Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are addressed to the Minister for Human Resources today. I’d like to ask the Minister with regard to a report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations from reviewing the 2009-10 Annual Report of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. At that time both the Information and Privacy Commissioner and the office of the Auditor General had recommended transparency in government, and particularly with regard to funding of dollars within government. It was a recommendation of that report in May of 2011, over a year ago, that this government be proactive and disclose employees, senior management salaries. So I’d like to ask the Minister of Human Resources why it is that we do not publish our senior employees’ salaries. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was actually on Government Ops when that report was done. In the Government of the Northwest Territories there are three levels of pay for executive managers: EM1, EM2, EM3. EM1 runs from $162,000 to $202,000. EM2 goes from $180,000 to $225,000. EM3 is $198,000 to $247,000. This is as of April 1, 2011.
I have directed the department to post those on-line. They will be posted on-line similar to all other salaries for all GNWT employees. Thank you.
Thank you to the Minister for being so proactive. I appreciate that that’s going to be posted and I hope the Minister will advise when that’s going to happen, but will employees be identified by their salary range? The Minister mentioned three salary ranges. So if I’m interested in a particular employee in a department, will I be able to figure out which salary range he or she falls into? Thank you.
Thank you. I have directed the department to post it on-line the same time we post the current and the new UNW, NWTTA and senior management, do them all at the same time, which should be done as soon as we have ratified the final agreement, the UNW Collective Agreement. So that should be really soon.
No, we won’t be posting individuals’ salaries. That would be inappropriate and against the conflict of information. But that would be consistent with what we do for all employees. We don’t tell anybody what Jane or John Doe in any other profession makes, so why would we do that for our senior management? Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. I wasn’t referencing a specific individual’s salary, but whether it would be possible to find out what range the individual falls into. So do I fit into EM1, 2 or 3?
The other issue that was recommended by the standing committee report from a year ago had to do with employee bonuses. So I’d like to ask the Minister whether or not employee bonuses will be published the same as senior management salaries. Thank you.
Thank you. With respect to the individual positions that my colleague is talking about, there’s only about 17 positions that fall into these executive management bands and if we started identifying what positions follow what bands, would be really actually identifying what the individuals make and that would be inappropriate. So we won’t be sharing that information. We will only be sharing the ranges.
With respect to what an individual receives as a bonus, we won’t be telling anybody what an individual receives for a bonus, but the policies and protocols for how bonuses are identified is public information and we can release what we paid in a year in bonuses, but not by individual. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister for that information. I would look forward to seeing the bonus information, whatever it is, hopefully by department or by division.
I’d like to just ask the Minister, the report from a year ago suggested that legislation might be required. I’d like to know from the Minister whether or not he feels legislation is required to make sure that this happens every year. If this Minister is not around, will Ministers coming behind him take the same proactive approach? So do we need legislation, do we need a policy, do we need regulations? Thank you.
Thank you. I don’t believe we do. I think now that it’s posted, I think that will become standard practice. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
