Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I was trying to highlight some concerns regarding some of the penalties and the reporting under our WSCC requirements. It’s my belief that the GNWT should be considered a gold standard when we consider reporting on this particular legislation, regulations and guidelines which are, in essence, the ones we drafted up. So being late is certainly no excuse. Late fees should be filed without being late. In other words, late fees shouldn’t be the disturbing trend as they are. We have dozens and dozens of incidences and, as I have highlighted, thousands of dollars are going out the door needlessly.
My question is for the Minister of Human Resources. What is he doing with this particular information that we put together that draws out the disturbing trend of late fees and the penalties associated with it?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The data that was provided actually came from the WSCC. They are the ones who actually track all the clients’ costs and claims incidences.
With respect to late fees for late filing of incidents, I share the Member’s concerns completely. When I saw that data, the first thing I did was direct the department to start digging in to find out why we are late, because it seems to me that we should never be late. That information hasn’t been fully compiled. Once I have that information, I will share that with the Member and committee. I would like an opportunity to sit down and brief committee on some of the data that has been provided and I will be following up in that as well.
With respect to the late fees, one thing that has already come in so far is that many of our employees who work shiftwork may be injured on a weekend or after regular hours. If somebody happens to be injured on a Friday and they don’t submit until Monday, we the government, would be assessed a late fee. We need to find ways to streamline our applications or notifications of injuries straight into the WSCC so we don’t get any more of these late fines.
I agree with the Member completely; this is something that we need to address. We should never be in a situation where we have to pay late fines for late notification. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, with the alarming trends that point towards many claim costs, one particular envelope seems to be – I wouldn’t describe them as the shining example – the one we should be asking ourselves tough questions on what they are doing. The area I am speaking about is the health envelope. They represent 50 percent of the claims, 45 percent of the late filing penalty claims, as well as the overall cost to the claims under the WSCC.
With the trend of the health envelope being the worst offender on all three accounts, what is the Minister for Human Resources doing to help pull up the socks of the GNWT so we comply with these regulations that are our own? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the health and social services system represents approximately one-third of the GNWT public service. So it’s not that surprising that we have a proportionately high number of claims in that area. Front-line workers are in high-risk business, operating 24/7, and front-line staff may incur physical injury when they are lifting or moving patients.
The Department of Human Resources is a shared service provider and we provide support, guidance and advice to assist departments in improving their health and safety practices within all departments, boards and agencies. However, individual departments are responsible for ensuring that their workplaces comply with health and safety standards.
The Department of Human Resources is leading the development and implementation of a GNWT Occupational Health and Safety Program that will cover all the key elements of a successful Occupational Health and Safety Program, including training, incident management, preparing for emergencies and managing hazards. So we are working with the departments to help them strengthen their own programs and services in the area of occupational health and safety. Thank you.
Again, one of the clear results that are being demonstrated by the trends, now I emphasize if you look at one department by itself, it may not stand out, but when you put them all together, it shows significant frequency of behaviour.
What is the Minister of Human Resources going to do on our leadership perspective to sew the departments together to ensure we are complying with, a) the filing requirements, and b) we’re working for a safer work environment, because that fight needs to be relentless? Thank you.
Thank you. We obviously want a safe work environment. The last thing we want to do is see workers get injured.
With respect to health and social services, the three health and social services authorities with the large number of claims, Stanton, Beaufort-Delta and Fort Smith, have acute care facilities that have successfully passed an accreditation review by Accreditation Canada. So those require them to have certain practices in place to assist, avoid injury.
But there are a couple of other things. Although we see significant value in the intent of the Safe Advantage program, we do have some concerns. One of the concerns that we have is based on the Q1 performance update for the 2012 balanced scorecard of the WSCC’s website, their target for a loss of time claims per 100 is at 2.42 claims per 100 losses. The GNWT right now, with respect to time lost, is at 1.8. So although we exceed what the WSCC is suggesting that all employers are at, we continue to get some fines under the Safe Advantage program.
We agree with the intent, we know that we need to continue to do work, we want no claims, but we do have some concerns about the Safe Advantage program. But with respect to our workers, we continue to work with them. We will put programs in place and we will reduce claims over time. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When reviewing the WSCC claims cost summary, it’s become more than evident that the claim costs from 2009 tend to increase into 2010. They further increase in 2011 and they’re even at the same numbers as of September for basically on average for 2012, and 2012 is not finished.
With thousands upon hundreds of thousands of dollars going out the door because of compensation for medical, rehabilitation, pension and overall compensation, what brakes and alarms are being sounded on this particular issue? Are brakes being pulled? Are alarms going off? How is the government stopping this disturbing trend that puts workers’ lives at significant risk? Thank you.
Thank you. Just for clarity, the vast portion of claims where there are claims cost or salary, the Government of the Northwest Territories from 2009 to 2012 has had about a 6 percent increase in salary. So even if our claims stayed the number, our costs would go up.
We are working with individual departments. The Department of HR, as I indicated, is working on Occupational Health and Safety programming that can be implemented by the departments. The individual departments have some responsibility in that area and we continue to work with them.
By way of example, the Department of Justice is one of the other departments I happen to be responsible for. It’s also a department with significantly high claims. We have identified specific staff within that department to actually dig deep into why these types of things are happening in the Department of Justice in our correctional facilities and come up with some recommendations and ways that we can actually reduce the number of claims within the Department of Justice. So other departments are doing the same types of things. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
