Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I found the Minister of Human Resources statement interesting today about eRecruiting and the vacancies in the territorial government. The territorial government isn’t the only employer in the Northwest Territories who has issues with recruitment and retention of staff and I believe I can safely say this is an issue in the private sector as well as in the public sector. The Minister indicated that with the new system up and running, that they’ve had a lot of applications come in. There were 587 applications for 112 government positions. These come from a total of 76 different countries. This effort is all well and good, but I’d like to ask the Minister of Human Resources what we’re going to do when people apply to come to work in the Northwest Territories from other countries and we have a bottleneck at Service Canada with a person who works in that office who is over-opinionated and anti-immigration, from what I know. Just about every constituent that I have talked to that has any dealings with Service Canada has found this particular individual to be a problem. I’d like to ask the Minister what he’s going to do with that. It’s great to advertise jobs and get applications from all over the world, but what are you going to do when we don’t control immigration and we have no control over who sits in that seat?
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister responsible for Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I certainly have heard from a number of businesses about the concerns with regard to recruitment of employees in certain sectors. I guess the first thing I would do is identify the department and program where the problem is and consult with my colleague, the Minister responsible for employment. I guess then I would have follow-up with the federal department responsible. Failing that, we would approach the federal Minister.
It’s a sad statistic that the Northwest Territories is the only jurisdiction in Canada that saw their population decrease in the last census. We have no control over the ability to bring people to work in the Northwest Territories who come from foreign countries, because that is a federal jurisdiction that we’d have no control over whatsoever. I appreciate the fact that the Minister would use his influence at the FBT or with the federal government to make sure that we, as the NWT employers in the private and public sector, are not going to be detrimentally affected by this situation. This situation has existed for quite some time now. I have colleagues in this Legislature who can also share stories of their constituents who have had this same experience. How long is this going to be allowed to carry on? We can have all the expensive campaigns to promote coming to live in the Northwest Territories that you want, but when you have one person sitting in a position that’s responsible for all immigration applications to the Northwest Territories who’s anti-immigration what’s the Minister going to do about it and when is he going to do it?
I’ve already started investigating where the bottlenecks are and we will be contacting the management in that department that the Member is referring to. We’ll work from there. Certainly it’s a very big concern for our government about the fact that the population of the Northwest Territories has been dropping for about two or three years now. Mind you, not significant, but enough to cause us concern. We will be examining all the different avenues that we can to attract people to the North. We will be launching a number of campaigns.
Like I said, without a single exception, this is the report that I hear back from people who try to work with either advocating or assisting people with immigration issues in the Northwest Territories. This is all handled through a Yellowknife office. Would it be appropriate for me today to say to those people who’ve had those experiences, to take the effort to communicate with the Minister and share with him their experiences so that he has some solid evidence with which to go to the federal Minister?
It always helps to have information as to the nature and size of the problem. So any information that I have from the Member or any other businesses that are running into problems may help resolve the problem.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The last thing that I will ask the Minister is when he does communicate with federal counterparts or folks in the federal government who are responsible for immigration, would he be kind enough to share that communication and those efforts that he will take on behalf of his department with the Regular Members of this House?
I’d be pleased to do that.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
