Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. We will resume with the people who were on the list to make general comments. First I have Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have a few comments to make. Over the last couple of years in the Health department, with the closing of Nats’ejee K’eh we have seen a lot of programs in our territory diminish. I haven’t seen the latest stats on how many people are actually going south for treatment, but there is a high demand up in the Beaufort-Delta for on-the-land programs which were promised, but as of today I believe there is only one program offered over the last year. There has to be more done in that department.
Also, under lowering the cost of living, it is good to see some funds going towards that but a good example is fuel prices. All over Canada, anywhere from $1.03 and lower, yet up in our smaller communities like Tsiigehtchic, Fort MacPherson and Aklavik we are still paying $1.86 per litre. There is something wrong with that picture. I don’t think the cost of transportation is that much. All over Canada, lower prices, except in the Arctic or Beaufort-Delta. That needs to be addressed.
Also, the same thing with the cost of food. It is almost double what it is here in Yellowknife. It’s $8 for one litre in Tsiigehtchic. I hope as we move forward we address that. Also, in moving forward, I hope we can improve the services that we do deliver throughout the communities. A good initiative is the government service officers, as mentioned earlier today. It’s really a big help to the community residents, and I hope to see that move forward.
Also, under the economy, it’s good to see the Inuvik-Tuk highway going forward and creating a lot of employment, but it’s sort of seasonal too. Over the summer months it’s pretty quiet in the communities and hopefully within the next month here we do hear more on the Building Canada Plan, but we need a lot more work in our territory. It was mentioned here, the Fibre Optic Link moving forward. That’s great. Also, with the hydro, hopefully one day in my lifetime I can see hydro going all the way up to Inuvik and further. If it could be done in the Yukon, I don’t see why it can’t be done here in the territory.
With that, I just had a few brief comments I wanted to share.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. General comments. Next I have Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to correct an impression that I apparently perplexed both the Minister and the Premier with. I have been commenting that the science shows we cannot pursue the exploitation of our fossil fuel reserves in the Northwest Territories as a cornerstone of an economic development strategy. Both this Minister and the Premier are, unintentionally I am sure, misconstruing this comment to say that I want a faster shift to renewable energy. I think we all want a faster shift to renewable energy but that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying we cannot build our economy on fossil fuels that science shows we must leave in the ground.
Currently, of course, we import all our fossil fuels, essentially exclusively, so yes, we do need to shift to renewable resources and get off those, but if at the same time the government pushes the extraction of our fossil fuels, the most emissions intensive source of energy in the world, according to the science, which we know must stay in the ground just to avoid dangerous levels of climate change, and of course, we are taking one step forward and three steps back and shooting ourselves in the foot, so stop pursuing fossil fuel development. Although it’s not focused on a lot in this budget because there is very little activity, we’re still spending a lot of money pursuing this, including about $5 million in this budget that could, in fact, given the science, be put in to developing a sound economy that actually is sustainable and provides a healthy future for us as opposed to the one contemplated with the pursuit of fossil fuels that we know should stay in the ground.
I’d welcome the Minister’s more informed response, but I just wanted to clarify that both the Premier and the Minister have been misconstruing that comment into wanting to go faster and faster, and they’re espousing all the great things that we’re doing and our Arctic Energy Alliance and our own government shift to renewable energy, which I appreciate, but that’s not relevant to the comment I am making.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Any further general comments? Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a few comments. I made some last week, and I will repeat some of them because I think they bear repeating, and there are a few other things about the budget that I would just like to highlight.
I said last week that I am quite concerned that we are going to spend ourselves into a corner, into hot water, I think I said last week. We seem to produce money out of thin air sometimes. Admittedly, we can borrow money, but borrowing costs money, and at some point in time – and we’ve been talking about this for a number of years and we don’t seem to achieve it – we have to get our revenues to equal our expenditures, and we’re not doing that. We keep spending. We get a little bit more money from the federal government and we spend it. We have done very little, in my mind, to reduce our expenditures.
