Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Finance, where the human resources department falls under. Can the Minister confirm or explain if term contracts cannot be extended up to 48 months any longer, where this could ensure a longer commitment from some of our healthcare professionals? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, Mr. Speaker, the new collective agreement now has 24 months as the benchmark and no longer 48 months. Thank you.
Knowing, within my past experience, looking through the collective agreement, when somebody is here for up to 48 months, they get 100 percent removal. If they choose to stay on past that and sign on as an indeterminate, then there is a removal, and this is what staff look at: the years that you stay within the government, you get so much percentage of removal. When it used to be up to 48 months, if they decided they loved the place that they're living, they would comfortably move into an indeterminate. Can the Minister explain to me why this change was made?
I will say I listened quite intently, and I am well familiar that the Member has a lot of experience in terms of hiring in an area that is under a lot of stress, in terms of hiring healthcare workers. I'm not in a position right now to explain the details of how the collective agreement was negotiated on this particular point, but I certainly intend to inform myself on it. I will reach out to the Member and to a relevant committee if they're interested. The Member is probably still aware, and the House is likely still aware, that, earlier, I had made a commitment that the Department of Finance and human resources is going to be working and is working with Health and Social Services to improve recruitment and retention of healthcare workers. It certainly sounds like there is some interesting experience and very relevant experience that I would like to draw from the Member on.
As the Minister alluded to, one of our priorities of this government is to increase resident healthcare staff by 20 percent. I would like to know if there is some sort of plan that is in place in human resources to fix the system to make it more appealing to indeterminate employees rather than locums and terms, especially in our highly-needed healthcare profession.
I certainly can confirm that human resources has already begun working with Health and Social Services, that they are already underway in terms of developing their plan. I'll correct myself later if I'm wrong, but I believe there was an intention to move forward this summer. Again, now, with COVID-19, that may have changed somewhat, but the Department of Finance and human resources has been quite actively involved in the fact that we've had to staff up in the Health and Social Services Department. I will certainly commit to getting the details on those plans back to the Member and back to this House as quickly as possible.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
