Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for whoever wants to answer them. I’m not sure if it would be the Minister of Human Resources or the Premier.
We talk often in this House about the growth in the public service at headquarters. I have talked about my experience on the occasional visit to an office in one of our ivory towers here in Yellowknife where I walk down hallways and through cubicles and try to find somebody that’s a receptionist or somebody that’s in charge. Let’s just say, there are hundreds and hundreds of public servants in Yellowknife here at headquarters.
We talk about decentralization, and we beg for a few crumbs in the regions, but I’d like to know what the process is for assessing when a position may become obsolete or is no longer required. Because let’s face it, in the government, there is no bottom line that we’re trying to adhere to. The people that are in positions of management are people that are telling the government we need these positions.
But whoever actually looks at the complement of staff and says, okay, you know what, there’s not enough going on here activity-wise to warrant a full-time position in this particular activity, and then maybe delete some positions, we never hear about that. We just keep hearing about the adding on and adding on and adding on.
I’m not trying to dis the public service, but I just wonder. In an operation this size, who is it that would actually look at that and who would come to a Minister and say, you know what, we’ve got people here that they don’t have enough to do. Is that the deputy minister’s job? Whose job is that?
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That’s done on a regular basis by the individual departments themselves. They always have to look inwards and make sure that the services that are provided are being met and that they have the staff complement to do that. The Department of Human Resources does offer advice and guidance with respect to organizational design and workloads and work flow, but at the end of the day, ultimately, it’s the responsibility of every department and the deputy head to do that analysis and make sure that analysis is done.
As a note, I think in the last vacancy report that was provided to Regular Members, it identified at least 180 positions that need to be deleted within the Government of the Northwest Territories as they are no longer utilized and are sitting vacant with no expectation to fill. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Abernethy, in his fulsome answer, actually went on to some of the other questions I was going to ask, like when was the last time we actually identified obsolete positions within the public service. I’m not just thinking about those that are vacant. There may be some that are occupied that are obsolete, if that may be possible. The Minister is saying that it is the deputy minister’s role. From what we see of deputy ministers around here, they are pretty busy people. Deputy ministers are pretty busy folks. I’d like to ask if there is any other way of monitoring this to ensure that everybody that is in one of those government cubicles has enough of a workload to constitute a full-time job. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the Member is absolutely correct; deputy ministers are incredibly busy. But in every structure, as everybody would know, there is a delegation of responsibilities and there are ADMs, directors, managers and line supervisors. All of those individuals are responsible for ensuring that staff is adequately resourced and that they have work to do. When they don’t have work to do, that’s an analysis that has to be shared up the chain of command so that the individuals at the higher levels can make informed decisions.
With respect to individuals in jobs that may no longer be required, we as a public service have an obligation and responsibility to our employees to keep them busy. If we can’t keep them busy in their jobs, they’re redundant, then we have policies and procedures to move people to different positions. But before we can ever delete a position like the 180 that I have previously referenced, we do have to have them deleted or vacant before we actually officially delete them from our system. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I will try and be more brief. I’m sorry. It doesn’t seem like there would be much incentive for directors or people in management positions to identify obsolete positions within their organization. Really, I don’t know what incentive there would be to report that because that means less people working for them. That might diminish their role as director. I know that sounds like kind of a sinister conclusion, but what incentive would senior managers have to identify positions that are no longer needed or not busy enough to constitute a full-time job? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I’d say that that’s one of the first things they’re looking at, especially in times of passive restraint or when we’re trying to make sure that we have the dollars to deliver programs. We need to make sure that every dollar we spend is being spent efficiently and effectively, so deputy heads would be pushing that pressure down into the bureaucracy to make sure the people are utilizing the resources to the best benefit. We have a lot of programs and services we have to deliver here in the Government of the Northwest Territories. The vast majority of our dollars are going to salary, so if we want programs, we have to look internally and where there’s no work, we have to make the hard choices to eliminate positions. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Has the government and has the Minister ever contemplated an outside review of positions by department to ensure that we are not overstaffed in various departments? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we already have the program review office which has reviewed different divisions and different sections and different functions, so they can provide us advice on eliminations if they think they’re necessary. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Hawkins.
