Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions, as well, today are addressed to the Minister of Human Resources. I’d like to start off by asking him about an event that was held about two weeks ago, not that long ago. It was open houses that the Department of HR held in seven different communities across the NWT. I haven’t heard anything since they were held as to what sort of success there was from these open houses, what were the results of the initiative, so that’s my question to the Minister initially.
Were these open houses successful? Does he have any results that he can share with the House as to the success or failure of this initiative?
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; there were open houses held across the North, and the idea would be to try to provide information to individuals who are interested in coming to work for the Government of the Northwest Territories. I don’t have the matching amounts for the number of individuals that have come to the open houses and whether or not that resulted in us hiring more individuals as a result of the open houses. I know that it has been a good avenue for disseminating information from Human Resources and several departments that do participate to getting people in the communities who are trying to get work with the GNWT.
So far the information I’ve got is it’s been successful, but I don’t have the particular numbers on each of the open houses that results in actual people coming to work for the GNWT.
I look forward to seeing the numbers that the Minister can pull together at some point in time. I’m not surprised he doesn’t have them. It was only two weeks ago, after all.
We’ve held open houses or career fairs, job fairs, whatever you want to call them, in the South as well. I would like to know from the Minister, my understanding is that when we hold a career fair or a job fair in the South that the staff that are attending these fairs are able to offer a job on the spot to applicants who they think are credible and could take a job. I’d like to know from the Minister if I’m correct in that assumption, and if that’s the case, was the same ability given to staff at the career fairs or the open houses that we held in the NWT? Were they able to hire people on the spot?
We are looking at the hard-to-fill positions, as the Member refers to the open houses in the South. We are looking at jobs that have been vacant for at least 18 months and have been advertised at least two times in the North and still with no success of filling the positions. Now we are trying to develop a team that will go down there and make job offers on the spot in those hard-to-fill positions. In the NWT, our open houses, we’re not dealing with the same group of people. These jobs are not considered hard to fill. We will go through the regular process of the departments working with HR to go through the advertising process. The people who are attending the open houses do not have the authority to hire people on the spot at open houses in the NWT.
To the Minister: That’s rather unfortunate. We have so many jobs in the GNWT which are unfilled, whether they’re hard to fill or whether they’re just “regular jobs,” so I fail to understand why the department wouldn’t want to hire as many people as possible, fill as many positions as possible, particularly in the North, but whether they be hard to fill or not.
One of the things that we have heard much about but have yet to see written on paper is the Population Strategy that this government is working towards bringing 2,000 bodies to the NWT to try and beef up our population.
I’d like to know what the Department of Human Resources is doing. What is their part in this Population Strategy to contribute to bring more residents to the territory?
The Department of Human Resources works with all of the departments and we are thinking that reducing the vacancy rate is something that will increase the population in the Northwest Territories. I referred earlier on in my response to hard-to-fill positions that where we will be actively trying to hire individuals from the South and giving the people the ability to hire on the spot. In those positions we’re expecting to increase the population by that.
As far as vacancies go, a year ago we had over 1,100, well, 1,175 vacancies six months ago. We’re down to 1,038 vacancies, and today we’re at 917 vacancies. Each time we do a vacancy we actively try to reduce the amount of vacant positions in the GNWT, and I think that we’re being fairly successful.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. I totally agree. It seems like a no-brainer that reducing the vacancy rate is going to bring more people to the Northwest Territories. But I guess I would like to know from the Minister, if we’re trying to reduce our vacancy rate – and I have to say, I have to give credit to the department for reducing the vacancies by 200 or so, as the Minister mentioned – or we’re trying to fill jobs, why would we not, at these open houses, albeit we’re giving out info, but why would we not give our staff the ability to hire on the spot to fill as many jobs as possible with Northerners?
To give them the authority to hire at the open houses within the Northwest Territories would not really be something that would be necessary. That’s the reason we’re not doing it. We could look at talking to departments that may want to go there and be prepared to look at applicants of certain positions that they may talk about in the open houses. But at this point we find that the departments are being relatively successful in trying to reduce the vacancy rates and do the hiring using the current method of how we are hiring people in the Northwest Territories. For that reason we had not contemplated the idea that individuals who are attending the open houses, we had the ability to hire on the spot.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
