Floyd Roland

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Management Assignment Program that’s in place, or MAP as we call it, was developed to try to move from within the existing workforce of the Government of the Northwest Territories; people who would have the ability to move up and take on the higher level positions and hopefully, with a succession plan, a person can come all the way up and take over a deputy minister position. That’s sort of the long term of things. When it was put in place, it was again there for everybody in the Government of the Northwest Territories. It wasn’t specifically designed...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we should be clear again that the affirmative action policy is not dead. This government is still committed to it. It is still part of our hiring practices. The specific area of succession planning and so on, they are pieces of what we’re going to put together and improve on as the Government of the Northwest Territories through our corporate human resource service centres. With the ability, once we have the staff together, working together and having the support of their colleagues, and with the same interpretation of the rules that we operate by, we will...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the process, as laid out, is with our policies that are in place. Each applicant would be put through that. They would be followed. If the rules are followed, then there is no ground for appealing if that is the basis of the concern. So as we go forward from here, as we have stated, to clarify where we are going and to make this a more transparent process, going with the independent staffing appeals officers, it is our goal to limit the concern that people are not being given a fair opportunity for the jobs that are in place. As we have it, the rules are...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the three positions will not all be located in Yellowknife. One of them will be in the north and one will be in the south part of the territory. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the casual employees would be hired on the basis of less than six months. That’s a normal thing for short term, summer employment, short projects that staff or departments did not have enough personnel to do the work. That’s the area of the casual employees, as well as a number of departments who do have a number of casuals when it comes to filling in for facilities that are on a 24-hour operational basis. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the reason we have our stabilization fund is to sort of limit the cost of the product to a certain degree. Then as we start to get to that ceiling, we would put in a request to FMB for a change in the price setup. But the idea is cost recovery, not on the market situation. So as Mr. Aumond stated, some of the issues that we look at as we go forward…But each community, again, the cost of delivery of the product and the commission charges of the contractor are taken into consideration. For example, on October 1, 2004…There hasn't been a big change in...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Joe Handley will be absent from the House today to speak at the Arctic Gas Symposium in Calgary. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, again, the process would be the responsible department, once there’s agreement there that there’s additional space required, would put their plan for that space into the system. If it was approved and dollars were attached to that and identified and approved through this budget process, we would then get involved through Public Works and Services' side on issuing and getting the engineering work done, architectural work and then issuing the contracts for that construction and doing the inspection to the final phase where the building would be turned over...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the work that’s undergoing right now we’re trying to get done within the resources we have available, but we also recognize that with over 180 employees being impacted and how we redesign the Human Resource Service Centre process and go into the regional build up of those, we understand and know that there’s going to be some growth in the areas as we try to make sure we can do this job accurately and get it done efficiently, as well. So there’s going to be some growth when we look at some increase in regional centres for staffing, as well as the...