Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to talk today about one of my favourite subjects which is jobs. I know probably most of you expected either power bills or certainly the cost of living to be on the topic. But you know what? Frankly, what better relates to them than jobs?
According to the Minister’s numbers the other day, we have 466 jobs that they are presently working on in some form, stage or consideration, and again according to the Minister’s numbers, he said the total number of vacancies on the books is 1,038 jobs. To be clear, that’s about 20 percent of the NWT government’s workforce. That’s a lot of people without jobs or vacancies or in some other type of consideration. However, if we work with those numbers, the Minister’s numbers, that means we have 572 jobs not being looked at in some form or fashion. So they’re either doing nothing or very little about them.
To be clear, these 572 jobs, that we don’t know what they’re doing with, represent 10 percent of our unstaffed and unaccounted for workforce. We know not every one of these additional positions has the intent to be filled. As a matter of fact, we heard the Minister that through his numbers where he accounts for some of them in the grey area, if I may describe, but he doesn’t account for them all.
The issue really, to me, keeps coming back to the fact that we are funding many of these positions, not all of them, but most of them in some form or fashion. The question that keeps occurring to me, and certainly the public, is where does all this money go? I can better describe it as mystery money as to where it shows up and where it goes. I can’t say in this House that that money won’t be accounted for in some way or some fashion, but it is really fuzzy when you try to find it and follow the numbers.
The issue comes down to things like this: Why aren’t we properly filling them? Well, the Minister will tell you we have casuals filling some of these jobs. Staffing long-term vacancies through a casual process is not the right way. If these jobs are important, then fill them properly. We all know casual positions don’t require the same amount of money as a normal staffing position would. So then again that begs the question, where is that job money going?
If we can’t fill these jobs, then let’s turn them into training positions. People need experience to get jobs. If the government is asking too much for credentials for these jobs, then we should be asking ourselves are we filling them the right way with the right people who need opportunities. Most importantly on this particular question of where the jobs are going, have we evaluated any of these as great opportunities to provide decentralization to help stimulate economic opportunities in other regions?
I will have questions for the Minister of Human Resources later today about jobs. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Item 7, oral questions. Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a few questions.
