Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today in my Member's statement I talked about summer employment and the program that the government offers and is doing a better job. I have to give credit where credit is due. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister of Finance please tell us what the department is doing for potential employment for smaller communities in regards to the Summer Employment Program? Thank you.
Masi. The Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member pointed out before that the government has hired 349 summer students this year. That is the highest number we have had in the last five years. We have challenged our departments actually to try and find more, including in a lot of the small communities, because I would like to see a summer student hired in every community, but if you look at the number of summer students who are hired by maybe the local housing authorities or the municipal government organizations that are funded by the government, I think those numbers would go up. I have been trying to put those numbers together. We are getting a better number of the number of students that are working across the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mahsi cho to the Minister for his answer. I greatly appreciate that and understand the importance of that, but again some of my smaller communities don't have LHOs and don't have these opportunities. Some of them don't even have students who are going on to university. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister get back to us or tell us if he is able to work with his department to look at hiring some students that are in high school that go back into these smaller communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, summer students hired by the GNWT are typically post-secondary students. We try to get as many out as we can. The ones who are going to university, so I am not sure if we wanted to bump them, but we can work, and as I said before, we are working to trying to increase it. Every community in the Northwest Territories has some funding come in directly or indirectly from the territorial governments, so I would like to put those numbers together and see the true number of summer students who are working, because I know with a lot of the smaller communities, they use a lot of their school students to do some of the summer work. I will commit to try and get some of those numbers put together. We will share them with committee so we can have a true indication of the number of students that are working.
I thank the Minister for his answer. I look forward to seeing those numbers. I greatly appreciate the commitment from the Minister to hear that. Will the Minister, and I have asked this before, will the Minister look at working with his colleagues to develop a budget line in the business plan for summer students so that we can actually promote it? I know we were looking at 400 as a number in the past, and we got close to it. Will the Minister commit to working to doing that?
I will work with my colleagues, but as far as the budget line goes, I don't think that is in the plans right now. The work for summer students is based on an operation basis, so as there needed to do some work, they are hired or to work on special projects. The operation requirements vary between the departments, but as I have pointed out before, we have seen an increase in the numbers. All of the Cabinet Ministers have encouraged their departments to try and bring on more summer students.
I am going to use this as an opportunity to point out the three departments within the government that had the most summer students in the past year. Number one was Infrastructure, but that is really not fair because we combined two departments, so that is why the numbers were higher. Health and Social Service was second, and the Department of ENR was third. I will bring attention to that, so our departments know that we are paying attention and we would like to encourage them to continue higher summer students as operational requirements permit.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Minister for that answer. That is very encouraging. I would really love to see ENR being number one. ENR has a real impact in my riding. I would encourage the Minister to do that. Can the Minister, if they are not going to put a budget line in there, work on developing a plan to encourage the departments and work with us as Regular MLAs as an opportunity so we can find these opportunities for our summer students? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I think we just heard from one of the Members before speaking during the Member's statement talking about plans and strategies and action plans. I don't think we need to put a plan together. We know what we have to do and we just have to do it. If that means working with and we have the opportunity going through the business planning process and the budget process to get feedback from committees. We are not going to plan to do. We are just going to do it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.
