Tom Beaulieu

Mr. Speaker, although the operational requirements are something that is a factor in granting immediate leave for an individual to fight a fire, none of the departments or any of the managers that work for the GNWT will withhold leave when some firefighters have an immediate need to leave to fight a house fire. None of that leave will be unreasonably denied, but like I indicated, there is an operational requirement as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The GNWT has various leave for volunteer activities. Some of the leave is laid out in the Collective Agreement and in the Human Resource Manual. We have civic leave, where an individual employee of the GNWT can take up to 15 days to work with public boards, community councils and committees. There is other leave, as well, for something we refer to as sporting leave for people who are athletes, officially designated coaches, managers, head officials and so on, and GNWT allows up to eight days for that type of activity. Thank you.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Great Slave, that Bill 30, An Act to Amend the Public Service Act, be read for the first time. Thank you.

Thank you. A representative public service is a priority of this government. We have asked, through my office I have talked to the deputy minister of Human Resources and advised the deputy minister of Human Resources that I wish to see all of the human resource plans from all of the departments, that she was to talk to all of the deputy ministers across the GNWT to look at the human resource plans and determine how the departments are going to raise the level of Priority 1 candidates in each of the departments. So we are doing that. We’re examining that to determine how the numbers look now so...

A good point of contact for us has been the government service officer. The government service officers who have worked in the communities that they’re responsible for put a list of individuals in the community that they feel that have achieved Grade 12, and from that list the government service officers have talked to the regional directors. It’s a standing item with the regional directors at the regional management committee meetings and they’re communicating that back to the Human Resources department. In Human Resources, we have a regional recruitment specialist, and that individual then...

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated, civil leave used for participation in community councils, public boards and other committees, other volunteer organizations around the community. The Rangers are used extensively for search and rescue, as well as firefighters. CASARA have their leave when an individual is out on the land, lost. In that case the Rangers would fall into that leave. When the Rangers are exercising, as I’m sure the Speaker is aware, then the leave will be granted under the civil leave. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, as far as the training of the firefighters goes, for that aspect of it the GNWT will provide five days of leave. If a firefighter at work is called to a fire and needs to take leave for that day when they’re fighting a house fire, I think that is something that we don’t have specifically covered in our HR Manual, but it’s something I think that the GNWT, as the manager of that employee, allows an individual to go and fight a house fire if they’re part of the volunteer group.

However, some of the other things that may be important to this questioning is that right now the GNWT is...

Mr. Speaker, certainly I will look into that. I will talk to the department, and the department, in turn, will contact the regional office out of Simpson and confirm any issues with the road. If there are serious issues with that road, then we’ll repair it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are three main pieces of work happening in the area that the Member speaks of. On Highway No. 7 we are resurfacing and putting new chipseal down from zero to kilometre 20, and the Member knows exactly where that is. Also, on Highway No. 1, we are going to apply new chipseal. I believe there was some chipseal down. We’re going to apply new chipseal from kilometre 395 to 411. Also, again on Highway No. 1 just as it flows into the Member’s riding, from kilometre 188 to kilometre 206 we’re going to resurface and put on new chipseal. Thank you.

Like I said, we do get 700 to 800 applicants to our summer students. We hire around 300. We’re on target to do that again. We tried to do a fairly even split between Yellowknife, where the majority of the public service is, and out there in the regions and the communities. We do have 100 or so competitions at one time because we can’t run all the vacancies at one time. All the positions to recruit, we cannot run them all at one time. They’re at varying stages. Some of them may be at the offer stage, some are at the appeals stage, some are just becoming vacant and so on, so there is a constant...