Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I would like to continue asking questions regarding the vacant positions with the Minister of Human Resources.
The Minister should know I’m not asking him to account for whether it’s the Department of Justice or Education or Finance or those things. I’m asking him from his policy position as Minister and steward of Human Resources.
The Minister just confirmed that some positions have been deliberately left vacant and I’ve been told by some people in the bureaucracy, even as of today, that some positions’ money is being left vacant, and that money is being left vacant for various reasons obviously, but it’s often used for other departmental purposes.
Why is this a contradiction when you can’t use doctor money that you can’t hire doctors for and you can’t use that to hire nurse practitioners, but it’s okay for department officials to turn around and not staff positions, in some cases deliberately, and use that money for other projects? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated earlier, the management of the human resources and the budgeting of human resources is a responsibility of the departments. The departments need to use that money for various reasons, and one real obvious reason is when you do have vacant positions and you are in the process of filling the vacant positions, it is a complete process. When you have that many vacant positions, you can’t possibly advertise them all at once. So, they have these vacant positions and they are forced into paying overtime because there is no overtime allocated within the framework that we provide to the departments by the position.
Overtime is one big one and then, of course, just to try to meet the priorities of the department, which are priorities of the House, they would sometimes need to hire another position that’s not of the ones that are vacant but a position such as a casual to fulfil a job and so on. So, there are various reasons as to why this money is with the departments, and the departments are managing on the ground how to expend the money that’s associated with the positions.
Mr. Speaker, the Minister just said something really interesting, which is the departments can’t advertise all the positions all at once. That’s an interesting situation, because if you go to the career website, there’s barely 100 jobs there and the Minister just earlier said there is at least 1,150 jobs considered as a snapshot of vacancies. So there’s a variance of at least 1,000 jobs and we know that they are actively pursuing, although we can’t find it anywhere, 571 jobs.
So when I asked the question to the Minister – and I will ask it again – do we continue to fund these positions that nobody is in, his answer is maybe.
Can the Minister officially clear it up on the record that when a person transfers on a transfer assignment, we’ll say from the Department of Justice over to the Department of Education that even though he’s now paid by the Department of Education, the Department of Justice continues to fund that position at its home office? So in other words, that money is sitting there. Will he clear it up and tell me where that money goes? Thank you.
An individual that goes on assignment would still have the home position held for them. However, they do need to do that job that he or she was doing in the home department. So, on a transfer assignment they will backfill that position. That position stays vacant and they will backfill the position with most likely a casual or a term position until that person returns to the job. So the position is vacant. The money is used to continue to do the job that the position would do back at their home department.
Most likely, maybe, who knows, we’re not sure and when would it happen.
The money remains there, the money is there to perform the tasks that are the responsibility of the individual that is now on a transfer assignment. Those are some of the priorities that are assigned to the department that would be a part of that. So that’s what the money is used for. I don’t know what else that money could possibly be used for other than to perform those tasks in this particular case. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think the Minister even knows departments use money for other things other than human resources. So, finally, I keep asking how much is being accounted for all these funded positions, who knows, up to 1,151 as noted by the Minister of Human Resources. How much money is being invested through our legislative process but spent in other allocations? We don’t know. Maybe the Minister can enlighten us. Thank you.
As the Member knows, inside the main estimates we have positions, compensation and benefits. There’s a category there. The departments use that money for that purpose. At this point the indications that I have are that this is what that money is used for, it’s not expended on other things. There may be personnel hired elsewhere to do the job, but it is used to pay individuals compensation for doing the job for the Government of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Moses.