Passive restraint has been something which the government has been using as sort of a cost-saving measure for the last several years, and I don’t think it has been all that effective. As an example, not necessarily in terms of spending but from the time that we discussed the business plans in the fall and to the time that we see the numbers in the budget that we have before us, there was an increase of, I forget now what the number was, but it was a fairly large increase in our budget, many millions of dollars. It seems that whenever the government needs to spend money, they just kind of find it. We, unfortunately, on this side of the House, though, when we want to spend money, there’s never any money available. I have a bit of a difficulty with that contradiction where no, we have no money to spend when talking to Regular Members but then if the government needs money, well, they just find it, and I think we need to rein in that kind of thinking.
Although it’s a capital project, I am concerned about the Stanton Hospital Renovation and Renewal Project. It’s going to be a huge drain on our resources. It’s some $35 million a year, and I can’t remember the length of the contract. If we do a P3 project, it’s going to be a huge drawdown every year for many, many years. I think there is a need for us to consider whether or not a P3 is the right way to go. I’ve mentioned this before, but I feel it needs mentioning again because that $35 million a year amount that we’re going to have to pay, that’s going to be in our operations budget in the future. I think it probably is going to be cheaper for us to do it ourselves. I realize that there are issues with that because we don’t have the borrowing room in order to borrow, but I think we have to seriously consider whether or not a P3 is the right way to go. I don’t think that it is. I think there are an awful lot of examples of P3 projects, particularly involving hospitals, which have not been all that positive.
I see that this budget doesn’t address the need for alternative energy enough. I know there’s some money in here to develop alternative energy projects and to look at it, but I don’t think it’s enough, and I think we have to be spending far more. We should put a greater priority and should be spending far more time and energies on energy. One of the things which drive me crazy is that some six years ago now, I think, there was a trip to Europe. Members came back and said that district biomass heating systems, heat and power systems were in use in Europe, they were readily available and that they would adapt quite easily to the North. We have yet to see one in the North, and there is absolutely no reason why we could not have in the past six years developed a pilot project.
I am glad to see that we have started to record environmental liabilities in a financial sense. We’ve started, but I think we have a long way to go and I don’t think we have yet, in our budget, reached the appropriate number to properly handle environmental liabilities. I don’t think we know. I know we don’t know because we haven’t been able to monitor all the sites yet, but I don’t think we have any idea of how much the environmental liabilities are that we’re going to be on the hook for and that’s pretty important.
I am particularly concerned about junior kindergarten and the fact that there is no new money in this budget for junior kindergarten. I think it’s an unfair drain on the larger school authorities and school districts. If we’re going to put a new program in place, if it’s going to be a new initiative, then we ought to fund it properly, and we’re not doing that.
Lastly, I wanted to just comment on, sort of, the perilous situation that we’re in, in regard to our land and the drought and the impending fire season, which is not all that far away, unfortunately. We could quite seriously be in the same situation in July and August that we were in in 2014; 2015 could be a repeat fire year. Again, it’s going to have an impact on our budget. It’s not something that we’ve budgeted for, so we’re going to be having extraordinary expenditures again, and it goes just to my view that we are planning but we’re not planning to meet our expenditures I guess. We’re not planning to reduce our expenditures; we’re not planning for a rainy day to a certain extent.
Two other things and then I’m done. One of them is the Minister has stated that we are going to have flat revenue growth. He has stated it quite often and I appreciate that. I know that our revenues go up and down and they are at the whim of forces that we can’t control. However, I think we need to spend; we need to put a lot more emphasis on finding a new revenue source than we do. We have for every year since I’ve been here said no, no new revenue source, no new taxes, no new levies, nothing. All we’ve done is to increase. I think we have increased the fees, we’ve increased our sin taxes and I think that’s about what we’ve done. Maybe put an increase of inflation on some of our fees for licences and so on. That’s not enough. We need a revenue source that is going to enable us to do the many big projects that we think we need to do.
