Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The deferred maintenance budget of $5 million is in the capital and we also have $3 million in O and M in deferred maintenance, as the Members are aware. The infrastructure deficit is impacted a bit by deferred maintenance. Deferred maintenance essentially is on infrastructure that is already in place; however, it prevents that from becoming infrastructure deficit by us doing midlife work. Also, when there is time for items that have been deferred, that is the program for deferred, then we then do the work on the building. So we have been able to reduce our deferred...

Mr. Chair, I do.

I do not believe that these were direct appointments. Usually we fill direct appointments for a few reasons, one being that it’s a development opportunity for a person that has a priority 1 status in the government. We also offer those types of development opportunities to individuals that have priority 2 status in the Northwest Territories.

When we direct appoint somebody that has a priority 3 status, which I would assume all of these five people have, then it would be a position that we were unable to fill. Perhaps a scenario could be that the job was advertised two or three times without...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have the costs with me, but we collected approximately 700 resumes and were able to hire five people. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I will have the deputy minister respond to the standards.

Thank you. I didn’t indicate that we weren’t advertising the majority of them. We are advertising the majority of the jobs. There are some jobs that do go through other methods. That’s true that people are able to secure positions that are not necessarily at the advertisement stage. Sometimes an individual could be getting a position through transfer assignment. Sometimes the department, after a couple of attempts and failure to fill the position do go to a casual position and fill with a casual position. Sometimes there is a contractor filling the position. So they are at various stages, but...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Our schedule here shows that this year, this fiscal year that we’re in, we had put some money in the budget to work on the PWS shop. So our understanding is that work was completed. So if it’s not then we will get to the department and back to the Member to find out what may have occurred. We’re surprised to hear that nothing had happened. That’s because it was approved in the budget the last fiscal year.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our PeopleSoft is essentially a snapshot, but the numbers are fairly static throughout the year. So at the point when we did the last print off on PeopleSoft, the last time it was able to give us our semi-annual information, we had 244 jobs that the government was pursuing to fill and 281 jobs that were scheduled to be filled within a short time after that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We had some negotiations but the land issues have been resolved. Perhaps if the Member wants some detail on some of the issues we may have had or how we were working with the Department of Health, I’ll ask that the deputy minister respond to the Member.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are working closely with the Department of Health and Social Services and the RFP for the planning study will be going out very soon. It was scheduled to go out this fall, but we’re getting close to winter here, but it’s scheduled to go out very soon.