Tom Beaulieu

Mr. Chair, each department has a health and occupational safety coordinator, but it’s not that individual’s position. It would be a position where a person in the government is responsible for that position. Each department has one. Some of the departments that have maybe more… Some of the positions where we’ve had more incidents for, health and safety would have an actual health and safety occupational coordinator position, but I could maybe add to that by just asking the director to indicate which departments would have their own.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We would go to the departments. It’s department-specific information, so we would go to the departments. Each department would have to provide that information.

On this specific item that we’re discussing, there is an increase of $99,000. With some adjustments, all of that increase, essentially, is from the Collective Agreement; $107,000, actually, was the increase in this area, so the increase itself is more than the increase we’re presenting here today.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will look for the officials to support me in this in a general response. Generally what we could respond to is, any vacancies that are in Human Resources, the Department of Human Resources, and then for the overall vacancies in the government, the various agencies, whether they be health authorities or the education authorities, we would need to have the vacancies responded to by the appropriate Minister. As far as the Department of HR goes, we have seven vacancies that we are currently in the process of staffing. Only two of those are in the region and five are in...

The time frame is between six weeks and eight weeks.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I am going to speak a bit about what we are doing to attract summer students; however, I think we will stay with the idea that the Member is referring to a mentoring program.

We think there is merit in such an idea. Again, it is something that once we have gone through the process of retaining the student or recruiting the student to the GNWT, then it would be the responsibility of each department to determine what type of mentoring that the student would go through, what type of mentoring that student would need in order to succeed in the job that they are being...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I would.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to have the deputy minister respond to the question.

Thank you. Maybe I’ll start off with this discussion a bit on the open house with Ms. Beard and then go to the deputy.

If the proprietors were able to come in with a new hospital, new construction, 30 percent bigger than what we have in place, 30 to 40 percent bigger than the current hospital, with a more reasonable cost than renovating and expanding the hospital, of course we would go with a new hospital, but at this point we were thinking that this would be the most efficient way to go. Once the proprietors are able to look at the project and cost the project out, we would have a better idea of which direction to go. Thank you.

It’s kind of an interesting comment. An unfilled position would be the only reason that we would be trying to fill it.