Lastly, I mentioned last week and I have to mention it again, and that’s the strategy or the plan by the government to bring new residents into the territory. We have yet to see any evidence of that strategy on paper. The Minister has talked about it a number of times, there have been questions; however, I haven’t seen anything. If there is something on paper, if there’s a strategy that we can look at I certainly would love to see it as I think other Members would like to see it as well. So it concerns me that we are “doing stuff” as the Minister stated in answer to some questions last week, but it just sounds like talking into the wind and I have yet to see any concrete evidence that what the government is doing is going to pan out and get us more residents. So I’d love to see what the plan is for the next four years, apart from what we’ve done in the last year. I want to know what we’re going to be doing as we go ahead.
So, some comments, Madam Chair. I think that’s it. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Any further general comments? Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Madam Chair. We appreciate the comments from the Members in regard to the lowering of the cost of living, which would be a way of improving services. We are very committed to that. I’ve indicated now quite a number of times, as we look at our borrowing limit we need to make these critical investments that are going to help us lower the cost of living and there are a couple of things that we can do and we are focusing on those. One is the cost of energy generation and look at how we do business. The other one is critical infrastructure that promotes economic development like the Tibbitt-Contwoyto conversion from the ice road to an all-weather road, the next leg of the Wrigley to Norman Wells road where we know that there’s going to be a way to help pay this with industry but also promote activity that will expand our economic base.
When Member Bisaro says we need more revenue, the implication tends to be most immediately is somehow we should raise taxes. We’re saying that we already have the highest cost of living in the country, that we are far better off to make critical economic infrastructure investments that will help grow our economic base, promote more employment and more wealth, put people to work, more money in the economy. So we believe we can do that. We have started that and we have to continue to work at that.
In regard to the issue of wanting to see more, specifically the significant number of activities that we have underway in regard to the growing the population by 2,000 in four years, I’ll commit to the Members that we will have a document for them that pulls together all the pieces of work that have been underway over the last year and we’ll have that probably by sometime before the end of April, the beginning of May. There is a significant amount of work that has been going on that we believe will bear fruit, that the first year was a foundational year as we got ourselves organized and looked through the things we need to do both with industry and chamber as well as internally to government. How do we improve how we do business and take advantage of some of the federal changes to the immigrant Nominee Program that Minister Lafferty will be speaking to in the coming weeks?
In regard to Mr. Bromley’s comment, just to clarify that we were not misunderstanding his point. I think both the Premier and I understood the Member’s concern about any future development of fossil fuel should cease and desist, and what I would suggest to the Member is that that is a very fundamental policy decision. That’s a policy decision for this Legislature to discuss and weigh in on and pass judgment on. I don’t think it would be appropriate at this juncture just for the government to stand up and say it’s no longer going to have anything to do with the development of the fossil fuel reserves in our jurisdiction without a thorough conversation about that, and I think that has yet to take place. I appreciate the Member’s concern about greenhouse gases, which we share, and the millions that we’re spending on alternative energy to cut our costs and limit our reliance on fossil fuels, but in the meantime my suggestion would be that’s the type of very fundamental policy debate that a Legislature should have and see if there is a consensus that can be reached on that issue, especially given the fact that we have a consensus government.
There was a comment by Ms. Bisaro about no money for MLAs, but when the government wants to spend money it finds it. I can only assume that, if I can use the example of fire season and low water that yes, we found the money, short-term borrowing. We had an emergency response, catastrophic events happening on the fire front, and as I’ve repeatedly reassured Northerners, we’re not going to ground our planes and confine our firefighters to barracks because they have expended their budget. This is a very, very critical issue and what governments are supposed to do: protect their citizens, protect the infrastructure and protect the land to the greatest extent possible and values at risk. Same with the low water. We made a conscious decision that this was a worthwhile investment to keep our costs down so it’s not transferred to the power rates and we put that money on the table as a contribution.
