Glen Abernethy

I do, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On my right I have Sylvia Haener, who is the deputy minister of the Department of Justice. On my left I have Kim Schofield, who is the director of finance of the Department of Justice.

Mr. Speaker, the government is committed to being an inclusive workplace open to all Northerners. A diverse workplace improves our ability to serve the public.

Today I would like to provide Members with highlights from the recent Inclusive Public Service Survey, conducted by the NWT Bureau of Statistics on behalf of the Department of Human Resources. It was developed in consultation with the GNWT Advisory Committee on Employability. The survey was conducted in the first half of this year, and asked all GNWT employees to share their perspectives on a wide range of workplace diversity topics. The...

Absolutely. The Member is the chair of EDI, which is the committee that we would be going through. He will absolutely, without question, as I indicated before, get the information, as will all Members.

Once again, I share the Member’s concerns with respect to liability. We certainly as a government don’t want to take on additional liability for this purpose. I believe there are individuals who would be interested in this opportunity and I’m sure we can find a reasonable solution with the cooperation of everybody involved.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am happy to report that the Government of the Northwest Territories hired 308 students this past summer. This was an increase of 9 percent from 2011, when 286 students were hired. Of the 308 students hired, 54.6 percent were indigenous Aboriginals.

The summer student employment is an investment in our future and our youth. Through this program, northern students gain valuable work experience to complement their formal education and test drive the GNWT as a future employer.

At the end of the summer, we asked the students about their experiences. The feedback we received...

I like to go for lunch.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Obviously, we would be going through committee for some discussions around that but we also need to approach the arts community themselves to get a sense of what their expectations might be. Their input into the development of a policy would be valuable as well.

There are a number of different organizations that we could approach just to get ideas, not necessarily to have them draft or work on the draft with us, but we need to get some ideas from them on what they would like to see as performing artists, graphic artists, painters, photographers, any of those individuals...

We’re happy to give that. Some of it will obviously be forecasted. I mean, the true impact is sometimes not known until the building is gone or the construction activity is done, and we don’t include it in our numbers for actual reduction until those items have happened. But we can do some forecasting. We can clearly identify some of the buildings that we know today will likely be coming down during the life of this Assembly, two schools in Inuvik being examples. So we’ll take a stab at that and we’ll try and get the information, and we’ll have an opportunity to discuss that with committee...

Madam Chair, the Member asked a similar question in I think it was business main estimates last year and I committed to having the department go and do an analysis of the space available where we could actually hang pictures or display art, with parameters being it has to be the public area in the buildings rather than, say, office areas or areas that aren’t open to the public.

The department is doing that analysis. We have some early numbers. There is not as much public space as you might imagine, so we are just trying to explore our definition of what is public space.

Once we have that...

Sure, Madam Chair, I just said it doesn’t disappear by itself. It needs investment.