Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to return to one of my favourite subjects, and that’s direct appointments. As we’ve all heard at length repeatedly over the years, my concern that they’re not publicly accounted for and whatnot. Rather than spending a lot of time, let’s go straight to the Minister of Human Resources and get right to the bottom.
What type of public reporting does the Minister see is available for the public to know how many direct appointments we are doing, how often do we make them, and what departments receive them? Let’s just start off with some simple questions like that.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have that information. We do advise committee on the amount of appointments that we’ve done over each government. I believe that the last time the committee asked, we had provided them with information on the amount of direct appointments that we had done at the Cabinet level.
If it’s provided to committee, of course, as we all know through the various channels, levels and scrutiny we receive, of course, every piece of that information is confidential. What public reporting can be done on this particular subject?
Direct appointment is a unique tool that this government uses to fill positions, and if the committee feels that it would be important for this to be reported in a manner to the general public and if committee has ideas on how we would be able to report that to the government, then we would be open to listen to that.
I appreciate the answer from the Minister. Is the Minister saying that if he had a sharply worded letter from committee that supported this initiative, the government would jump on it?
Yes, we would consider it, depending on what information they wanted to release. I believe that we could probably talk about the various priorities, but I think some of the information would remain confidential. If the committee has ideas and it was to write to us asking us what they wanted released for what purpose to the public, then we would consider that.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to be very clear on the record. I think that there are cases and reasons why we do direct appointments, and I am certainly not against all of them by any means. I want to make sure that’s absolutely clear. I’m only about public transparency, and that’s really what it comes down to. Frankly, my question, lastly, for the Minister of Human Resources would be: Minus the recent devolution transfer of appointments – because some of them, if not all of them, had to be considered direct appointments – what type of direct appointments are we talking about that have fallen under this government in the last three years?
There are various reasons: supporting career development for long-term employees, supporting advancement of employees who have successfully completed formal training, advancing career development of affirmative action candidates outside the public service, addressing unique challenges with a particular job competition such as when recent recruitment practices indicate an open competition would be unproductive in resolving an undesirable work situation such as marriage between two individuals in the same departments.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