All of us, MLAs and government together, know that we have and we’ve been struggling with our funds. We’ve listened to Mr. Dolynny’s top 10, the issues about the cliff and flat tires and shooting caribou and all of the other eight things that he mentioned about the budget top 10 in his mind. So there are money issues, but yes, for emergencies, to protect our people, we will put the resources to use and if we have to borrow it, we will, and we’ll do the same again this summer if we have to. We want people to be reassured that they’re not going to be left defenseless in any event.
The P3 projects we will determine. The final determination on the P3 projects will be made once the proposals are in. We will determine the costs, we will look at the value, we will look at is it a renovation. Is one of the proponents going to propose a brand new building on a different site that would meet the size increases, the program increases for the same kind of money that we have budgeted for the renovation? We’ll have to see. The P3 is being looked at because we’re obligated to under our own policies and directions from the Legislature and strong push from the Members and we want to see if there is value
Yes, there are examples where things haven’t worked well, but there are probably as many or more examples of P3s that have worked well, both in Canada and I was just looking at a report from things that have happened in Australia and a countrywide review that was done there. So, that final decision has yet to be made.
In regards to district heating, yes, folks went to Europe and they took a look where the average mean temperature was somewhere… In the wintertime it was like minus 6. We have one very clear experience with district heating and that’s in Inuvik. Madam Groenewegen will remember, as do I, the heated debate, as it were, that took place over the High Temperature Hot Water System in Inuvik. I know how incredibly expensive it was, so much so that everybody, including the government, walked away from it and, finally, NTPC. So technology has improved. I just think we have to look very carefully. It’s not a direct line comparison between what may be done in Sweden and what may be done in a place where today it was, I think, 45 below when I was walking to work. I froze my face in about five minutes. So it’s not something that’s been totally ruled out but we should just recognize that.
The issue of the very specific issues related to health and education I will leave for the Ministers to answer to the Members when they come before the House.
Finally, just to reiterate that we are very committed to expanding our revenues, and our focus is on, once again, creating conditions that are going to foster, encourage and promote economic development that’s broadening our economic base; look at recruiting our own students to a greater extent; look at maximizing all the opportunities that are going to come to us under the new Nominee Program to be able to get workers up here, and their families, within a six-month period; work with industry and encourage them to be like Dominion Diamonds and take the incentives for travelling, flying in, flying out, off the table and see what happens and we will pull that all together, Madam Chair, and we will provide that in the form of a more permanent longer term strategy as we go forward here to look at making the reality out of that decision to expand our population by 2,000 in now four years. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Any further general comments? No further general comments. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the Minister’s response and will look forward to him leading that debate on leaving fossil fuels in the ground and also sort of explaining to me – I’m just looking for the common sense here – about how we’re struggling so hard to get our relatively modest energy demands into renewable energy away from fossil fuels while we’re pushing to develop fossil fuels as fast as we can to feed whole nations and generate greenhouse gas emissions that are off the charts compared to the per capita consumption here. So I would appreciate that and I’ll look forward to the debate.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. I do not see any further general comments. Thank you. I`ll ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to please escort the witness from the Chamber.
If committee is ready, we will commence with the Department of Human Resources. We would ask the Minister if he would like to please bring his opening remarks. Minister Beaulieu.
I am pleased to present the 2015-2016 Main Estimates for the Department of Human Resources. Overall, the department’s estimates propose an increase of $688,000, or 2.9 percent, over the 2014-2015 Main Estimates. These estimates continue to support the objectives of limiting expenditure growth in order to sustain the long-term sustainability of the fiscal framework.
