Debates of May 28, 2012 (day 4)

My last question here is: Is this a unit of your department or is it a private enterprise contract? How does it work?

Mr. Bromley, sorry, to conclude your question.

Yes, thank you. Just the word “allied” caught my attention there. It’s normally used in the title of companies and so on. Perhaps it has another meaning here.

It is a section of this unit. It is six employees who are GNWT employees. The allied health recruitment unit is titled that because we didn’t want to focus just on nurses. It’s got to be for all allied health professionals, which include PT/OT, respiratory therapy, pretty much every health profession. They’re commonly referred to as allied health professionals. So we wanted the unit to be consistent with those individuals that we were trying to recruit.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My question has been asked and answered.

Thank you. Page 3-21, management and recruitment services, operations expenditure summary, $3.970 million.

Agreed.

Thank you. Page 3-22, active positions, information item, management and recruitment services.

Agreed.

Page 3-25, corporate human resources, operations expenditure summary, $12.371 million. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d just like to follow up with sort of an alert I gave in my general comments on the green teams, part of the Brilliant North, the plan. There was a record of failure on that and getting those established in the past, and I know in the 16th Assembly there was agreement to try and focus more on that. Has the Minister been able to get on top of that situation yet and what are the plans during 2012-13 here to make sure that those are up and running more effectively in all departments rather than in one or two? I know the one or two that are up and running have tried to share it but I’m not getting the impression that they’re very successful yet, and I, again, do regard this as an important element especially for young people and people that are really plugged into the state of the world as a job place quality issue. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just going back a little bit, this corporate human resource section is the section that has that health recruitment unit that we were talking about previously. The GNWT Green Team currently has representatives from 12 of 14 departments, including the Housing Corporation sitting on our committee. There is also one outside agency, the Arctic Energy Alliance, who has committed a member to participate on the committee. The committee has initiated conversations and relationships with the federal government Green Team and is participating in their meetings as well.

Our Green Team holds quarterly meetings and will be engaging guest speakers and other participants from other jurisdictions and communities interested in helping us educate and foster new ideas how the GNWT can contribute to becoming a greener workplace.

Some of the initiatives that are taking place or have taken place include reducing the use of paper through the use of iPads and double-sided printing, purchasing recycled papers, organizing healthy lifestyle activities for staff including taking the stairs, in-office recycling stations and composting, and a GNWT Event Catering Contract Policy. As that committee moves forward, I am happy to share other future recommendations with the Member. I don’t know what those might be but I’m happy to share them with committee. We think this is an important initiative within the Government of the Northwest Territories and we will continue to support it.

So there is a government team or committee, in this case. Are there departmental committees, departmental teams as well? My understanding was that that was the intent and that was not happening. But maybe the Minister could, again, clarify that for me.

As I indicated, we’ve got a representative from 12 of the 14 departments. I know some departments do have stand-alone committees. I don’t have that number in front of me right now. I am happy to get that number pulled together and I will share it with the Member and committee once I have it.

I appreciate the Member’s comments again. I appreciate his understanding of this issue and support as an important issue. I guess I haven’t quite seen the use of two-sided paper yet from departments. I see it pretty good in the Legislative Assembly, though not necessary amongst Ministers’ statements this morning, but I think we are on track in the Legislative Assembly at 50 percent or greater reductions and certainly the electronics are happening, but I’m still not getting the feeling that it’s happening routinely within departments, unless maybe it’s going over at the Ledge. Occasionally there’s more scrutiny. That might be a good one for the Minister to look at. That was just a comment.

I’m guilty of that myself once in awhile. It’s noted and we will make sure that it’s brought up to the committee to make sure we continue to push that initiative.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Next I have Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a couple of questions here. I’d like to at the outset, though, to say that I was very pleased to see that three negotiations which were entered into in the last several months were settled in short order and that basically everybody on both sides is happy. Kudos to the department for that.

