Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to continue with my questions to the Minister of Human Resources. There was a fair bit of information that he left on the table. I am not sure if he just felt bad that he gave me the original information of PeopleSoft and felt that, boy, we have to stop giving this guy information so let’s just ignore stuff so hopefully he will go away.
I asked, repeatedly, the details of the job fair money and the results, so let’s get to the bottom line here. What were the results of the southern job fairs and what did it cost the people of the Northwest Territories?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have the costs with me, but we collected approximately 700 resumes and were able to hire five people. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Human Resources does not know the cost, and that is a bit of a surprise. I can’t ask the same question because he is going to give me the same answer.
Where did those five people go and what type of positions did we employ people that we had to go to the South and only find five people out of 700 resumes?
Mr. Speaker, this was a job fair that occurred in Ottawa that was a bit controversial the last time we were in the Assembly. I got the information and looked at it, and the one thing I don’t have but could present to the Member no problem, or to the House, would be the cost of that. That’s not an issue. We can determine the cost of that fairly simply.
What I am saying is that we were able to get the five positions. Exactly where those five individuals came to work, I don’t know. My guess is, a 50 percent guess would be that they probably ended up in Yellowknife because the vacancy rate in the GNWT is split 52 percent Yellowknife and 48 percent outside of Yellowknife. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, while the Department of Human Resources was sorting through those 700 resumes, while they found time in some form or fashion to hire five people, were any of those five people that they hired direct appointments? I want to know the credentials of these types of appointments and how he got them. Were they direct appointments or were they true competitions where Northerners could have applied for and at the end of the day the government wasted probably a lot of money on this? Thank you.
I do not believe that these were direct appointments. Usually we fill direct appointments for a few reasons, one being that it’s a development opportunity for a person that has a priority 1 status in the government. We also offer those types of development opportunities to individuals that have priority 2 status in the Northwest Territories.
When we direct appoint somebody that has a priority 3 status, which I would assume all of these five people have, then it would be a position that we were unable to fill. Perhaps a scenario could be that the job was advertised two or three times without success. So if we’re able to find someone that fits the credentials from the South, it is possible that the individual could go through a direct appointment. That’s possible, but I believe that these individuals went through our job bank and the talent pool, applied on jobs that they saw were available at the time and got those through a competitive process.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Mr. Speaker, we know from the Minister’s own numbers that we have well over 500 vacancies. That’s under my estimate, but it’s fine, we’ll use that one. We know that the government had received 700 resumes, as the Minister has clearly articulated, and the Minister clearly said here today before this House, they found five people out of 700 resumes, which begs the question why weren’t we making a bigger concerted effort from his department when we know over 500 vacancies exist on the ground.
Why aren’t we turning these into some type of training positions? We know immediately that would deliver solid results in the communities where the employment rate is over 30 percent. We know it would have a huge impact on people who are already here. It means our government wouldn’t be wasting time flying across the country and doing whatever they’re doing and only getting five people.
At the end of the day, why weren’t we finding better ways to hire Northerners who have invested their lives, their families and their future here?
That’s exactly what we intend to do. We have various categories, like I indicated, positions that require university degrees as an example, and positions that require trades, a position that requires college, as an example. We are developing plans in Human Resources to start looking at the various job categories, so we’d look at the job categories and determine how we can best fill those job categories.
I’m having a lot of discussions with the deputy of HR and we in turn are trying to put a plan together, are putting a plan together, not trying, and then I intend to discuss each of these plans with the Ministers. That is going to be a part of my mandate moving forward with the intent of filling the jobs that have been vacant for a long time and turning the casuals into jobs that people can hold in the Northwest Territories. Also, we’re hoping that once we’re able to achieve filling these positions that we are able to increase the population in the Northwest Territories and prevent the population from decreasing all the time.
