Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. Will the Minister provide an update on the how-to booklet and the number of community visits that have been completed to date? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. The honourable Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Member for his questions. We have two booklets we are going to be producing in relation to the harvest of morel mushrooms. The first will be an information brochure, which will be targeted to community leaders, educators, Aboriginal organizations, associations, government departments and the general public. The brochure will offer readers information on the harvest of morel mushrooms. The brochure will be published and distributed through our regional offices at ITI and also through ENR regional offices and be made available on both department websites.
The second document will involve the production of a how-to pocketsize booklet aimed at harvesters. There will be three separate booklets prepared, one for each region, North Slave, South Slave and the Deh Cho. The booklets will be region-specific in terms of information and emergency contacts with a map of the burn areas in each region. The North Slave booklet will speak to the Tlicho Final Agreement and the need to ensure harvesters gain the appropriate authorizations in order to harvest on Tlicho land. The booklets will provide at-a-glance instruction about morel mushrooms, where to find them, what they look like, maps of the burn areas, harvesting methodology, harvester/buyer interaction, tools and equipment needed and what to watch out for. I know the Member mentioned bears earlier. Certainly bear safety is something people should be aware of.
The target audience, of course, is the harvesters. Production will be in the range of 1,500 to 2,000 coloured booklets. Again, they will be distributed through ITI regional offices and also regional offices of Environment and Natural Resources. Thank you.
It’s been suggested by a person that has experienced the mushroom harvest last year that this initiative could be a great investment by this government and that similar policy initiatives and programs could be very similar to the Grubstake Program. The mushroom harvest is potentially a multi-million dollar industry.
Does the Minister have specific strategies that would assist Aboriginal governments to capitalize on this economic opportunity? Mahsi.
We certainly understand the benefit of supporting the morel mushroom harvest in the Northwest Territories. Everyone knows what a horrendous fire season the Northwest Territories endured last summer. This year we are going to have a real good crop of morel mushrooms. We are planning community visits in the South Slave coming up starting next week. We’ll be at the Hay River Reserve February 23rd, in Hay River in the evening of February 23rd, Fort Resolution on the evening of the 24th, Fort Smith on February 25th, Enterprise on February 26th and Kakisa on February 27th. We are also hoping to get into other communities in the South Slave and North Slave. In addition to that we’re also going to be conducting walking workshops. When the season does open for morels, we will have guided trips into the burn area, so we can bring people in and show them how to harvest morel mushrooms for themselves. Thank you.
Can the Minister let us know if any follow up has happened to ensure that buyers have a business licence? Is the government adequately equipped and staffed to provide this oversight? Mahsi.
In order to conduct business in the Northwest Territories, legally they are required to have a business licence to carry out business or business pursuits in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At the last discussions I had with the Minister in this House, the Minister had indicated that travel will be done either through the Minister’s office or his officials in the communities. It’s quite surprising those visits haven’t been done. The other point I want to make leading up to my final supplementary is that no strategies should entail in terms of how is it communities will be in a position to take advantage of this opportunity that’s going to happen this summer. Last year Trout River and Jean Marie River areas saw lots of people go into the communities.
Has there been a report done in terms of the experiences we have had and how have we learned from that? Mahsi.
I’m certain that regional offices in the Deh Cho had prepared reports. I could try to get a copy of the report that was prepared by the regional office. One of the clear messages that we have to send to these guys if they come back up next summer is we are going to have to try to get an able-bodied workforce here in the Northwest Territories from our communities that can go out and harvest morel mushrooms. They can leave their pickers at home because we should have pickers here in the Northwest Territories that can go out and get the work and make the money themselves, and those pickers can stay down south. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions today for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. There is a lot going on at Education, Culture and Employment these days, lots of change, lots of action plans, and as part of the Early Childhood Development Action Plan, last week the Minister made a statement and he announced the start of a wage supplement program. He told us about the program last year, and according to the Minister’s statement, the first payments of the wage supplement were made on February 13th, so just last Friday.
