Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Finance. On page 3 of the fiscal strategy of the budget address, the Minister says some of the areas of concern are hundreds of vacant jobs in the Northwest Territories. Then he goes on, and part of that paragraph that I want to focus on, but the Minister also stated that in there, is that they want to embark on an initiative to increase the population of the Northwest Territories in five years.
I want to ask the Minister, in the vacant jobs – there are hundreds of vacant jobs – how many vacant jobs are there in the Northwest Territories?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In any given time there are about 800 vacancies. There are about 400 that we’re actively trying to fill. Those numbers are split between Yellowknife and outside of Yellowknife.
I know there’s probably a little more complexity on the answers, but 800 positions that the government has right now, there are 400 they’re actively trying to fill. So the other 400, what happens? There’s active and inactive. Is that correct and can the Minister also put a financial figure to those positions that are vacant?
Thank you. There are unfunded positions. There’s still a gap of about 7 percent on the benefits that the departments are funded with for positions that the departments are required to cover off. There is money that’s used for casuals to offset the vacancies, contracts that are used to offset the vacancies. Some folks may be away on leave. So it’s a very complicated list. It’s not just empty or full. There are many issues to consider.
One of the things I would point out, as well, in the budget address, is we’re devoting $22.6 million, I believe it is, over three years to put housing in small communities with a specific focus to try to deal with the housing, to alleviate one of the barriers to filling those positions, which is often adequate housing. Thank you.
Thank you. We have voted for these positions in past Legislative Assemblies, past sessions, and still we’re having a difficult time and I’m on board with Mrs. Groenewegen. How do we create some things to do something exciting, something that would fill these positions?
Mr. Blake talked about getting the young people back into our communities or somehow get the northern people back working again. So I want to ask the Minister, on these positions, what happens to the dollars when we vote on them and now we found out there are 800 vacant positions that are not yet filled? What happens to these dollars that we vote on to prove that these are the positions that we want in the government?
Thank you. Once again, this is a short question that would require a very complicated answer if we wanted to cover all the issues. But there are positions, the money is used in some cases to help cover off a gap in benefits, there are casual dollars, there are contract dollars, there are staff that may be on transfer assignments. So there’s a range of reasons why some positions may be empty.
The issue, though, is one of concern to the government that we need to find a way to make sure… We have a couple of competing issues here. We have northern graduates that don’t come home and we have positions that we are going begging in terms of permanent employment, and we have to reconcile that as we move forward. If we could fill all our positions we would go a long way to addressing some of the concern we have about trying to go from 2,000 in five years, in terms of population increase. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I heard on this side that we could be very creative on this initiative as to filling these 400 vacant positions, the active positions. I’m going to make the assumption that the 400 inactive, what does inactive, meaning these 400 positions to fill, and we can embark on that, and as I said, like some of our colleagues, but let’s start training up people in our own communities, start upgrading them. Maybe that’s the bigger picture.
I want to ask the Minister, when will the Cabinet come over to our side and say let’s sit down, let’s figure out how we can resolve this. Right now, as it stands, we have 800 vacant positions within the Government of the Northwest Territories and yet I’m not too sure what the financial cost is of us approving those positions in past Assemblies to have those positions in the GNWT.
Thank you. If the Member will recollect, before Christmas we had a meeting and I indicated to the Members that we were intent on coming forward to try to address this issue and that we would keep committee fully engaged and apprised. We had a first inaugural meeting with the mine presidents as well as the chamber representatives this week, just to see if there was a shared interest in trying to address this issue, and there is, so we’re in the process of striking a high level senior working group to try to look at some of the things like the immigrant Nominee Program, the fly-in/fly-out issue as well as some of the broader ones. It’s not only the government that has vacancies, it’s the private sector as well. So we are going to look at those as well as we are definitely turning our attention to how do we do a better job recruiting our own students to come back home. We intend to get that working group going. If the committee has a specific role that they see for themselves or potentially how they would like to be engaged, if they would let us know, we would be happy to look at that.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
