Debates of August 23, 2011 (day 16)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I cited a number of concerns with the summer student hiring process. The process is more than just how many students we’ve hired; it’s about how we hire them and, of course, what type of promise and opportunity we provide them. I think it’s quite understood that we have an obligation to ensure that our future workforce is certainly prepared for the opportunities before them, and I think it’s an important role.

Mr. Speaker, HR at present doesn’t have the official coordination powers and authority to, in my view, fully manage the summer student problems. So in other words, they’re the gatekeeper. They get a big pile of resumes and it’s almost like they reach in the bucket, grab 10 and give them to the department. I think that better coordination and management of these types of resumes needs to be done.

Before I get into the lengthy types of questions that I’d like to get some really good detail on from the Minister, the first question I’d really like to ask is how is the Minister going to assess this year’s hiring process of summer students, and is the Department of Human Resources working towards true authority about hiring summer students with that type of authority and coordination. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s our intention to review the Summer Student Program the way we do every year. We’ve discontinued the hiring of students as of August 15th. We’ll review our practices. We will review the exit interviews that were done with summer students and we’ll assess how successful we have been. We think we’ve been successful this year, considering our fiscal situation. We’ve increased the hiring of the number of summer students from last year. We’re not aware of any significant staffing issues when it came to the hiring of summer students and we will incorporate that into next year’s Summer Student Hiring Program. Thank you.

As I’ve said many times, our staffing in the Government of the Northwest Territories is based on merit. If the Member has any incidences where he’s seen hiring done because of who you know, well, we certainly want to be made aware of it so that we can investigate.

In every instance we try to follow the merit principle. As far as hiring of summer students, if he wants to hire only the most experienced summer students, only summer students that are in the fourth year of their programs... We try to make sure that we have a mix of summer students and we try to make sure that we hire as many summer students as we can. Thank you.

I want to thank the Minister for that particular lead in to my next question because he’s right in the context of how do we balance that fairly. We’re well aware of students being hired by the same departments year after year, not giving a break to new students. Some never even get opportunities at territorial government jobs and we’re all well aware of students being hired in February and March, even before the summer student application process begins. So in other words, they’re all scooped up, the old returnees continue to return to the same jobs and I’m concerned about fairness.

Will the Minister of Human Resources, in his exit interview and sort of 360 positions where they examine the whole process from start to finish if that’s going to be the detail they do as a wrap-up, will they be investigating on how this works? I think it ties rightly back to the authority issue; departments will do what they will do. So, Mr. Speaker, will the Minister address those types of concerns I’m raising? Departments will just keep hiring the same people they just want to.

Thank you. I think looking at the statistics, in this year we hired 286 students. Fifty-nine percent of the summer students hired were Aboriginal students or P1s, 40 percent were non-Aboriginals that lived more than half their life in the Northwest Territories, what we call P2s. So I’m not sure what the Member is suggesting the problem is. Is he suggesting that we should only hire high school graduates for one year so that we can hire the most students without any experience? I’m not sure what the objective of his line of questioning is. So maybe if he could clarify that, we can make some better recommendations going forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Mr. Speaker, I think it was amply clear. I think the answer was not amply clear. To put it in a different way, I’m well aware and I have no doubt that this Minister is well aware of many people who are summer students who keep coming back to the same jobs. They’re being given job offers in February and March even before the summer student season starts.

Mr. Speaker, the whole line of questioning is about trying to ensure that there’s fairness here, and if it smells funny, that tells me that something should be investigated. I’ll tell you when people are told that folks already have jobs in February and the summer student season hasn’t even started, something tells me something’s awry here and there’s not fairness. So, Mr. Speaker, that’s the whole line of questioning.

I’d like the Minister to see what he can do to make some recommendations for the future years that we ensure we have a full accountable process that shows students we’re being fair and honest with them. Thank you.

Thank you. I guess the reason summer students are hired in January and February is we ask summer students to put in their applications by the end of December of every year. So for 2012 we ask the summer students to put in, those interested in getting summer employment, to put in their applications by December of 2011. So we’re quite prepared to look at the process. If it means that we should wait until April for summer students to put in their applications and have everybody compete for every job and if we think that works out in the best interests, we’ll be prepared to look at that and see. To me, I don’t see where there’s a lot of unfairness in the system, and if it does come out that it’s unfair, then we would certainly look at different ways of trying to improve it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.