. We’ve got 4,700 employees in the public service. We’ve got 167 people in HR. That works out to roughly 25 to 28 people per person at HR. That just seems to be a fairly high number, in my opinion.
I’ve always got concerns. I got an e-mail from someone who left the Northwest Territories probably about two years ago who’s still looking to get their pay. Whatever they had coming, they were still waiting for. They sent me the e-mail. They cc’d a couple of other people, and they got some results probably a little quicker than they normally would have. There was another e-mail from another person who was concerned about some pay that they had coming. Again, working with the Minister we were able to get that resolved fairly quickly.
The point I’m trying to make is that these folks shouldn’t have to resort to sending their MLAs e-mails wondering where their pay is and their ROEs. I think that was one of the issues that one of the folks had. With this many people in headquarters, this many people in HR, our public service shouldn't have to be waiting forever. I know students who work during the summer who three-quarters of the way through the school year still hadn't received their final pay.
So I have a real concern, not just with HR but with most departments, that too many of the positions are in headquarters — too many. I mean, if you look at the overall size of the public service, you're looking at probably over 50 per cent of them in headquarters. I understand that Yellowknife has close to 50 per cent of the population of the Northwest Territories, but still, that doesn't justify having all the positions in headquarters.
You talk about cuts. I see a reduction. You know, we're talking reduction exercise, reduction exercise. But one of the first sentences in the Minister's opening remarks is the word "increase": increase by 2.1 per cent. It seems to me like that’s going against what we're talking about here. We're talking reductions, and I kind of agree that some reductions were needed. We're talking reductions, but reductions where? Reductions out in the communities.
You look at Inuvik. We're losing 34-plus people. That's reductions. I mean, we've lost enough people to make up for a couple other places. The problem I had with this whole reduction exercise right off the bat — other than being told by constituents that they got an affected employee letter, but that's a different story all unto itself — was that I was afraid the people making the decisions to reduce were going to start down here. They were going to work their way from the regions up to headquarters, and when you get here, you realize we've already almost made our quota, so we don't have to eliminate so many people at headquarters. Four. I see four. I see an increase of 2.1 per cent, an increase of $678,000. That kind of money could have probably kept Arctic Tern going for another year, half a year.
This is the first department we're doing. I hope this is not a sign of things to come, where every department that's going to come before us — when we're talking reductions all the time — the first word in their opening remarks is going to be the word "increase." That kind of defeats the whole purpose of this particular budget when you talk reductions, and we're still increasing. We're still getting bigger, and I have a serious concern with it.
I probably will have more questions to the line by line as we go along, because I did commit to going through this whole budget document yesterday. I did commit to going through it line by line and asking as many questions as I can, deleting whatever I think could be deleted, and that's the route that I intend to go with all departments. So thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to make a few opening remarks on the Minister's general comments.
Mr. Chair, in listening to the Minister's statement, I see that he's indicated that there's been a decrease in four positions, which is technically true, but there were actually five positions eliminated as part of the reduction exercise, all in Yellowknife, and then there was one position created in Fort Smith. So, technically, five positions have been eliminated as part of this reduction exercise.
I'm not as upset or as disturbed by the elimination of these five positions, as they were all vacant. I'm more concerned on a territorial level about eliminating positions where there are actually people in them. So as far as getting rid of vacant positions goes, I'm not as concerned.
Areas that I do have some questions about — and I'll be asking some questions later. You've identified five positions you're eliminating, but you've also reduced service levels in a certain number of areas — specifically around Maximizing Northern Employment, in areas of program workshops for grads, the Graduate Transition Program, as well as social work and teacher placement. I'm curious, given our strategic plan in supporting Northerners and maximizing northern employment, getting Northerners into northern jobs, whether or not those areas are necessarily the areas we would want to be cutting.
