Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As follow-up to my Member’s statement earlier today, I’d like to ask the Minister of Human Resources, since the MOU with the Union of Northern Workers on the Safe Disclosure of Information Agreement that we signed into April 1, 2013, I’d just like to ask if there has been any uptake into that program. If so, how many, I guess, allegations or complaints did the GNWT receive?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. As of today, since the memorandum of understanding has been signed between the UNW and the GNWT, there have been no disclosures.
As I mentioned, in the statement that was out on February 21st for the then-Minister of Human Resources, it mentions that a safe disclosure coordinator was going to be put into position as well as a Safe Disclosure Panel.
Would the Minister have the costs of the staffing for this position for this past fiscal year that this government has approved? We aren’t getting any results on this safe disclosure of information pilot project, I guess you can say right now, or this agreement.
I do not have the costs for the creation of the Safe Disclosure Panel. Also, if they do have a safe disclosure coordinator working with the panel or putting the panel together at the time an employee discloses some wrongdoing, harassment or other things that are found underneath this disclosure agreement, I don’t have the costs of those at this time with me. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the Minister mentioned that we had no uptakes in this program that we’ve had in place since April 1, 2013. That makes we wonder: why zero? We hear complaints. As MLAs we hear a lot of these complaints in bringing these concerns forward.
Has the department done an effective awareness campaign? How is this information been going out to employees to let them understand that this GNWT is supporting them for coming forward to bring any types of allegations in which they feel there are some wrongdoings? Has the department done an effective campaign to our employees throughout the GNWT system? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, every UNW employee in the GNWT was informed of the new provisions by letter in March 2013, a letter that was jointly signed by the Union of Northern Workers president and the deputy minister of Human Resources. A copy of the Safe Disclosure Provisions and Guidelines were posted on both the UNW and Human Resources websites, also articles outlining Safe Disclosure Agreement and the process were published on June 7th and September 20th in the editions of the GNWT employee newsletter, posters were developed and shared at GNWT worksites in December of 2013, and senior managers across the GNWT have been briefed on the safe disclosure process and are able to assist employees once an employee makes a determination that they would like to disclose wrongdoing. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Knowing full well that we’re going to take this agreement on April 1, 2013, not everybody always goes to our websites to review some of this information, and hearing that we had posters out explaining this program in December 2013, nine months after this agreement was supposed to take place, I’d like to ask the Minister – it says that the Safe Disclosure Panel and coordinator will report annually – when can we expect to see a report tabled in this House of some of the best practices and probably some of the challenges or some things that we might not have taken into consideration when putting this agreement into place effectively, so that we might have gotten some statistics with this report? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, if HR is going to be tabling a report on the memorandum of understanding on safe disclosure, I don’t know what date that is going to be done. However, we are moving to legislation. We expect to have a legislative proposal in front of the House in the sitting of October 2014, and that will give the Assembly about a year to work on completing that legislation. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
