Mr. Speaker, I believe that this budget process has eroded public confidence. Unfortunately, people out there in the public don’t always differentiate between that side of the House and this side of the House. To them we are all the government. So I am feeling, as well, like we have been not fully brought into this whole process.
I did sit beside the Premier when we announced that we need to live within our means and we need to have affordable, sustainable government, and I believed in all that. But when it came down to the decisions on how we were going to attain that, then we weren’t part of the discussion.
I know the Premier has already said, Mr. Speaker, that he is sorry that Members weren’t notified before the 135 letters went out to potentially affected employees to set up interviews to discuss their options with them. But I want to stress, I guess, that I didn’t get here yesterday. I’ve been here a long time, and I know what normal practice is. I don’t have any motivation to just be crabby for the sake of being crabby. I don’t. I mean, if things are good, I say things are good. If things are screwed up, I say things are screwed up. And this budget process has not been what it should have been.
On the recruitment and retention reference in the Budget Address, we stand up and say that we’re not the employer of choice. Well, I guess not. I mean, here we are out here trying to spend money on recruitment and retention, yet we’re laying off 135 — with vacant positions maybe 200 — positions in the public service. I want to ask the Premier: what efforts were made to redeploy, reassign or come up with reasonable circumstances for those members of the public service we have had working for us, who have skills, who have possibly transferable skills, who we have invested in and who have invested their work careers in us as a territorial government. What efforts were made?
The Hon. Premier, Mr. Roland.
Mr. Speaker, I as well have not just come into this environment. As I stated earlier, I’m very familiar with the process as a Regular Member, as a Minister and as Finance Minister in a previous government. That process has been followed. There’s always a glitch with the first budget of the Legislative Assembly. You can decide to either go ahead with the work that was done by a previous government, with some tinkering, or you can take control of it early on. We’ve decided to take control.
We’ve tried to mitigate the impact on employees. Again, I’ve heard from Members. Members said early on that to minimize that to the least extent possible, if it has to be done, you notify early. We’ve done that, and it was a mistake in not providing Members the information as that was happening. So we’ve dealt with that, and that won’t be occurring again.
The other side is that we’ve gone through our staff retention policy, and the Minister of Human Resources has been keeping us up to date on the number of employees who have been interviewed for potential redeployment within government, taking on new assignments. We’ve had some individuals in the system say, “We’re not ready to talk just yet until we see that the budget actually passes.” Then they’ll be sitting down with us.
We have quite a large number who have talked about retirement. They’ve hit a threshold where they’re considering doing that. We’re looking at our options to deal with that and pension issues. So we’re looking at a number of options to mitigate the final impact on individuals within the Government of Northwest Territories.
I had a situation in my constituency where someone received notification of being a potentially affected employee. Someone else in the same organization, with a similar skill set, doing a similar type of work, wanted to embark on voluntary separation, thinking that if he did that, the person who received notification for layoff would not have to go through that. The voluntary separation was denied, so it goes back to the person they want to remove. It makes you wonder about the motive. Was this really entirely a job reduction for saving money, or was this some kind of a housecleaning exercise that gave managers a prerogative to have people affected who maybe they’d had an issue with or crossed swords with? It doesn’t make sense. I can give you another example.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. I’ll allow the Premier to answer that question.
Mr. Speaker, I know early on that notifications went out to potentially affected employees and that there were some issues about the retirement options. I’ve even heard of an example up in my community. I would say, through that process, that we should be willing to look at that. We should be flexible enough in our environment to do that. I think, as we proceed with this and have further discussion, that is being considered at this point. We have tools — for example, direct appointments. If we have somebody who wants to retire and they have somebody who’s in line with them — they’re ready to move up — there is the potential we could be looking at that. We’ve had some discussion about that, and we’re ready to sit down more on that. Again, the Minister of Human Resources has been looking at these options. He’s been coming to the table, and we’ve been putting some of these suggestions out as well.