A couple of questions with regard to, well, I’ll start with the UNW agreement and the statement that there will be interim whistle-blower phrasing, I guess, for lack of a better way of putting it. I’d like to know from the Minister or from the department when they expect that this sort of interim whistle-blower protection will be in place, and secondary to that, the intent, I think, is to develop legislation as well. Does the Minister have any idea when an LP might be before committee?

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Once the UNW Collective Agreement is ratified officially by both sides, we will have a six-month time period to complete the interim whistle-blower protection. It isn’t going to be legislation. It’s going to be interim protection that we’re going to work in partnership with the union and other stakeholders to put in place. That’s going to be our first priority, to get that in place. Once that’s in place we will proceed with the LP for whistle-blower legislation. As I’ve committed to before, we hope and want and expect that we will have whistle-blower legislation introduced in this House and passed in this House before the end of this Assembly.

I’d love to pin the Minister down to a specific time and date, but I appreciate the answer. Thank you very much. I look forward to the interim document in six months’ time. I think that’s going to be something which is needed and I think it will be much appreciated by our employees.

The other couple of questions I wanted to ask are around persons with disabilities and duty to accommodate and so on. The department has recently done a survey of persons with disabilities. I haven’t seen anything that indicates that that survey is done or that there have been any results from that survey. I wonder if I can get an update on where things are at with that. Thank you.

Yes, the Member is correct; we have done the survey. We’ve gone out and collected a bunch of data. I do have to say that we had a technical difficulty with the computer system that people could enter their information to and it put a bit of a delay in, two or three weeks, but it has closed. We’ve got the data and the analysis and a report is expected towards early June. Hopefully, we will see something during this sitting.

That’s good to hear and I look forward to seeing those results as do many people, I think.

We’ve had, over the last year or two, some changes within the department in and around the issue of duty to accommodate. I believe we have a duty to accommodate an officer now, and I think we also have a policy. It’s been in place, I think – the Minister can advise me – but I think about a year. I’d like to know whether or not there’s been any evaluation of the position and/or the policy and the affect that it’s having on our employees. Thank you.

The Duty to Accommodate Policy has been in effect since August 2011. From there, we developed a bunch of policies and protocols that went in place. Those went in place closer to December 2011. There is a position – the Member is correct – that’s responsible for assisting the departments in their obligation and their duty to accommodate. We haven’t done an analysis of the effectiveness of that position. It’s still early days and we’re still trying to smooth out all the ripples and find ways to make sure that the departments understand the policy and that we’re able to provide them advice that they act upon, so it’s still in progress.

Just to follow up, I can appreciate that it’s been a relatively short period of time since you’ve, sort of, started to implement the policy, but can the Minister tell me when they will do an evaluation and whether or not Members can get the results of that evaluation?

Mr. Chair, there are a significant number of accommodation cases in the Government of the Northwest Territories. We have our officers and staff working with the different departments to accommodate those individuals. As with any accommodation, it takes work on behalf of the employee being accommodated, the department that is doing the accommodation and HR providing the advice with respect to the policies and procedures.

Our first priority is to get some of this backlog down and to get as many people accommodated as possible, understanding that it does take all three parties to find a reasonable solution. Every party has to be flexible in the accommodations.

As far as a program to evaluate, we are continuously pulling together data with respect to each of the accommodation’s duration, how long it takes, situation, but there are no immediate plans to do a comprehensive evaluation of this section in the next year or two. Nothing at this point, but we are continuously gathering data as we move forward.

Thanks to the Minister. I guess I would encourage the Minister and the department to seriously consider a formal evaluation after about a year. That will be the end of this particular calendar year, from the sounds of things.

I appreciate that you are collecting data all of the time, but collection of data is not necessarily doing an evaluation of how well you are succeeding with the policy. Just to comment, Mr. Chair, but I would encourage the department to not wait two years to find out whether or not we are doing the right thing.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. I think that was more of a comment. Would you like to respond, Mr. Abernethy?

