Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are to the Minister responsible for Human Resources. I want to follow up on an inquiry and a bit of correspondence with the Minister regarding greening the workplace under the June 2009 Human Resources action plan, A Brilliant North. This objective calls for encouragement to employees to develop and implement environmental programs. Can the Minister tell us what work has been done to date? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Greening the workplace is a very important initiative that this government undertook as part of its 20/20 human resource strategic planning. What we’ve accomplished is we’ve set up an interdepartmental advisory Green Team that meets on a regular basis. We have representation from the majority of the departments and they make recommendations to our deputy minister committee on a quarterly basis. The green advisory team has developed an action and terms of reference that they’re working on. Thank you.
I appreciate the comments from the Minister. Mr. Speaker, this is good work. It shows motivation on behalf of our employees and our leadership. We know that improving practices involves changing habits and human behaviour such as getting people to wear seat belts or stop cell phone driving, not an easy task; one of the most difficult things to change. Strong leadership is often needed. The Minister, according to my correspondence, has indicated that at least seven departments are signed on. That’s a good start. What more aggressive plans does the Minister have to roll this out across government beyond Yellowknife and provide the marketing resources needed to give us a model workplace? Thank you.
Right now we’re focusing on our government. As well as having an advisory team we also have internal departmental teams, and I’m pleased to say that we have five interdepartmental teams that have undertaken a host of initiatives so that we’ll have a greener workplace and with the active participation of all of our employees. Thank you.
Again, good work. I understand that some of the work has included voluntarily setting printers to duplex, using recycled paper, having recycling stations in offices, in-house waste audits. ENR has a Green Event Catering Contract Policy for its departmental use. I’m wondering if this could be spread to all departments. I also note, Mr. Speaker, many people complain to me about GNWT catering that includes bottled water. They just shake their head when we’re surrounded by the best water in the world. Does this catering policy include the dropping out of bottled water? Thank you.
In addition to some of the activities that Mr. Bromley outlined, we have developed some other activities that I would like to note such as in-office composting, purchasing recycled bond paper, we’ve purchased bicycles for interoffice travel, also hybrid pilots. We also organize healthy lifestyle activities, we conduct in-house waste audits, have established recycling stations in every department, and we organize staff awareness contests. All of these activities play a role in improving our workplace and, certainly, with utilizing the deputy minister committee, we use that to make sure that it occurs in every department. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just want to note that these things and a lot of other common-place green behaviours sound to me like the least we should be doing in our departments and not really voluntary. The Human Resources department and Public Works and Services are best positioned to make these standard practices. Why are we leaving it up to employees to separately devise and implement the most basic practices of green office management? Can we get this in place as a standard that must be achieved?
It is our intention to implement a Green Procurement Policy within the department; as well, the GNWT event catering which will exclude bottled water. There are a number of locations in the city that are bottled water-free zones. As well, we are reviewing the department utility monitoring status and we hope to be able to report on that. I will have to check on the status on whether the Legislative Assembly is a bottled water-free zone. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
