Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would agree that the government should act as a role model and ensure that it is living up to all of the requirements of the human rights legislation in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Hopefully it will be done. If I remember correctly, the draft was supposed to be done by the end of September. So hopefully there won’t be issues around the review of that and I would expect it could be turned around fairly quickly into final form, which would mean that it should be ready for consideration during the business planning process.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said, our policy speaks only to the duty to accommodate the employee and not the employee’s family. Certainly we do have the opportunity, with the flexibility in the policies, for supervisors to recognize employee needs where they are able to accommodate. I’d be quite happy to ensure that the Department of Human Resources offers training sessions throughout the course of the next year to supervisors to make sure that they’re aware of the requirements in the duty to accommodate and to also ensure that there’s some discussion with supervisors around applicability...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t know whether or not it reflects what our human rights legislation says in terms of what is in our policy. It does refer to the human rights legislation and it says that the employers' obligation to accommodate stems from the human rights legislation. So it does refer to it and it says that it must reflect it. So we have a duty to accommodate our employees for their disabilities and if that’s not happening, then clearly we would have an obligation to do that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The government will work with the Seniors' Society to determine what is appropriate in each community and see how quickly we can move forward with that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If we could end question period right now, we could meet right now.

---Laughter

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The government already has a 1-800 number that is delivered in conjunction with the Seniors' Society in order to make sure that seniors are able to access clear and concise information about programs that are available. As I have said, over the next few years we expect that this government will move to ensure that all of its front-line services are delivered through one-stop shopping in the communities. So I can commit to the Member that moving in that direction will be a priority for this government.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In fact, during the hiring process, different weight can be put on different aspects and it's not uncommon for the people conducting an interview to recognize that an interviewee may be experiencing some difficulty with the interview and ask whether they would like to do it again or do it at a different time or handle it in a different way. So the government does make attempts to modify the process to work with applicants to ensure that we are not screening people out simply because they are having a bad day at the interview. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, it’s the last day for oral questions for me in this House. Can you hear the sigh of relief?

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Mr. Speaker, the last day as I work in this House I would like to reflect a bit on the past 16 years and first of all, though, pay tribute to my role models, and I had two; they were my parents. Both were very politically active. My mother was a tremendous organizer and backroom strategist; while my dad was the politician. I learned from them. I learned the importance of applying common sense, listening to constituents and the public, and communicating. They...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's interesting that the Member says he's hearing about a difference in how the affirmative action policy is being interpreted by human resources officers. In fact, what I've heard more often is that since the centralization, that there's been more consistency in how it's applied, because each department often had an interpretation in the past. There is one policy around affirmative action and our staff are regularly updated on how to apply that. So I'm quite confident that we are seeing more consistent application of that policy across the Territories.