Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to say how glad I am to see the senior Indigenous patient advocate finally advertised. This is a position that the Regular Members raised during the budget process, the previous budget process, as a need for this territory.
Mr. Speaker, I also want to point out that this position has been evaluated at a pay range that is not an entry level position, which is excellent, and that the screening criteria is not adding unnecessary barriers like degrees and masters but recognizing experience and lived experience. And I am sure we will get some excellent candidates in this role, in these roles.
Mr. Speaker, this brings me to think about how all our job descriptions in the GNWT are in desperate need to be reevaluated and updated to remove unnecessary barriers that are put into them. I also believe that there needs to be more emphasis put into cultural and lived experience, especially in areas like health, education, justice, child and family services. They need services counted as experience and equivalencies.
With the recent class graduating from the Northern Indigenous Counselling Program, I congratulate them. I personally know some of them, and I know that they are going to do amazing work.
But I look at the screening criteria; for example, the child and youth care counsellor position. They are calling for a masters and one year’ experience, or a degree and three years’ experience, when I know they would be amazing with our youth in these roles.
Mr. Speaker, the GNWT needs to be transparent in how they measure equivalencies and desperately need to add lived and cultural experience to how they measure experience. Mr. Speaker, this needs to be done and made public so the NWT residents and anyone who is applying for jobs can see it and can use it to see what their education and experience will be measured at when applying for jobs, because as it stands right now there is no one way of doing this and sometimes it is not being done at all and therefore people are being screened out of jobs, job competitions, and some who may be excellent candidates are not even applying.
I will have questions for the Minister of Finance. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Members' statements. Member for Thebacha.
