Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Wednesday, June 3, 2015, I will move that Bill 60, An Act to Amend the Motor Vehicles Act, No. 2, be read for the first time.

The Department of Human Resources works with all of the departments and we are thinking that reducing the vacancy rate is something that will increase the population in the Northwest Territories. I referred earlier on in my response to hard-to-fill positions that where we will be actively trying to hire individuals from the South and giving the people the ability to hire on the spot. In those positions we’re expecting to increase the population by that.

As far as vacancies go, a year ago we had over 1,100, well, 1,175 vacancies six months ago. We’re down to 1,038 vacancies, and today we’re at...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; there were open houses held across the North, and the idea would be to try to provide information to individuals who are interested in coming to work for the Government of the Northwest Territories. I don’t have the matching amounts for the number of individuals that have come to the open houses and whether or not that resulted in us hiring more individuals as a result of the open houses. I know that it has been a good avenue for disseminating information from Human Resources and several departments that do participate to getting people in the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We do have a job share policy in the government. Currently, the boards and agencies and the departments are allowed to hire and put two persons into one position and they share the one job. That is currently allowed in our system. Thank you.

We will do everything we can to try to keep the traffic flowing on the highway, so if there is a list… It becomes a difficulty to try to anticipate when the road will be shut down. Last year we found that to be difficult to anticipate. But if there are fires near the highway, communications and Environment and Natural Resources will stay in touch with them. If we’re able to determine that we might have to shut the road down two days out, four days out, whatever, I will be prepared to accept a list from the Member and provide that to the departments, and the departments can touch base with...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department has been advised that we had done an excellent job in communicating with the folks last year during the fire season. We’re going to continue and, in fact, maybe enhance some of the areas that we had communicated to the people and to industry from last year. We have Twitter. We have a website. We also have a toll-free website and also the toll-free telephone, so we’re able to communicate with people, and people are able to communicate with us.

On contacting the actual people like the grocery stores or the hospitals and so on, we’re afraid that if we reach...

I will have the department provide that information to the committee.

We’ll be reconstructing that area. Thank you.

The plan is to reconstruct the highway from 20 to 38. I believe that takes us to the chipsealing being finished right to Fort Liard. Also the intention is to try to do some resurfacing in some of the heavy truck areas between Fort Liard and the Nahanni Butte turn and concentrating on an area from kilometre 111 to 130 and a complete reconstruction of a narrow part of the highway that is around 169, 170. Thank you.

There are two things that we have to look at before we can make any commitments, before I can make any commitments on a forum that is operational requirements. Number one, the fact that the majority of our civil servants are in the union, so we would have to discuss this with the union, and also, it becomes very important for operational requirements that all the positions that are needed in the key times and areas are there, and I couldn’t make a commitment to do that without checking those two things first, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.