Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions today are for the Minister of Finance. I'm wondering if the Minister of Finance can tell us how many summer students are currently working for the GNWT this year. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As of May 31st, 2021, we have a total of 192 summer students currently hired. There's an additional 53 who have pending offers. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that response. The numbers are much better than the last numbers that I have from the Department of Finance, and so that is good news to start us off with today. And so I thank the public service and the Minister for that.
But this number is still lower than previous years, and I'm wondering if the GNWT has plans to beat their numbers from preCOVID times. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And, yes, Mr. Speaker, there's been an effort being made to keep numbers updated. Indeed, it's been a bit of a rally of late. So I am pleased to say that the numbers are improving. We're still a little bit behind where we were in 2019. I won't use 2020 as a comparator given what was going on a year ago with COVID.
But with respect to the 2019 comparison, Mr. Speaker, we're actually pretty close right now, whereas in at this time in 2019, we had approximately 247, and if we include the pending hires, we're only at 245, if I'm reading correctly on my numbers. So we're not doing too poorly, Mr. Speaker, but, really, the goal is to continue to hire and to continue to hire all through the summer. Maybe we can beat our numbers. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, by my numbers, the GNWT is still off by about a hundred fabulous students that would love to work for the GNWT. So I'm wondering if the Minister will make a commitment to at least hire another hundred students before the end of June. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, but that it was so easy. So the summer student program, it doesn't have a separate line item or budgeting item to it, as I think was mentioned earlier in Members' statement. The way that it works, though, Mr. Speaker, the Department of Finance, of course, can coordinate the support hiring of summer students and can coordinate and support training programs for the summer students.
Every department has a responsibility to determine what their needs are, to find special projects that they often do, and often do rely, indeed, on summer students who are coming in to fill gaps over the summer period.
So, you know, opportunities such as this one, to be in the House, to be speaking to all the departments, who I know are listening, reminding them of the opportunity to bring in students, creates a succession plan for them in their departments, creates an opportunity to educate members of the public about the work they do, and to have ready and willing students available to do projects for them over the summer.
Again, this is an opportunity to essentially speak to the public service and to the departments and say, Please consider hiring a summer student. And, hopefully, we will get to that hundred mark by the end of June. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Final Supplementary. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as it stands right now, the last numbers that I saw, I saw a lot of summer students really concentrated in Yellowknife. And there's a great deal of need in our communities as well. If we look at what's happening in the Northwest Territories to date, there's tremendous amount of flooding that leads all the way up to the Arctic Ocean. I'm sure that there's students that would love to be on the ground and helping out with that too, with cleanup opportunities and being able to see, you know, a different community or being able to help out their own community. And so I think there's a lot of opportunity.
But my question for the Minister today is currently the GNWT has a program within Human Resources that's called Building Capacity in Indigenous Governments, and as a cost sharing program, that allows the GNWT to play role in building capacity within Indigenous governments. So I'm wondering if the GNWT would be prepared to put together a summer student program that also costs shares summer students with Indigenous governments, municipalities, notforprofit organizations going forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the question began with a discussion of outofYellowknife hire. So just to give some sense, about ten days ago before the rally, the numbers, we were already at 71 regional hires, and that's hires I think not pending as compared to 2019 when we were at 80. So, again, we're not tracking too badly just yet. And, again, the numbers have, indeed, gone up even in just the last ten days.
As for entirely revamping the summer student program and modifying substantially how we will fund it, I'm certainly not in a position to give a firm yes on that standing in the House but always open to new ideas about how to support students, how to support succession planning in the government. And how to support, indeed, may well be the regional government's, nonforprofits, municipal governments and so on and so forth.
That conversation, though, Mr. Speaker, is one that I think would have to begin with those other entities and organizations, as well as looking at each department and the kind of connections that they have.
So, you know, I think that's one to take away and to see what kind of conversations we might be able to have and what ideas and inspiration it might lead to. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Hay River South.
