Glen Abernethy

We do have the strategic plan, the 20/20, for the Government of the Northwest Territories, which is focused on building a public service that is responsive, respectful, but also representative of the population we serve. I will commit to working with each of the departments to try to find priorities and activities we can do within the individual departments. As far as individual human resources plans, I believe much of that work is already begun, or has existed in the past. We will look to see if we can revitalize any of that, but also need to focus in on: what is it really going to take to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, this is going to sound like a really repetitive answer, but in this particular area we really dug deep into the department trying to figure out what we're actually spending, and compare it to what our budgets were, and realign our budgets with actual expenditures rather than historic budgets. And this is one of the areas that, you know, we felt we needed to align in order to capture the fact that some of the fees and payments that we're making out there with respect to some of our software, our human-resource-specific software, have escalated and changed over...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. If you look onto page 213 you'll also notice that there's a position reduction within the directorate, and one of the positions that was eliminated was the assistant deputy minister of Human Resources. Some of those costs are directly related to the reduction of that position.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a good question. I couldn't say 100 per cent what the reason is. But I can say that in all the other community and region numbers they do include numbers for Health and Social Services. Whereas, in Hay River and Hay River Reserve, they don't because the Hay River Authority currently is outside the public service. They're bound by the same terms and conditions of our collective agreement and, I mean, we don't crack their summer student hires, so we have no numbers here for any summer students being hired within the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority. That...

The Aboriginal Employees Advisory Committee is made up of Aboriginal employees of the GNWT, and their role is to provide some guidance and advice to the Minister and the department on how to have a more responsive system, a system that is hiring more Aboriginal people, where appropriate. I do believe they have a pretty solid role; I think they're doing some good work. As we move forward and get some of the statistical information and have a better sense of where we are and how we have actually responded over time, I will have a conversation with committee and we can talk about the advisory...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chair, there are three positions being eliminated within the Department of Human Resources, all of them were vacant, and they are a result of the reduction. As a result of eliminating some of these positions, especially the area around strategic human resources, we've had to do some reorganization within the department. The re-allocation of the marketing and communication budget from the strategic human resources section, which was about $212,000, as well as some internal re-allocation of budget from purchase services to better align us with historical expenditures...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, before I commit to tabling that document, I would like to obviously talk to the Minister responsible for the WSCC. It's really their report to table, but given that our information's in there I will certainly have a conversation with the Minister responsible for the WSCC.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, to change a PY in the Government of the Northwest Territories, it is a funded position. It requires us to go through the mains process that we are going through today, which means the Members do have an opportunity to see any funded positions that are being moved from one region to another or being eliminated. As with our policies and procedures, we have policies and procedures with respect to staff who are affected. If a position is going to be moved or eliminated, we have a very thorough process we follow in an attempt to retain our staff as best as possible...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the parties who have appeal rights include any person eligible for priority consideration under the Affirmative Action Policy and any current GNWT employee. There are some scenarios where appointments to positions may not be appealed under regulations and those are clearly outlined within the policy and regulations. That's a person with a staffing priority status under the Staff Retention Policy, any position considered an executive position as determined by the job evaluation system, and teacher and/or principal jobs. With respect to fairness, I mean we want...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we are committed to a safe workplace for all of our staff. Our people are our most valuable asset, and we need to make sure that they are working in safe environments. To that end, the Department of Human Resources does provide assistance to all the departments who have established individual occupational health and safety committees throughout most of the work sites and most of the departments through the GNWT, most of the departments, not necessarily every work site. I can tell you that through the Safe Advantage program there have been years where we have...