Daycares and preschools struggle to make ends meet. My questions go to the Minister. I would like to know how the department arrived at the amount of the wage subsidy that they are giving out to the ECE staff. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. When we first introduced the grant, the staff grant with the stakeholders across the Northwest Territories, we did our research. We found out that we have one of the lowest paid workers, early childhood workers across the Northwest Territories. We want to give them incentives for them to pursue higher education, even as far as certification, diploma degrees and even masters’ programs so they can come back to our organizations and work for us. We wanted to provide some incentives, so we have had research done and talked to a number of stakeholders. Those are the results we came to from input from the general public. Mahsi.
I hope the Minister was stating or suggesting that he did some consultation with daycares and with preschools in order to try to arrive at a reasonable figure. The fact that we have the lowest paid early childhood educator workers suggests to me that we have daycares and preschools that struggle to make ends meet.
So I’d like to ask the Minister, second of all, the Minister seemed to indicate, and I think he indicated in his statement that this grant or this subsidy, whatever you want to call it, has to go directly to the staff person. Does it go there and does it have to go there? Thank you.
Yes, that is part of the plan. The staff grant will go directly to the staff. As you know, some of the staff have worked over 20-plus years. This will be an incentive for them to be more committed and further their education if they want to. We provide the incentive for them primarily focusing in those areas. We provide the funding directly to the staff so there’s no implication on organizations, whether it is expenditures or budget planning process. This has been already indicated. We spoke with numerous workers, as well, and they are fully aware that this money is available to them. It’s based on applications and we’ve received a majority of applications already and we initiated some of the payments last week. We will continue to do that, Mr. Speaker. Mahsi.
Thanks to the Minister. So, you know, we are now adding some to the wages to some of the early childhood educators and that’s a great thing. If we have the lowest paid workers, we really ought to be doing something to increase their pay. But I’d like to know from the Minister how that is intended to assist daycares in their overall expenses. I don’t believe there’s been an increase in the daily subsidy to daycares for quite some time.
So I’d like to ask the Minister, how does assisting the workers with their wages help the daycare with their costs of running their business, and when was the last time there was any kind of an increase in the daily subsidy? Thank you.
As I stated, we’ve done a variety of research across the North. That also includes the daycare operators and early childhood workers as well. Based on the results that came back… We provide funding to the daycare operators, whether it be the mortgage, whether it be other areas of subsidy for them to operate, whether it be day homes, even at daycare facilities.
The early childhood workers, as I stated earlier, are one of the lowest paid wages across the country but more so in the Northwest Territories, and this is one way of attracting more individuals to pursue early childhood worker programming to develop in those areas. That’s the very reason why we’ve initiated the staff grant programming for this particular area. Mahsi.
Thank you Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Speaker. I’ll repeat the question that I just asked the Minister. When was the last time that the daily subsidy for daycares and preschools was increased? Thank you.
I was going through my notes; I don’t have that specific detailed information. I will provide that to the Member. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s been raised many times in this House about vacancies and the percentage now. The percentage is a number that moves back and forth, but we’ve agreed that in some form or fashion the government usually has about a 15 percent vacancy. It’s gone down to 13 but it’s gone as high as 16. So if we even take 15 percent, that’s 735 people not staffed at any one particular time in the Government of the Northwest Territories. So as we hire one, we lose one. It’s rote rolling, and to give you an illustration of that figure so I can get to my question, that’s approximately $60 million of human resource money at any one time that isn’t being tapped into because it’s waiting for someone to be hired because someone has gone out.
So, speaking to that money and how it was important for me to illustrate that was, how does the government track that money that isn’t being attached to or following any particular human person being paid through the human resource process, because we should really drill down to this actual dollar amount that isn’t being used properly. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. The responsibility of the budgets lies with the various deputy ministers for each of their own departments. The vacancy is across the government. It is a reality of the public service right across the country. We do have a bit of a higher vacancy rate, I would say, than some of the other jurisdictions, but it’s fairly even with the smaller jurisdictions across the country. So, we don’t consider it to be anything unusual, but we are working with the vacancy report to ensure that we are actively looking at the vacancy report as we’re trying to fill the positions in the various departments. Thank you.
