Alfred Moses

Thank you, Madam Chair. More just comments. No particular questions for the Housing Corp here. Just over the course, this is the fourth time we’ve sat down with the department in terms of our operational budgets. I remember at the onset of the 17th Legislative Assembly and the Auditor General’s report that came out that had some pretty scathing results that I think committee of the day was just raring to go with this Housing Corp in terms of looking at getting to the work.

Even before they came to committee they started taking the necessary approaches to make the changes that would affect that...

Can I ask the Premier, when was the framework developed and what year did it come into effect and, in fact, if that framework will be reviewed? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to follow up on my Member’s statement. In our main estimates it shows that there has been an increase to the forced growth for two not-for-profit organizations. I’d like to commend the Premier for taking that initiative to get our organizations, that do excellent work on behalf of government, and getting their wages and benefits up to par with what we pay our government employees. So my first question is to the Premier.

When we’re going through an exercise like this, who initiates that process? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to acknowledge the department for the two programs that they’re putting into place here, the Integrated Case Management Pilot Project and seeing that the department is taking the initiative to get our departments to work together, rather than in silos, to integrate our people back into society and become, hopefully, stand-up citizens so they get jobs and work, and Mr. Yakeleya was making some references to that earlier. It’s better late than never. Coming to the game with that now, I think we are going to start seeing some improvements in how our people that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just making a recommendation to the Premier, would the Premier, in the framework, make it mandatory that forced growth with all our non-profit organizations be reviewed or even the framework be reviewed every four years or every time there’s a GNWT negotiating the Collective Agreement for our GNWT employees and do the same for our not-for-profit sector? The ones that we fund.

So, moving forward just in terms of awareness and an education component, hopefully some of our non-profit organizations that we do fund are listening and can take that same process, but sometimes those organizations don’t want to come knocking at the door.

Would the Premier make a recommendation to his Cabinet Ministers to go and talk to their non-profit organizations and see if they do in fact need an increase in their funding for salaries and wages and benefits to keep up to par? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On November 18th I attended the budget dialogue in Inuvik where various concerns and recommendations were brought to the government in the Minister of Finance’s budget dialogue tour across the Northwest Territories. There was a big discussion around investment in renewable energy, and obviously Inuvik is going through a gas situation, and that was one of the big topics, and I’m glad to see that it was also reiterated in other regions with the high cost of living and energy that was put into the Taking Stock Budget Dialogue.

This government is working on, right now...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think that’s a good practice, because you heard some Members here say that some people don’t even get an interview and they don’t even understand why they didn’t get an interview in the first place. They don’t have an opportunity to appeal because they didn’t have a chance to even get to the interview process. I mean, we might be screening out people that are long-time residents and might be screening out people that have the community experience but maybe not the education that is always required, so that is something that could also maybe be looked at.

We talked...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to follow up on a couple of things in terms of recruitment and retention as well.

Yesterday the Minister stated, I believe, that it takes about six to eight weeks for when a job that’s available to the general public closes to the hiring process. So about a month and a half to two months before someone can get a job within government. I know we’ve got to go through the interview process and all the areas to make sure that this individual is qualified and ready for the job; however, that seems like a long turnover time for when I put my application in to get a job...

The reason I ask if they look at priority regions and communities is if we put this back in this formula funding that we’ve been using since 2007, that means all regions would get a share of the pie, I guess, and it’s based on enrolments. You might have a region or a community that might not have high enrolments in daycares when this Junior Kindergarten came into effect, because now we’re getting more people out of the daycares, so it’s definitely affecting enrolments, so I’m glad that he’s doing that.

One area that I want to touch on with the daycares is these inspections. There was a news...