Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Finance. Can the Minister tell me the current number of vacant positions across the GNWT?
Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm able to say that as of December 31st, 2023, we had 517 vacancies across the total GNWT. So that's approximately 8.6 or so of all of the funded positions, which is a total of just over 6,000. Thank you.
Thank you. And thank you for the response. Mr. Speaker, how does the GNWT monitor and track this trend across government?
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there is a variety of different tracking mechanisms that are underway. Every department is responsible to manage all of their internal positions. Finance, through the human resources division, then elects and collates that information. Mr. Speaker, I would commend our annual public service report. It doesn't put vacancies in there, but it does put a fair bit of information that shows the ascensions, so the different hiring of employees, retention rates, retirement rates, and certainly does give a good sense of what some of the movements are, and it does that actually broken down by the different departments so you can start to see areas where there are some divisions that are seeing higher turnovers versus others. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Minister of Finance for that answer. My question is, is there an annual financial value to these positions that are vacant and, if so, can the Minister give me that number, please?
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, I don't have it done by a financial number. Again, certainly, if there's we do track, as I've said, as of December of last year there was 517. You certainly could go in and take all of those and figure out what each one is worth. What I can say is that late in the end of the last Assembly and also the beginning of this one, I certainly have asked the Department of Finance to go and figure out and ensure, rather, that we are looking at positions that have been vacant for a long time. There can be times where an individual may be off with a duty to accommodate and out on education. You know, there's maternity and parental leaves. So there's a number of different reasons a position may be formally vacant in this system but the individual or the position has somebody coming back to it or that maybe have competitions that are ongoing. But we do want to make sure we're monitoring positions that are vacant for a long time where there's not an open competition, and those ones should be then removed from the system. That work has begun and will certainly continue. Thank you.
Minister of Finance. Member from Inuvik Boot Lake. Final supplementary.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thanks for that information. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister talk I guess that number of 517, how does that compare to previous years? Is it an average for those positions and are the positions tracked by regions, Mr. Speaker? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, again, I want to ensure that we do track these positions and we track the hard to fill positions. They are done by region. I'm just trying to see if I was able to give the Member an example. Well, and so that December 31st date that I'm using, there was 108 vacancies in the Beaufort Delta. That's 12 percent of the region's funded or rather funded positions so you can note slightly higher than the overall total. So perhaps lightly different slightly more difficult to recruit. But, again, would have to look at the underlying reasons. It may well be that there are some positions there in the Beaufort Delta that have been vacant for a long time, and we need to look either at more creative ways to fill those positions or to look at whether or not there are positions there that need to be cleaned up. Again, so happy to have that on the radar, and we'll certainly make sure that we are working to clean up positions that are not being properly filled. Thank you.
Minister of Finance. Oral questions. Member from Frame Lake.