Duly noted. With respect to data, we need the data to do the evaluation, so it is important that we continue to pull the data.

I have the honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Chair, I want to ask the Minister on the Aboriginal cultural awareness training within his department. I know they are drafting a framework that will set up the GNWT’s desire to increase the Aboriginal cultural awareness and appreciate this in the workforce. Are you going to have it ready by this fall and where are you going to do the first pilot of this cultural training with our workforce?

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Abernethy.

Mr. Chair, that is the intent for this fall. Location is yet to be determined. Training will likely take place in Yellowknife for Yellowknife employees, but it is also going to be available on line. It will be digital as well.

Thank you. I look forward to it. I hope they have some digital. We can go on the land and experience that. I’m not too sure. I guess that they’ll adjust to it, so I felt all the time that we have a population in my region very strong Aboriginal. I felt that senior government people need to be immersed into our culture. I feel sometimes that we missed the boat and I found that, with this government here, with the Minister, we may be bridging some understanding amongst ourselves. I do want to say good luck. I do want to know where you’re going to pilot. I wouldn’t mind a time where we could find some time to talk about this Cultural Awareness Training Program. It has been long overdue. Those are just my comments, Mr. Chair.

This is an important program. I share the Member’s opinion and thoughts. It’s going to be an e-training curriculum. It’s going to be on line. That way the greatest number of GNWT employees and respective GNWT employees can access and start gaining the awareness that they need of the different cultures and realities in the Northwest Territories.

I understand the Member’s point, as well, about getting out with members of the communities, getting into communities, and I as a Minister have committed to getting to those communities and bringing some of my staff with me on a regular basis. I know the other Ministers are doing that as well. So it is a starting point and we need to continue to work together.

I will happily come to committee to talk about this program once we have an RFP and we move a little bit further down the line and we start doing a little bit of analysis on the effectiveness. The input is appreciated and sought.

The Aboriginal cultural awareness training, I would hope the Minister would not bank 100 percent on the e-training. It’s easy to go there and click things and don’t really have a relationship. It’s all up here. You can say I know how to make fire because I learned it on e-training or how to do this and that. That is not what I hope I envision this government is going to do. I hope they would take half that training, 50 percent, and go out and do the experiential training, out on the land with the real McCoy and do the real thing. I hope that is there also, that they take the senior bureaucracy and go out on the land for two or three days. That’s just a warming up to the culture and that they have that training solved.

I know the Minister is looking at rolling this out. It’s going to be a huge, enormous challenge. It’s the first time I think in the history of this government that we are embarking on a journey of understanding the Aboriginal people and their culture. How they work it, you might not have all willing, happy campers going. Some of them will question the policies. Some are going to question why we are doing this and some of them will question the validity of this. They might even tell us we’re wasting money. Well then, we have an answer for that: we really don’t want those types of employees working for us, for me.

We need to work it in a way that the Minister has some good support systems in place and good structures in place to say this is important. We want to attract young Aboriginal university and college students or students that are just out of school to our workforce. We need to make sure that they are okay. For me, this is a long process and I think that the Minister is starting out on a good process. I look forward to the next three years to see how this develops into a world-class Aboriginal training for employees, not only the government but for corporate. This is something that they can use. I think it’s a program that I would like to put my rubber stamp on it and say yes, I was part of this government, I did this, in 10 or 15 years. I want to wish the Minister good luck.

Mr. Chair, I look forward to working with the Member over the next three years as we try to develop training that is both appropriate and cost effective. The trick is that we do want to respect and appreciate the Aboriginal cultures, but we also have to do that in the fiscal realities that we’re faced with, which is one of the reasons we are starting the eRecruit. We figure we could get the greatest amount of access to GNWT employees in all communities – Yellowknife included – at all levels, anybody that has access to a computer, so that is a starting point.