Highlights of the proposed estimates include:
the decentralization of a web technologies specialist position from headquarters to Fort Simpson;
the addition of one new position to help us meet our French language services obligations; and
in our role as a corporate service provider, $4.7 million, or 19 percent of the Department’s 2015-2016 funding, is allocated for direct support to departments and agencies through programs to address hiring, development and well-being of GNWT employees. This investment and support also ensures we connect with northern residents to fill our job opportunities.
The proposed Department of Human Resources’ estimates continue to support the priorities of the 17th Assembly. Specific activities in support of these priorities include:
The Department of Human Resources will lead the development of a human resource management accountability framework to align the GNWT with modern best practices globally in human resource management.
This framework will continue to move the GNWT towards the goals and objectives of 20/20: A Brilliant North, the NWT Public Service Strategic Plan.
The accountability framework is a strategic tool that supports a modern high-performing public service by maximizing the value of the workforce and developing people’s potential to achieve the strategic goals of the GNWT.
It is fundamental to guiding sound human resource management decisions. It establishes the supporting structure to set clear roles and responsibilities and reasonable performance expectations based on legislation, policy and regulations and recognized best practices in human resource management.
It also establishes a foundation for continuous improvement and performance measurement to monitor progress, measure results, perform evaluations and adjust to improve strategic outcomes.
It is anticipated the framework will have a positive impact on the GNWT’s efficiency and effectiveness of business processes by reducing time and maximizing effort spent on human resource management.
A focus on risk will also help prioritize efforts. Measuring return on investment will also help communicate the positive impact of Department of Human Resources’ work on the organization and provide evidence of positive returns on investing in people and in Human Resource programs.
Developing a strategic business partnership with clients will be a primary focus of the department. Human Resources professionals will continue to add value to line managers in human resource planning and recruitment of a qualified and representative public service.
Through these modernization efforts, we will continue to build a diverse, competent and well-managed workforce, capable of and committed to delivering high quality services to the people of the Northwest Territories.
Madam Chair, that concludes my opening remarks. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. At this time I would like to ask the Minister if he would like to bring witnesses into the Chamber. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I would.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you. I’ll ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to please escort Mr. Beaulieu’s witnesses to the table.
For the record, Mr. Beaulieu, please introduce your witnesses.
Thank you, Madam Chair. To my right is Ms. Shirley Desjardins, deputy minister, Human Resources; and to my left, Ms. Michelle Beard, director, corporate affairs, Human Resources.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. General comments on Human Resources. First I have Mr. Blake, then I will go to Mr. Hawkins and Mr. Moses. Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a few concerns. As we move forward there are a number of positions that are not filled within the Mackenzie Delta riding. As we move forward this coming year, I would like to see all of those positions, if possible, filled. There are a number of people looking for work in the communities and I feel there is really no excuse for not filling those positions. If we try hard enough, I think we could accomplish that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. Next for general comments, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I was wondering if the Minister could speak to the number of vacancies we have within the public service at this particular time. Perhaps we can break it down into regions if possible. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. We will save that until we hear from three Members. We are doing general comments right now, and when we have heard from three Members we will turn it back to the Minister to respond to those three Members. Mr. Hawkins.
Sorry, Madam Chair. I thought we agreed this morning to use our time in a manner that made sense, where we could go back and forth with our 10 minutes.
Okay, understood, and if committee agrees with that process then, Mr. Hawkins, we will allow the Minister to respond to your question. Then I probably should have let the Minister respond to Mr. Blake immediately after his comments as well. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Perhaps what I will do is I will stand down and Mr. Blake should be able to finish his line. You are the chair, obviously. Can I stand down completely? I will start over and let Mr. Blake continue.
Thank you. Mr. Blake made comments and the Minister could respond to Mr. Blake’s comments at this time, please. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I will look for the officials to support me in this in a general response. Generally what we could respond to is, any vacancies that are in Human Resources, the Department of Human Resources, and then for the overall vacancies in the government, the various agencies, whether they be health authorities or the education authorities, we would need to have the vacancies responded to by the appropriate Minister. As far as the Department of HR goes, we have seven vacancies that we are currently in the process of staffing. Only two of those are in the region and five are in Yellowknife. Of the seven vacancies that are on the books now, two of them have been filled and the other five are in the process of being filled.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Anything further, Mr. Blake?