Mr. Speaker, reductions and layoffs are never a pleasant experience. However, there are ways of mitigating the impact and making it at least professional, businesslike and somewhat humane.
I’ll give you another example of a situation where we’re going to reduce positions. There are four people in one shop, all doing basically the same activity. Now the government says they only want three people. So rather than going to the person in that shop who’s got 28 years’ experience and suggesting maybe coming up with some arrangement, like a normal employer would do.... Why would you send notification to all four employees and ask them all to apply for the job, knowing for months that one of them at the end of the day isn’t going to have their job? That is another example of a very unprofessional way of approaching these job reductions. I resent that, and I ask the Premier if he would respond to that kind of treatment of our respected members of the public service.
Mr. Speaker, that issue has come up. I’ve also asked some questions about that and about looking at, as a government, our interpretation of our obligations under our contracts, with the unions as well. Sometimes it’s just our direct interpretation of things. There are a number of cases where there are staff who work in the same area within the same department where one position was targeted; three positions became potentially affected. So we’ve got to look at that.
Again, this scenario has played out in a way where we definitely don’t want to be using the same processes and where we get a clear understanding right off the bat, before we jump to that next stage of notifying employees. That was a concern. As I stated, we should have got all that information together. We need it as well; we’re feeling the pressure. There was talk out there. Whether it was the union itself sending the message, the fear factor was that there are 700 to 800 people who are going to lose their jobs. That came out earlier. We needed to dispel that by going out as soon as we could and trying to reassure the rest of our public service that there was not going to be that type of impact. And trying to move ahead at a rapid pace has caused us some of these other problems in interpretation.
I would be looking to have that discussion with the Minister and say that I believe we need to have a different look at that and see if that interpretation is something that can be reviewed once again.
Final supplementary, Ms. Groenewegen.
On the same topic, when someone is applying for a job and they don’t feel they’re treated fairly, there’s an appeal process. When somebody’s in their job and they feel they’re not being treated fairly, there’s a union — an appeal — process. There’s a grievance process.
When somebody gets notification that they’re being laid off, and they’re a potentially affected employee because of reduction, there really is no recourse for them. Like, to whom do they appeal? They could go through the staff retention exercise. But you know, it doesn’t necessarily work out if it’s in a different community or if they’re in a very specialized area of employment.
So here’s my problem: when the department, when the deputy ministers…. You know, the Ministers went to the deputies; the deputies went to the managers; and they tagged or flagged what they wanted to offer up as the reductions. And they tagged an employee and said, “Okay, that’s the employee; that’ll save this much money.”
Now, somebody else in the organization offers to take voluntary separation. They’ll step up, and they’ll take that, thinking the other person will get the job. But you know who approved that? The same manager who tagged them in the first place is the person you go back to, to say, “Can this person vacate this position so this affected employee doesn’t…?” It’s the same person you go back and ask. It’s a problem.
I’d like to ask the Premier: what recourse do we have for employees who are potentially affected if they feel they are being treated unfairly?
Mr. Speaker, as we’ve heard — and we’ve heard from a number of sources — this is a concern. The Minister of Human Resources has been working on the files to try to bring some clarity to it. We’ve had our discussions. We will continue to have those to look at some of that interpretation — the rules.
What we’ve come down to is, if we decide as a government — like the staff retention policy — a policy in place can be amended. And if we feel we should use our discretion to say…. Why not direct appoint some of these individuals into places where they do fit? We’re not going to take people who, as the Member stated, don’t have the training and put them in a place where they’re bound to fail.
We’re going to do as much of that realignment as possible through our normal processes we have in place. And if we have to review that — the number of tools we do have available — there should be enough flexibility in that to make some of these adjustments.
Very early on, when we made the announcement, I had an e-mail from a constituent back home that said, Pick me. He was looking at moving on and retiring. I think we need to be open to those types of initiatives.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. The Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes, Mr. McLeod.