I don’t want anybody to think that is the only thing that we’re doing. Individual departments are doing things specific to the departments. Justice has a Corrections Entry Level Training Program. There are Aboriginal components in there, cultural awareness in there. RCMP have made a commitment to having their officers engage with the public and the communities that they serve. In smaller communities, get to know the chief and councils, and where appropriate, get out on the land with the members so that they can get a true sense of what’s going on in the communities and understand the people as much as possible.

Health and Social Services in their Community Health Nurse Development Program has a cultural component. So there are things that are being done out there that are a lot more specific and include getting more into the communities and engage more in the communities. This is a starting point. I want to stress that it’s just a starting point, but we want to get this one in place and make it work as an initial tool to develop awareness of the cultures and from there we can build. So I look forward to building with Member Yakeleya.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. One final supplementary question, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Minister listed a number of other programs the departments are doing to increase the understanding of Aboriginal culture. I think it works both ways. That’s the beautiful part of reconciliation and healing. I think the Minister has listed some fairly good initiatives by some of the departments.

I do want to say that the Department of Education and Culture so far, for myself I think, has done an excellent job, because those teachers go out for one week on the land and spend a week on the land. It’s a directive by the Minister. For the teachers, you have to go out to the land. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it. You’re on the land for one week and our people really appreciate that in our communities. They come back and have fun, they laugh, and the teachers I’ve talked to say that’s the best thing they ever did in all the four years of university, where they learn the most. So I just want to remind the Minister that he’s got the power.

Fortunately the Minister of Education is sitting here as well, so he got to hear everything that you just said and I look forward to working with both the Member and the Minister.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Moving to our other speaker here and I’ll remind Members we’re on page 3-25, corporate human resources. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again I seek guidance. I’d like to speak to the failure of this department in the past to establish a Workers’ Safety and Compensation Commission policy that resulted in fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars amounting and totaling to millions. Is that appropriate under the corporate human resources or would that be the next section on employee services?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is the appropriate section. This is the section that that responsibility would fall under. The Department of Human Resources continues to lead the development of the GNWT Occupational Health and Safety Program. A work plan is currently being developed to improve health and safety practices within the GNWT workplace.

Ultimately every department is responsible for their own occupational health and safety plan or program. We provide guidance and advice on what works in other jurisdictions as well as what works well within some of the departments within the Government of the Northwest Territories. We’ve had, as a government, pretty good uptake in some departments. Some departments are still a little behind and still working on that, but yes, this is the section that is responsible for assisting the departments.

Thanks for that information. I know there is a sort of bifurcation. There are some responsibilities of this department and then there are responsibilities that accrue to each and every other department as well. So maybe I could get some clarity on what exactly Human Resources is responsible for, and if I could just save time a little bit by also asking if we know what the status is, have we received a fine, how much in the past year and are we anticipating further fines this year. Any crystal ball estimates there? Thank you.

I’ll start with the easy one first. We have been fined in the past and we are expecting to have a fine again this year. I can’t tell you what that total is going to be, but as soon as we know, we will certainly share that information with Members.

With respect to the role of the Department of Human Resources, we provide leadership and guidance. Ultimately it is the departments that are responsible for putting their committees in place and making sure that those committees are meeting on a regular basis and providing that occupational health and safety perspective within the individual departments. We are responsible for putting in policies such as the Duty to Accommodate Policy and whatnot that has some play here. When an individual is injured in the workplace, we do have a duty to accommodate them. So the policy was drafted by the Department of Human Resources in cooperation with input from other departments, but once again, when it comes to the actual implementation, we are a provider of information, best practices and recommendations based on policy.

Maybe could I just get what the amount was in fines for ‘11-12? We had been fined under two categories. So if it’s possible to break that out, that would be great.

Would the Minister maybe commit to keeping us updated when we know what’s happening this fiscal year in terms of that and maybe even an update on how things are going at some point with trying to seal this issue once and for all and get all of the departments responding appropriately? Thank you.