Mr. Speaker, the GNWT has launched their annual summer student recruitment campaign. Last year, due to COVID, this was cut short. Many students were impacted. I am happy to hear that the Minister advised my colleague from Thebacha yesterday how it is moving ahead. My question for the Minister of Finance is: how is the government's Affirmative Action Policy incorporated into the government's summer student hiring process? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Affirmative Action Policy applies to the summer student and internship programs, just as it does to all GNWT hires. Hiring managers are expected to be fully aware of all of those policies, certainly, and as I had referenced earlier, there are a variety of training tools, including an online tool kit for new managers as maybe needed so that they can employ that policy in this form of hiring as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
When a request is received to hire a summer student, is the hiring manager provided with information on the government's Affirmative Action Policy and how it applies to summer students?
Yes. There is a database that gets created, which is why summer students are asked to register and interns are asked to register as part of the process. When a hiring manager wants to participate in that, they have to get access to the database. When they get access to the database, they are reminded that the hiring process does still need to apply the Affirmative Action Policy. That reminder is right there. Again, at this point, they really should be versed in those policies as part of their training as being managers.
I'm just going to go down to my next question. What mechanisms are in place to assisting hiring managers to ensure they are appropriately applying the Affirmative Action Policy when hiring summer students?
I sense the theme of where this is going, and really, all of the policies in the world are really only as good as the people who are applying them. I am conscious of that. We certainly talk a lot within the Department of Finance around making sure that training is available and accessible; that the drive to give employees time to take their training is there; and that there's a conscious awareness from the top down that, really, we want employees to take the training. We want managers to be abreast of their training. We want them all to have those opportunities to take the right training so that they can do the best to employ the good policies that we do have and raise issues if there needs to be changes.
I do gather the general direction of the questions here, but more specifically on this one, I will also say, if there are students who are looking to be hired who are not a priority 1 or a priority 2, it is expected that the manager will go back to human resources, will check back in with them before simply proceeding, and, indeed, if in the end there is a hiring that is outside of those priority candidates, they are expected to go through the deputy ministers.
Thank you, Minister. Final short supplementary. Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Does the Department of Finance conduct audits or reviews of the summer student hiring program to ensure that affirmative action policies have been fairly and appropriately applied, ensuring that our Indigenous students have fair opportunity to gain the valuable employment with the government? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
No. Right at this point, there is not a formal audit that takes place of the summer student program. In general, right now, we do certainly get feedback, and the feedback as I've been told is that it's positive. It's a program that is well received by students and well received by departments as this is a great tool for them to recruit and retain northern Indigenous students. Certainly, if there are concerns, I want those concerns brought forward. I would say, at this point, out of the 84 students registered, 21 are Indigenous Aboriginal and 54 are Indigenous non-Aboriginal, and those are the terms, I know frustrating to many, but they harken back to the policy itself. Really right now, almost entirely, the whole cohort is northern students, because I agree with the Member, we want to have this opportunity for northern students. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral question. Member for Frame Lake.
