Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There has been no change to the Direct Appointment Policy.

I indicated that there are 1,038 vacant positions. I guess just to give some numbers, overall vacancies reported in the previous report were 1,226. That dropped to 1,038. The vacancies to be filled went from 527 to 466, as I indicated. The use of casuals went from 15 percent to 18 percent. The positions to be inactivated have decreased considerably from 218 down to 71 positions. Positions that are home position individuals that were on transfer assignment, there were 84 of those types of positions.

I’m not sure that the department would be in the position to complete a legislative proposal to look at the energy efficiency act for the Northwest Territories. Currently, we are using the energy efficiency act that is used across the country. We use the energy efficiency and national energy efficiency codes when we do our buildings and make sure that all of our buildings are under the National Energy Code. These are building that are designed that exceed most of the energy efficiency requirements across the entire country and within the Northwest Territories. I’m assuming that Nunavut and the...

Had we left the 71 positions in the budget, then you would have seen a huge decrease, so what we did so that we’re able to compare apples to apples, was to remove completely retroactively to those positions left. It has no impact at all. Maybe what I am going to try to do is try to get Ms. Beard to add some of the details on how that had occurred. It is like we are comparing the… I think the department has 119 people, so we’re comparing that all the way along, not the 190 people that were in the department previously. It is as if those 71 people had never existed in the system. I think it is...

Thank you, Madam Chair. No. We will provide. What the Member is asking for is that we do a manual count of the change of all the individuals that came into the public service that were priority 1, 2 or 3. I guess I’m not clear on how far back we go. From the last report to this report coming up or is it from the last report that we have completed to the previous year or this government or this fiscal year? I’m not sure exactly what we’re reporting on.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The energy efficiency act was last amended in September of 2009. We were currently using it up until December 2014. There will be another review of the consolidated energy efficiency act.

Any time there are energy codes or anything, regulations in the act, then the Department of Public Works uses the current energy efficiency act. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the safe disclosure, I will have Ms. Beard talk a bit on that and respond on the budget. I really don’t understand exactly what it is that the Member is saying.

We’ve had forced growth, which means we are forced to grow in the area of collective bargaining and Collective Agreement increases and collective bargaining negotiations and also in the PeopleSoft maintenance, so those are three areas that we grew in. We’ve legally had to provide French language communications and services. We grew in that. There was an increase in devolution and then we had transferred to...

We would have to do a manual count by department, so what happens with our reporting on PeopleSoft is that they give a snapshot in between from one report to the next, so for about a six-month period what it would show would be the change but it wouldn’t show the amount of people going in and out to actually create that change. It would show the new number at this point. In order for us to determine how many southerners we hired or non-priority candidates we were to hire in the GNWT versus priority 1 or priority 2 candidates, we would actually have to do a manual count department by department...

Mr. Chairman, we have found ways within the passive restraint to roll out the program without increasing the budget.

I will try to have the director provide some detail on the increases and whether or not we are in a position to look at savings elsewhere.