One position you're eliminating does concern me more than the rest, and that's specifically the nurse educator mentor position. In the Premier's budget address he talks about expanding the nurse practitioner training, reducing wait time through a one-time $1.8 million investment, and increasing on-the-job training for the Community Health Nurse Development Program. I'm curious how you can be expanding things like the Community Health Nurse Development Program when another department, Health and Social Services, has indicated they're cutting the pot for the Community Health Nurse Development Program significantly, and the Department of Human Resources, which is responsible for administering the program, is getting rid of the nurse educator mentor. So I just want some clarity on that and to know whether or not the elimination of that nurse educator mentor is going to adversely affect the delivery of the Community Health Nurse Development Program.
As we dig through, there are some other areas that I'd like to ask some questions on, but I'm good for now.
Mr. Chair, a lot of my concerns with HR are in the area of supporting and monitoring. Initially, when the Department of HR was created, the worked that was being done I assumed was going to be work that was going to provide monitoring and support to the small HR units that were in each department. But as it turns out, we've created a fairly substantial Human Resource division, as indicated in the Mains, of 167 employees, which is down from last year.
In some of my questioning that the Minister could be prepared for, I would like to talk about some of the self-service issues surrounding the self-service that is being employed by the government now and maybe paid for by HR but administered by some support services as well.
However, self-service doesn't seem to be a really good system that is effective. I know that it is one program that frustrates the people working for the GNWT. As a manager it's very difficult to keep track of employees. As an employee it's difficult to make sure that you're getting paid for the hours you've worked. If you're a shift worker and something happened to run through a long weekend, I think you have to report that as either having been there or you don't get paid automatically, if you work through a holiday and stuff like that.
So self-service seems to be something, I suppose, that was initially designed to save the government money or save time or whatnot. The government had a really simple system. There’s one form you fill out and you send in to your manager. It's signed, and someone could actually keep track of what it is that you're doing, where you're going, whether or not you're on holidays or duty travel or whatnot. But the self-service system is apparently not very clear to a lot of people who are trying to serve themselves.
I'm curious about whether or not the Department of HR is involved in human resource plans of other departments, what types of plans are in place and what type of support this department provides to other departments: job description writing, evaluations, job descriptions, and so on and so forth.
I'm curious about the position of the department in relation to the Affirmative Action Policy with all the other departments. I’m curious about training: cross-cultural training for people working in predominantly aboriginal communities and what type of cross-cultural training is provided to them.
The final thing is that we're changing the financial information system again. I’m not sure if that’s directly related to HR, but the financial information system is another area. If it’s in this area, I’d be asking questions on that and the high cost of replacing that system, which I’m assuming is failing the government. That’s all I have for now. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. General comments? I’m hearing no further general comments. Does committee agree that we proceed to the detail of the estimates?
Agreed.
We’ll defer the summary on page 2-51 and proceed to the detail with the information item on Active Positions, pages 2-52 and 2-53. Any questions? Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wondered if I could find out how many regional offices there are for HR. I thought somebody had told me that there was only one in Fort Smith, but if I could have that confirmed, please.
Mr. Chair, we have seven regional offices in the Northwest Territories.
Other questions? Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks. I guess just to follow-up: are there human resources services in each of those regional offices?
Mr. Chair, we provide human resource services out of all of the offices. Some may not provide as many services as others, depending on the location. Generally, the larger regional centres are full service, but the smaller ones may not be as full service.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At headquarters are 120 indeterminate full-time positions. I’d like to ask the Minister if the core business of the Department of Human Resources could be managed with less than 120 people in headquarters. What process was undertaken by his department to determine whether more positions at headquarters could be reduced, or were they just responding to targets that were given to them externally?
Mr. Chair, I guess the best way to respond to that is that I think the number of positions at headquarters goes up and down depending on the staff that we have at the regional level. As much as possible, we like to have the services provided at the regional level, but on occasion we have staff who leave, and it takes some time to replace them, so that has impact on the headquarters level. As far as the reductions go, I think the approach that we took, our first cut at it, was to look at the vacant positions that we had in the department. That’s how we approached it.
Mr. Chairman, certainly in fairness to the people who work there…. Looking at the vacant positions, I agree with this, but I don’t think that’s going far enough. I think, again, it comes back to this issue of program review and looking at the effectiveness and efficiency of the methods by which we deliver those programs. One hundred and twenty people in headquarters is a lot of positions. I guess I’m just concerned about doing things the same old way and kind of status quo, and when a reduction target comes up, it’s not looked at in that in-depth way that a program review or maybe an outside objective set of eyes would look at the path that’s performed. Maybe I am not doing a very good job of describing this.