So if we had almost $60 million floating around in the bureaucracy in some form or fashion that’s never being tapped into, does Human Resources not have a policy about how money should be spent? So in other words, if money is dedicated, passed through the budget process in this very Assembly for human resource dollars, do we not have a policy that ensures it is spent only on human resource dollars? Thank you.
Again, the responsibility lies with each department; however, there has been some progress. In the last vacancy report as of April, we had we had over 1,200 vacant positions in the various categories. Actually, there are 11 different categories that we look at for the vacancies, and the last report as of October was just over 1,000, 1,038.
Many of the functions where we have difficulty recruiting full-time, we do hire casuals. We have, as of the snapshot on October 31, 2014, we were carrying about 183 casuals across the government. As the Member indicated in the Member’s statement, we are trying to fill 466 positions and there are other inactive positions, as well, that have a fairly significant number.
I asked about a policy that redirected human resource money to other functions and I didn’t get an answer, so I will assume we don’t have one.
Wouldn’t it be in the interests of the Department of Human Resources to track this additional money because it would lend the argument to the government knowing what type of money it has and its availability to spend on human resources, and it could give the membership of this Assembly, the MLAs the opportunity to talk about redirecting it as training money to help build strengths and competencies for these types of vacancies. Would that not sound reasonable?
The government does try to fill all of the positions. Sometimes the money for positions – and it’s not a whole lot of positions – does get used for other O and M requirements. It’s not like it’s wide open that the Ministers or deputy ministers can move money around from out of the O and M fund for salaries back and forth. It’s targeted for that and we try our best to fill those particular positions. Like the Member indicated, there are about 500 positions coming and going out of the public service on an annual basis and the rest of the vacancies are in other categories that are being filled by casual or inactive positions, for the most part.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister had mentioned how some of the money migrates into O and M and, frankly, this is concerning because I’m trying to find ways that we can either turn these empty jobs into training opportunities where we find ways to find folks or even evaluate them through the decentralization policy to find out if that makes sense.
Would the Minister be willing to see if he can help calculate and capture an actual real dollar amount of the money that is not directly being spent on human resource money through the normal staffing of positions so we can get a grip on this dollar amount so we can find a better way to ensure that we’re hiring people not just in the capital here but throughout the Northwest Territories? It’s job money. That’s what it was intended for. Can he do that?
Human Resources does work with other departments. We have a program now where we were anticipating filling quite a few of the positions in the departments called the Regional Recruitment Program, which is essentially a training program where an individual doesn’t meet all of their tasks, a candidate doesn’t meet all the tasks or functions of the job that are necessary to complete the job can be put into a regional recruitment position and then within that position they would get the training necessary to get them to a fully functioning position.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I still have a few follow-up questions on Bill 44 and the Hay River Health Authority, how it’s being implemented. The first question that I have is: Is it the department’s intent to move forward on Bill 44 with or without the Hay River authority becoming GNWT employees?
Mr. Bouchard, the bill is currently before standing committee right now, so could you redirect your question to the Minister or reword. Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question. Is the Minister willing to come to Hay River to discuss how the Hay River authority could become GNWT employees?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Mr. Abernethy.
I guess the question is: When would the Minister be coming down to Hay River to discuss this issue?
After session.
I guess the question is: How do I support Bill 44 if I can’t ask the Minister how the Hay River Health Authority is going to be implemented? I guess my question is: Is there a framework that will be implemented to structure Hay River Health Authority in before or after the bill?
The bill actually allows us the flexibility to roll in Hay River. Whether it’s all up front or whether we transition it over a time, the bill actually gives us the freedom to roll it in.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations questions. I listened with interest as the Minister talked about the Metis people organizations in the Northwest Territories. The Premier mentioned $20,000 to the Metis organizations.
Can the Premier inform the House as to how many Metis organizations have received this $20,000 and what is the $20,000 for, for these Metis organizations?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
