Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I spent a bit of time highlighting some of the words the Finance Minister had provided this House on February 6th. It was really talking about embarking on a new adventure of trying to create this initiative that would draw 2,000 new people to the Northwest Territories over the next five years, but as our NWT Bureau of Stats has clearly said, outlined – and I put great faith in their hard work – we’ve had a drop of 218 people in this last year, which puts us about 10 percent below that greater mark.
So, what I want to hear from the Minister today is what is he doing as an initiative to draw new people to the Northwest Territories, because we’ve lost 218 thus far. This has a serious impact in Yellowknife, but it has a crippling impact on every small community. When they lose those jobs, it is devastating, that financial economy is taxed, it hurts the community and we have to put every single effort into building resources in those areas. So, what is the Minister doing? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re not, in effect, losing jobs. What we’re trying to do is find people to fill the jobs that we have that are in many cases going begging. We have met as a government now numerous times.
We have a working committee that’s looking at a whole host of things, very simple things like the issue that has bedeviled many of us in many of the departments from following up with our students has been this issue that ECE had with confidentiality and an inability to share the information on students in school, where they are, what they’re studying, so that we can in fact make sure that we stay in touch with them and make the job offers and recruit them the same way that the private sector is doing. That issue has been resolved and it’s going to open significant opportunities for us.
We are doing very common sense things like working with industry to jointly go south to job fairs and we combine our efforts to recruit into the North, collectively.
We are looking at, once again through Education, a nominee program, integration program. There’s a new express program coming out from the federal government. We’re looking at that as a way that we can get folks on the ground here, where you can now reach out for specific occupations and get guaranteed from the federal government that within six months you’ll be able to get these folks landed on the ground and in the communities where the jobs are.
We’ve had now two meetings with industry to talk about the further work that they’re doing, the challenges that we collectively have with housing, and there’s more work underway as well. Thank you.
I was proudly educated in the Northwest Territories, growing up in Fort Simpson and in Yellowknife. My education taught me that negative 218 persons is a lot. So when the Minister says to me – and remember, this is the gentleman in charge of our books and our finances – we’re not losing ground, perhaps the Minister of Finance can explain how a loss of 218 people isn’t a loss to the Northwest Territories and the Northwest Territories isn’t losing ground. Thank you.
Thank you. The Member is a fine example of the success of our education system. We’re not excluding the fact that it’s a loss. What we have done is started a program, an initiative that we’ve given ourselves a five-year time horizon, because we recognize that these things take time to sort things out, to turn things around, to do the work that’s necessary, to make the changes that are necessary, to do the things with HR, for example, where we want to be able to go south and enable the folks that go south to take interviews and do job offers on the spot so that we can be way more timely in how we fill our positions. We don’t argue at all that it’s a loss and it’s setting us even further behind, but our goal still remains the same. We want to look at increasing the population by 2,000, in five years, or greater if at all possible.
Yellowknife’s population has relatively remained the same and we’ve been fortunate only on the principle that we’ve had growth from the communities. That’s terrible, because where the real impact is happening is in the communities. Getting the jobs out to the communities will have a positive effect on the whole territory, every single program we need.
In my Member’s statement today, I said let’s put two teachers in every single school. That would bring new families to every community; that would bring new job growth, new vitality and new cash on the ground where people spend money. There’s an initiative.
Would the Minister speak to that idea, because that would deliver immediate change to those communities and a seriously enormous, positive effect on everything that happens there.
There are a couple of initiatives that are intertwined here. We are looking at increasing the population of the Northwest Territories. That is one thing we’re trying to do. We are working, as a government, on decentralization to move positions outside of the centre, out to the communities. That work is underway. Phase three is now underway. We are also working to fill the very many vacancies we have, and we have approximately a split between Yellowknife and communities of vacancies anywhere between five to 800 positions that we’re trying to fill in both inside Yellowknife and outside of Yellowknife. If we can address those issues, I think we would be in fine shape.
The issue of adding potentially two teachers in every community, so 66 new positions to the government at a time of fiscal restraint when we also have all these other vacancies, would be a little premature.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I said in my Member’s statement that the net effect would actually be awash because our growth and our federal grant transfer would actually cover the cost of those teachers. May I also briefly remind the Minister that he had pointed out in his February 6th statement that in 2013 we continued to lose population? What’s happening here is, year over year over year we continue to lose population.
My last question is simply this: Where have there been any results of population growth in the Northwest Territories under the tenure of this McLeod government?
What we have laid out is a good, solid plan on a go-forward basis that we believe is going to show results. We are making a lot of the structural, organizational and procedural changes to do that. We have initiated a much closer working relationship with the private sector to make this a combined and joint effort so it’s not just strictly government.
But I can tell you, from a simple math point of view, if we filled the vacancies that we have, then we would address the issue that the Member is talking about many times over, and if we would recruit all the students that we’re giving SFA to, to come back home to take jobs that are there, if we do a better job at that, that would be part of the solution of making those staff changes.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
