Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment and I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement and ask a few questions about the Auditor General’s report and the report from the Auditor General on Income Security Programs at ECE. One of the things that was identified in the Auditor General’s report was a lack of training for staff. It was identified that this lack of training contributed to part of the problems that were identified within the Auditor General’s report.
I would like to first ask the Minister what exists now in terms of abilities and opportunities for training for staff.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The report is before the committee but I’ll allow the Minister to reply or take it as notice. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. With client service officers usually when there’s a demand for any advancement in their position or usually we have client service officers to get together. There is training or workshops that happen at times. Just recently we had a group of client service officers gather to provide training to them to deal with clientele professionally, not only that but the efficiency and proficiency and effectiveness of delivering a program. Those are some of the areas that we’ve covered. Whenever there’s training that is required, we provide that to client service officers.
Thanks for your indulgence, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Minister, as well, for his answer. One of the things I have understood in my dealings with constituents who have come to me with difficulties and with concerns with income security programs, is that they feel that the staff of the department are handling way too much work. There is not enough staff to handle the work and they have difficulty keeping staff. I’d like to ask the Minister why, if he can advise why, if he has any understanding why the department is consistently short-staffed on both front-line and supervisory positions on a regular basis.
I’m sure that will be the outcome of part of our action plan we’re going to be delivering to the standing committee next month. We make do with what we have, the client service officers, throughout the Northwest Territories. Some have high caseloads, some low. It does fluctuate. We are monitoring that right now. We continue to, again, pertaining to training, conduct training in the regions and communities. At the same time, this is an area that we are seriously looking at as part of the nine recommendations that came down from the office of the Auditor General. We are taking it seriously as part of an action plan going forward.
Another problem that I have encountered, my constituents have encountered and I hear about it by-the-by, is the issue of paperwork and files that are lost or misplaced or incomplete. It’s a huge issue. Clients regularly have all their paperwork in hand, they hand it in, and then they get a call a few days or a week later saying that their paperwork is not complete. I’d like to know from the Minister if he can advise whether or not this is a problem with the software that the department uses. Is it a technical issue, is it a lack of processes for the client service officers that they don’t understand how they should deal with applications, or is it something else?
What we’re talking about here will be released next month. I don’t want to get into detail before it comes before standing committee. This is an area that we have addressed and it will be part of the action plan. We are taking it very seriously. We’ve heard there’s probably… I’m not sure the percentage of files that have been misplaced but, at the same time, there are other areas where we have made progress and improvement. We will continue to do that but this is an area that will be before us as part of the action plan.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. I understand that he doesn’t want to prejudge what may come from the department. I know the staff within the department do their best. I would like them to know that I am not criticizing when I ask these questions. I am looking for solutions to solve the problems. I do believe that there is a great deal of knowledge and experience within the staff of the department on the programs that they run and I’d like to know if the Minister, in looking at the Auditor General’s report, will tap into that knowledge and that experience and the valuable resource that he has in his staff as he develops his action plan.
Yes, we do have, even with our client service officers throughout the Northwest Territories and even as far as the directors, we have the professionalism, we have dedicated, educated individuals in the system. At the same time, there is always room for improvement on the programming areas and we have to work with that as well. I’m glad the Member is raising that profile. That is part of the process as we discuss the action plan.
