Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of human resources. First question: is there a system in place to connect Student Financial Assistance and human resources in order to help post-secondary students identify viable career placements within the GNWT? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Great Slave. Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Finance as well as ECE do, right now, work together in order to promote the internship program that we have as well as to promote the summer student program that is right now open and to which I am hoping summer students are actively putting their names forward. For post-secondary students who are currently using SFA, they do receive that information about the internship programs and the summer student programs. Again, I'm happy to have any opportunity I have to promote that those programs are now open and taking names. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I am happy to help the Minister promote her programs. Can the Minister speak to what career options or programs that are available within the GNWT that are made available to high school students in order for them to plan their careers in the Northwest Territories?
Human resources staff do attend career fairs that happen across communities and attend at different schools in order to promote and make students aware of opportunities in the GNWT. There, of course, are now going to be career counsellors coming out through ECE in the new year to also help promote and assist with different options and make students aware of their different career opportunities. There is the Indigenous Career Gateway Program that looks specifically to Indigenous candidates who might need some support to breach a gap between what is in a job requirement and what their skill set might be coming out of high school, but that's a program that, right now, as I understand, in the last few years, in fact, has grown and is doing very well this year. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it has been a continuous improvement in order to support the continual training and education of students.
Again, the summer student program is open to students who might be going into post-secondary in the fall. I list all these things, and yet I do want to acknowledge that I heard the story that was told by the Member. I am receiving my own inquiries from constituents. We can always do more to promote our programs, so I am still actively looking at what else we can be doing to better improve awareness and involvement of students in our summer student program.
Those were somewhat ECE-related questions, so I think it speaks well to the Ministers breaking down their silos that the Minister of Finance could answer some of that. I appreciate that. My next question is: what incentive does the GNWT have to hire Northwest Territories graduates when the federal funding formula actually encourages the GNWT to hire from outside? I believe we were all told when we came in that one of the best ways to increase our revenues was to encourage more people to move to the Northwest Territories. Can the Minister speak to how this conflicts with our priority to hire more northern students?
I enjoy this question. It's not dissimilar to one that I think the Member has asked previously, and what's interesting about it is trying to figure out whether or not, in fact, the incentive of having more people in the territory should be the thing that we are looking, the $30,000-some that we get from the federal government, when we consider that, for every resident who is here, we have to still provide education and sometimes housing, healthcare services. It's not that we get the free money; we get the money to be commensurate with the programs and services that we need to provide. I certainly don't, in my role as Finance Minister, look at it as a one-for-one connection that, for every person who comes, we get pure, simple money.
That said, growing the population of the Northwest Territories to bring upon economic diversification is a good thing. Growing the population of the Northwest Territories to support our residents is a good thing. Having opportunities for northern graduates to be part of the public service is a good thing. I kind of want my cake, and I want to eat it, too. I want to make sure that we are supporting our northern residents, ensuring that they are having those opportunities, but I don't see that as being a reason to not also bring people to the North to expand and diversify whether it's the economy or our communities.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, like cake, so I hope I get to spend some time with the Minister eating that cake with her. My last question is a slightly different tack. How many employees within the GNWT are on transfer assignments, and while those transfers are taking place, how is human resources and Cabinet ensuring that the backfill is being done correctly and that client service isn't suffering? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I was able to find the first answer, which is simply a number, which is that, as of I believe in February, there were 708 staff on various transfer assignments. As for sort of the more general sense of what are we doing in terms of managing those employees and ensuring that the backfills are done properly, certainly, I have confidence in the people of human resources to be doing exactly that, to be monitoring and managing those systems. As far as being able to provide some background on how backflows have worked and on the numbers, that is one where I would offer to get back to the Member. I suspect there are actually tracking mechanisms in place that I simply don't have access to here, so I will gather that information up and provide it accordingly. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
