Glen Abernethy

It would be very difficult for us to determine what the per day cost to different jurisdictions are with respect to their facilities, but it still comes down to the bottom line: Will we be able to ensure that our residents have northern specific programming that we, as territorial politicians, have indicated in the past that we want?

In every jurisdiction the cost is different per facility. We know that. We also know what our costs are and we are planning based on future needs, what we know or what we predict will be the number of inmates coming down the pipes in the future, including with...

Thank you, Madam Chair. An ePerformance module is a tool that an employee and an employer can use when they are assessing the performance. This in no way, shape or form should take away from two people talking about progresses, and steps they can take to improve performance and start talking about where they want to go in the future by way of succession. But it does give us a way to formalize them in a standard document that we can use and track over time and compare to each other over time.

When we are talking about a paper system, often it was hard to track these over time to ensure that...

The Member must not be aware of some of the programming that we do offer, and we do offer a number of on-the-land programs. There’s a program in Fort Good Hope that we utilize to place inmates over the last couple of years and there are other programs that we utilize as well.

As far as changing my stripes, I don’t believe that’s the case. I am still interested in prudently managing finances in a responsible way and that’s what we’re talking about here. We know we’ve got facilities where the count goes up and down. We’ve got high count, we’ve got low count. Mostly we’ve got high count. Most of...

This is part of a corporate IT system. PeopleSoft runs across the entire Government of the Northwest Territories to all communities. All employees enter their time in the Northwest Territories and utilize the system, so wherever the system is available now, ePerformance will be able to be used. As far as increasing capacity, that’s something that we’re always trying to work with our Public Works and Services colleagues to make sure that we have the bandwidth and the IT IS/IM resources we need to continue to run systems of this nature in all communities.

Madam Chair, over the last four years I’ve heard many Members in this House talk about the programming that they’d like to see in corrections facilities and they talked a lot about culturally specific programs. To consider moving inmates outside of the Northwest Territories means that those inmates will not have culturally relevant programming.

I believe the mandate of this department is a good mandate and keeping our offenders in the North to benefit from our programs, including our cultural programs, is the way to go. I’m not sure that there would be much support for actually sending our...

Thank you, Madam Chair. With respect to the digital aspects of our GNWT human resource systems, we have been moving in that way for some time. We have PeopleSoft, which is our main human resource management system, and we, in the last couple of years, have added some additional modules to that. One of them was eRecruit, which is now used for all staffing actions in the Northwest Territories and has proven to be quite effective.

In this capital plan what we’re proposing is putting in our ePerformance module into PeopleSoft, and it’s kind of the perfect time to do it, because we are updating...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m not actually sure I understand the question 100 percent. We do have internal systems in the Government of the Northwest Territories within the Department of Justice both in courts and corrections and we do maintain those programs in house. Those programs are getting quite old and we are going to need to look at upgrading those programs shortly. But I’m not sure I fully understood your question.

Yes, I do, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The question that was asked earlier was how many youth female offenders we have in custody. We have one. That female offender is at the youth facility here in Yellowknife which also contains male youth. So there isn’t one person in that facility; there are a larger number of individuals. There are seven individuals in that facility here in Yellowknife, not one. I’m not sure if that clarity changes the question.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. “Public Service. Public Focus.” is the motto of 20/20: A Brilliant North, the NWT Public Service Strategic Plan. Our ability to provide quality programs and services is clearly linked to recruiting and retaining talented staff who are committed to their professions, their communities and the people they serve. The public service is the face of the Government of the Northwest Territories.

20/20: A Brilliant North guides the ongoing development of the NWT public service, with the aim of making the GNWT an employer of choice. There are real advantages to working for the...