Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to address my questions to the Minister of Human Resources. I’d like to follow up on his statement from yesterday and some of the questions that I asked the Minister yesterday. In our exchange, I referenced the Employability Working Group and asked the Minister what the group had accomplished. In the results that he mentioned to me, he mentioned a number of things. One of them was that the department has consulted with a number of other different jurisdictions; another one was that they have implemented some sensitivity training. I’d like to know from the Minister what impact this past work has had on the number of persons with disabilities who have been hired in the last little while. How many more persons with disabilities have we hired since the Employability Working Group was established in June of 2008? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated yesterday, it’s not something that we change overnight. It’s a process that takes some time and it’s a matter of working with partners and it’s a matter of changing the culture of an organization. Anecdotally, I know of at least two additional people with disabilities that have been hired, at least one of them has self-identified as disabled. So it’s our expectation that it’s an ongoing process and it will take some time to have some achievable results.
I understand that change takes a while for it to be processed. It’s good to hear that we have at least two more people hired who are persons with disabilities, but that still doesn’t bring our percentage to any kind of a limit that is representative of our workforce.
In June of 2009 the Minister made a statement and he talked about the development of a recruitment strategy as a long-term goal, and this is a recruitment strategy for persons with disabilities. The percentage of persons with disabilities in the GNWT workforce has been at about .4 percent for quite a number of years. I’d like to ask the Minister how this long-term strategy is going to assist in increasing the number of persons with disabilities now and prior to the end of this fiscal year. Thank you.
I get the impression that the Member has some issues with self-identification. The Member is correct; .4 percent is the number that has been on our records for the statistics for employing people with disabilities. We have undertaken surveys with regard to our Human Resource Strategy, and of the 1,200-plus people that have identified, at least 1 percent have identified themselves as being disabled. So that would be approximately a 60 percent increase in the number of disabled people within our workforce.
Having said that, we are taking a very logical approach to increasing our statistics. We are looking at what others are doing. We’re working very closely with partners, we’re setting up committees that can ensure some real change, and we’re working with our management teams so that they are sensitized and that they make real concerted efforts to hire people with disabilities. Thank you.
I thank the Minister for the answer and I understand that, again, as I say, I know that change takes time and I guess to the Minister’s comment that I’d have a problem with self-identification, I do, but I think perhaps we’re on opposite sides of the fence on what the problem may be. If we look at .4 percent of our workforce as being persons with disabilities and if we consider that it is the policy of this government that our workforce should represent our general population, we should, therefore, have about 15 percent of our workforce be persons with disabilities. So the Minister says we’ve had an increase, and yes, I agree, but a .2 percent increase is not enough.
Yesterday the Minister talked about the strategic plan and goal number two. I’d like to know from the Minister how the Employability Working Group and the actions that it has done go toward the accomplishment of goal number two of the 20/20 brilliant plan. Thank you.
I’ll just clarify that I think our objectives are the same when it comes to increasing the employability of people with disabilities and, again, you know, somebody said there’s statistics, damn lies, but I’m probably misquoting it.
The statistics, if you look at the workforce for the Northwest Territories, it should be around 8 percent, and I think that’s something we can probably reach agreement around what percentage we should be working towards. But nevertheless, I think what we’re setting in place with the Employability Working Group with looking at best practices with sensitivity training, working with groups that directly work with persons with disabilities, I think we will identify different jobs that could be made available and then we would identify people that could step into those jobs. So I think that’s where we see us going forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, I appreciate that the department is doing things. What the department is doing is long term and it’s not going to assist us right now in increasing the percentage of persons with disabilities in our workforce.
I talked yesterday about priority lists. I’d like to ask the Minister what priority does he put on the increasing of persons with disabilities in our workforce. Thank you.
Thank you. I could answer that and give my own opinion, but this is a government and we deal with the government policies. So right now, P1s, or affirmative actions, are the top priority. P2s, people that have lived more than half their lives in the Northwest Territories, are second priorities, and then we have P3s. I think that what we’re reviewing is what would it take to give persons with disabilities a higher priority in our Affirmative Action Policy, and that’s what we would be looking at. We are looking at ways and then, at that point, we would bring it back to see if we could change our policy. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.