It doesn’t seem like people from within the department themselves would necessarily have any incentive or motivation at looking at how they could do the same function and do it with more efficiency and less people. I mean, what incentive do people have to do that? So we get an external target reduction and you say, “Oh, we’ve got some vacant positions; let’s offer that up.” That seems very shallow to me. In the Alberta government they used to have one deputy minister, who had a nickname, who would go around and be put in a department and look for every efficiency possible. People knew that when that deputy came to their department, they were looking at streamlining operations and saving money.
I don’t know if it would take something like this to get those kinds of results. I mean, as a Member I’m all about wanting to do things in a cost-effective and efficient way, and what I’m seeing here, very much, is the status quo.
Can the Minister provide me with any assurance that he as a leader and being at the helm of this department has any creative or innovative ideas of how the Department of Human Resources could be better managed?
Certainly we have a number of different approaches we would like to take. What we are starting to realize is that it’s becoming harder and harder for us to staff HR positions with people with HR backgrounds. We are finding we have to spend more time in training. We want to focus more on working with the departments that have the delegated authority to hire. So we want to work more closely with them so we provide better service levels. We had to pull some services that were done at the regions into headquarters in order to deal with some processing problems or issues. We want to spend more time on training and developing capacity so we can put those services back out into the regions.
We also agree with the Member. We want to do a review of the workload and positions within the departments in the regions to assess if they’re located in the right place and doing the right things and if we have enough people to do the jobs they would have been asked to do.
Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you. My question is similar to the one that Mrs. Groenewegen just asked. Specifically, I am interested, actually, to hear some examples of the types of things you’d try to do to streamline the organization to find some efficiencies. There are large organizations out there with far more staff than the GNWT, and they run their organizations in such a way that staff get paid on time, labour relations are dealt with in a timely manner, and training and development is seen, recognized and delivered. Succession planning’s a reality.
I am not saying those things aren’t a reality with the GNWT, but we have a very large HR unit compared to some of these large international and national corporations. I’m wondering if there’s been any research done into sound business practices on how best to deliver human resource services and find those efficiencies and increase productivity within the organization itself. This is without necessarily resulting in additional job cuts within the department itself but maybe reorganizing or restructuring a little bit so we’re able to provide services in a timely and effective manner. Specifically, if you can walk us through some of the best practices you guys have been researching in order to find greater efficiencies.
Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess we’ve been looking at it from a number of different ways. I don’t want to go back in history, but we do have the Hackett report, where we looked at all of the areas we were functioning in to see what we could improve on.
We’ve also looked at self-servicing. I guess we see that as a way to improve services to reduce the number of people we need to do the job. We’re finding that we’re having to run competitions quite a few times in order to be able to attract people to come to work for the Government of the Northwest Territories.
This is an area we’re looking at, that we’re putting focus on, and we’ve been able to reduce the time it takes to fill a competition from ten weeks to eight weeks.
There are a number of those areas we’re looking at. Certainly, with the change in demographics, not only in the Northwest Territories but, I guess, all across Canada and the world, we find that we need to change the way we recruit and staff so we can attract younger people to come to work for the Government of the Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Seeing no further questions on pages 2-52 and 2-53, we’ll move to our first votable item. Sorry. Mr. McLeod.
Mr. Chair, the decisions to decide which employees were to be potentially affected within HR — and this is a question I’ll probably ask each department. Who made the decisions as to which employees would be affected employees? Who made that decision?
We had targets, and we asked the management to identify the positions. We were working under the direction that we were to minimize person-year reductions as much as possible. So we decided we would use vacant positions to fill our reductions for the Department of HR.
The Minister is telling me they were given a target — I’m assuming it’s by Cabinet — to meet the reductions. The Minister also said they decided to just go with the vacant positions. So I’m to understand there were absolutely no filled positions within HR that were affected. Am I correct?
That’s correct.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Follow-up, Mr. Robert McLeod.
