Tom Beaulieu

Thank you. I just used an example, that wasn’t exclusive to the fact that we would only have one such position that nobody else would be eligible. There could be more than one position of any type. The students, if the Member is asking about feedback from when the students were hired and then as they go back to school we provide them follow-up feedback, we don’t do that. But we do, like I said in December, start to get the word out that we are going to be hiring summer students like we do every year. There’s a Student Financial Assistance e-mail blast that goes out and it goes into the GNWT...

Mr. Speaker, it’s occupational health and safety training that’s performed by GNWT, labour relations. Of course, I do recognize that there is some bullying that occurs in the GNWT workplace as well. I don’t think it’s frequent, but it is there. I will be prepared to talk to the department and look at specifically trying to incorporate bullying into some of our work that we’re doing to try to make the GNWT a more respectful workplace. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the GNWT strives to have a respectful workplace. The labour relations is a course that is a requirement for all managers in the GNWT and there are some more courses and programs that are going to be a requirement for managers in the GNWT that will address this particular issue. The individuals that feel that they’re being bullied have options to go to their managers if they think that their managers are the ones providing or distributing the bullying or they have the option to go to the next level. They have the option to go to union if they happen to be unionized. They can go to...

Mr. Speaker, certainly as time goes, the severity of punishment for impaired driving has continued to increase. Impaired driving is certainly something that’s not viewed like it used to be in years past. It’s considered to be a very serious offence and is treated as such. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I don’t have that data with me. We are assuming that we’re still going to go and put in programs like the driver’s licence merit point program, the Alcohol Ignition Interlock Program and things like that, that are designed to address individuals that do drive impaired. But not having the information here, I’m not able to provide that to the Member to indicate whether or not some of this works… In the past, some of the work the department has done has had a positive effect on the impaired driving rates. Thank you.

[Microphone turned off] …have very good numbers. When we’re hiring students, we’re hiring students that come back to the North to work. Over 95 percent of the students that do come to work for the GNWT are either priority 1 candidates or priority 2 candidates.

I can talk to the Department of Human Resources to track the students that are coming in. Like I indicated, we’re getting about 700 applicants and if 400 of those students are not hired, then we can track those to determine why they were not a match, why they were not picked by the various departments that they did apply for. Students...

The departments use various methods to attract students. They’re on the website, they’re advertised by posters and so on. I indicated yesterday that that type of campaign for this coming summer was started in December 2013. The plan is to try to match the students as much as possible to their studies, so more of what the plan is, is to try to take the students and match them into the departments that they’re eventually hoping to study, and based only on that, not based on people hiring people that they know and so on.

Thank you. I think that this type of policy is something that could be looked at and discussed. We do hire the summer students that come back. Summer students that are looking for full-time employment during the short time that they are out, and need to make enough money to be able to get through the next year in many cases. So when we hire students, it’s often in an attempt to give them a full-time job or seven-and-a-half or eight-hour-a-day job for the full duration of the time that they’re out of school, so the idea of splitting jobs may be something that can be discussed with some of the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Summer Student Program is one of the programs used to provide experience to students so often they are rehired, the same summer student will be rehired in the department. So if there was a biology student that was hired by Environment and Natural Resources, there’s a good possibility that that individual would be hired after the first year, second year, third year, and we do have those stats. All of the databases in the GNWT, we track all of the students that apply and enter that into a database and all the individuals that were hired by the GNWT are also in the...

As the Member indicated, the Harassment Free and Respectful Workplace Policy would be a good place to start. Also, I referred to some of the labour relations training that would be a requirement for managers. Once those requirements are set down for various managers in the GNWT, that will educate the managers in this area. That is another place where we can see some results for perhaps bullying and harassment together. Thank you.