Jane Groenewegen

Thank you, Minister Dent. General comments. General comments on the Employment Standards Act. Mr. Ramsay.

Good afternoon, Members. I call Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of the committee this afternoon? Mr. Lafferty.

Clause 17.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have to assume that the Government of the Northwest Territories is a pretty sophisticated client and we have spent, as I said, a very large amount of money on ensuring that we have a modern and efficient system in place. I would like to know what is the Minister doing to protect the financial interests of this government with respect to the purchase of this and all of the subsequent costs that have occurred by its failure to function properly? What is this Minister doing to, I suppose even assess what those costs are, and to protect this government...

Perhaps if we had a plain Jane program with a plain Jane Minister running his department, we would work a little better. Anyway, Mr. Speaker, with respect to the Minister’s statement today, one of the problems that are still causing a great deal of strife for departments and for managers is the Absence Management module has now been shut off. This is summer holidays. This is when people wanted to input leave requests. This is when managers wanted to approve leave requests. This is when people needed to know what their leave totals were. If there was ever a time that we needed this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak to the problems experienced by the Department of Human Resources. It does seem to be an endless list. I don’t purport to be any expert on the subject of software for human resource applications, but I know that our government has spent millions of dollars to ensure an effective and efficient system. That is definitely not what we have today.

Oracle, or the system formally known as PeopleSoft, is what is known as an enterprise resource planning system. There are several problems related to these ERP systems. In general, they are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That was going to be one of my next questions, whether or not the work that would be done, which I understand is much needed, would interrupt any of the air traffic that is currently scheduled in and out of Hay River. The Minister has indicated that the work on the runway will not interfere with that schedule. I would like to know from the Minister, Mr. Speaker, if Hay River would still be designated today, Mr. Speaker, as an alternate site for planes, 737s and larger aircraft that could not land in Yellowknife because of weather. Is Hay River still the alternate...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I realize this is fairly late in the life of this government, but I would like to ask the Minister if he could undertake…I mean he will still be the Minister until a new Minister is sworn in. I would like to definitely come up with some kind of report that would put in chronological order where we went wrong, to avoid something like this happening again. It’s fine to keep saying, well, this is a problem, this is a problem, this is a problem. I would like to see some kind of a constructive debrief report come out of all this activity that would be useful...

I would like the Minister to assure us, and I don’t know what I can really stake on that assurance because I stood in this House and told the Minister that we had a problem about this previously. He categorically denied that that problem existed. He subsequently found out it did exist and now I am asking for those assurances again anyway. I would like to ask the Minister what assurances can he provide to us that now, going forward, we have a system that works and is not going to see managers and staff spending inordinate amounts of time trying to sort this out? Is he confident now today...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Although he’s not my constituent, I’d like to recognize Patrick Scott in the visitors gallery today, a long-time northerner who’s made many contributions to the North, not the least of which are his six wonderful children.

---Applause