Tom Beaulieu

Mr. Speaker, June 15th to 21th is National Public Service Week. This year’s theme is “Proudly Serving Canadians.” National Public Service Week provides an opportunity for us to celebrate the contribution and accomplishments of public service employees across Canada and especially here in the Northwest Territories.

A strong territory needs a strong society. All residents of the NWT should have the chance to enjoy the benefits of living in a prosperous, well-governed territory and to participate fully in a healthy, just society. The GNWT is committed to helping our residents achieve their...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document, entitled “Results Report (2013-14), 20/20 A Brilliant North, NWT Public Service Strategic Plan.” Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the reason for the whole thing would be direct appointments; it’s a direct appointment process. We go through the regular direct appointment process. The individual managers, unless they’re dealing with a person that’s affected, cannot direct appoint. Individuals affected through layoff would be the only way where an individual can go through the process back to the Minister as a Human Resources direct appointment. Otherwise, all direct appointments go through Cabinet. So there have been no direct appointments through the Regional Recruitment Program. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Regional Recruitment Strategy is one where a position would be identified by a department. Of all the vacant positions that may be in the region, the department would identify a position and then determine that that position would be one that can be filled by an individual that does not have all of the skills necessary to do that function at this point but can be trained up.

We are having some difficulties finding the key positions in the department; however, we have found some. We managed to put one individual on, like the Member said. We have five more individuals...

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. The department will do all it can to talk to the federal government, to meet with the federal government, have discussions, try to get the agreement signed off as quickly as possible so that there is no disruption in the work that ended last summer and that we’re hoping to roll into this year. We’re doing all we can, and unfortunately, I cannot stand up here and make a commitment for the federal government as to when they will release the money. But we’re doing all we can to try to get that done as quickly as possible.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The funds were approved and we had presented a plan to the federal government and the plan was approved, but the money for the plan and how the money is going to roll out from the federal government has yet to be determined. Unfortunately, we are still in the process of negotiating when and how the money will flow. We don’t want to spend the money up front if that’s not the way the federal government is hoping to advance the money to us, so we’re going to talk to them and then determine exactly what is acceptable and when the money starts to flow, and then hopefully...

During our meeting with the leadership when we were meeting on the Mackenzie Valley road, the leadership had indicated to us that they were going to provide a proposal to us, a proposal that will be presented to the federal government and other departments in the federal government so that they can provide some funding through various avenues. One of the things that the leadership was very focused on was to try to access some quarries and that they wanted to build some of the road using some access money from the federal government and some money from the various other agencies and departments...