Thank you, Madam Chair. I was specifically talking to the Beaufort-Delta riding and the Mackenzie Delta riding. Yellowknife has hundreds, almost thousands of jobs and my main focus is up where it is really needed and that is in the smaller communities of the Mackenzie Delta riding. Thank you.
Again, as I indicated, that was the full sum of the vacancies in the Department of Human Resources. We could, I suppose, go through the detail on the rest. We do have a report on the rest of the vacancies for the rest of the departments, but to speak specifically on the processes that are going through, or the plan that the various departments have on filling those positions, I don’t have that information with me. Each department, again, is responsible for filling the vacancies. When I spoke about the seven vacancies, that is the full vacancy for the Department of Human Resources.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Next I will go to Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Maybe I will reword the questions, just so it is clearly asked and can be clearly answered. At this present moment, the Department of Human Resources issued a snapshot which I know they do on a regular basis. How many vacancies in the public service would be recognized in that snapshot? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The report that we do on a semi-annual basis indicates the vacancy rate and then breaks down which positions are true vacancies where we are attempting to fill the positions. We have 466 positions where we are actually in the process of recruiting. They are at advertisement or they are at the stage where we are preparing to advertise or they could be in the job offering stage after all of the interview processes have taken place. The vacancy rate, which includes positions that are inactive, positions that are filled by casuals and other positions, positions that have been held vacant for transfer assignments and so on, that actual number is 1,038 at this time.
Does the Department of Human Resources keep any statistics on southern versus what I would call northern hire? Thank you.
Yes, we do.
I would ask the Minister, could he elaborate a little more, such as some of the details that they keep?
It is indicated when we have job competitions, we ask for individuals to give their priority status for the competition. When we go out to job advertisement, individuals will indicate whether they are a priority 1 candidate, Aboriginal indigenous Northerner; or priority 2, non-Aboriginal indigenous Northerner; or priority 3, not having either of those two statuses. In reality, if an individual was here but did not attain any of those two statuses, they may consider themselves a resident of the NWT but would not achieve either of those two statuses or they would be in the same category as somebody that was hired directly from the south. So we have those statistics and we have the percentage in each of those statistics in the public service at this time.
In the last year is the Minister able to provide statistics on southern hire versus northern hire? Thank you.
We would have to do a manual count by department, so what happens with our reporting on PeopleSoft is that they give a snapshot in between from one report to the next, so for about a six-month period what it would show would be the change but it wouldn’t show the amount of people going in and out to actually create that change. It would show the new number at this point. In order for us to determine how many southerners we hired or non-priority candidates we were to hire in the GNWT versus priority 1 or priority 2 candidates, we would actually have to do a manual count department by department to be able to provide that information.
Would the Minister be able to epistolize that?
Did you say would he be able to crystalize that?
Epistolize. Write a letter. Respond in writing.
Thank you. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Madam Chair. We would be able to provide that in writing if the committee wished for us to provide that information in writing. We are also looking at creating a field in this report so that… Right now, this concentrates mostly on the vacancy rate. We’re working on creating a field in this report that would indicate overall which the candidates were, either a priority 1, 2 or 3. Just for more clarification, I would like to ask the deputy minister to add to that.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. Desjardins.
Thank you, Madam Chair. With our workforce planning we are looking at different fields to capture because we do need to identify where the migration of employment is. With our eRecruit system we will be looking at fields to differentiate whether they are northern hires or southern hires for stat purposes.
Thank you, Ms. Desjardins. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I wasn’t sure if the Minister was going to provide that in writing or not. He said if the committee wants that. This is very unusual, in my experience, that we now need the whole committee of the Assembly to request information. Is that the position of the Minister?
