Tom Beaulieu

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. The career fair that we had in Ottawa is one method for the GNWT to attract individuals to come to work in the Northwest Territories. As a government, our approach is holistic when we try to also bring in some population, bring some people in and we have a goal of increasing our population in the territory, but one of the principle reasons for going to Ottawa would be to look at some of the very difficult to fill positions. Also, attracting some Northerners to come back to the territory.

When we were down there, we had contact with over 600 people. Some of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member brings up a lot of really good ideas for us and to add to some of the initiatives that we continue to work on, some of the strategies, some of the frameworks that we put together to bring people, to recruit people and also to retain people. I think some of the ideas would be difficult to do in the GNWT, and I know that the Member only brings that up as an example, but many of these ideas of job shadowing, being creative and innovative and making sure that we have the right jobs out there that can be filled by the individuals out there. Going to high schools...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Workforce Planning Strategy does have several sub-strategies, a Regional Recruitment Strategy being one of them. The Inclusive Recruitment Strategy is another, the Student and Youth Strategy and also the Career Fair Strategy. The area where the Member speaks of where there’s going to be lots of public servants retiring within the next five to 10 years, we have the Knowledge Retention Framework that we’re going to employ to try to retain the knowledge, pass the knowledge on to individuals that would be staying with the GNWT, like perhaps developing some mentorship...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will attempt to respond to some of the information and then have the deputy fill in, the deputy or the director fill in with some of the areas that we may be able to provide more specific details.

I guess to the overtime issue, we don’t have any overtime scheduled in any of our business planning or in the mains, and I guess that is sometimes part of the issue with some of the discussions that have been continuing in the House over the last few days. At some point there are individuals that are not able to come to work, especially in the 24/7 operations of the hospitals...

Yes, I do, Madam Chair.

Yes, I do, Madam Chair.

No, I’m not aware of anything that has been approved through the capital budget, but the DOT Access Road Program, although it’s an O and M budget, is used to do the upgrades on open access roads and upgrades to access roads, so we will be targeting that program to improve this road. Then we can also have discussions with the Member over the longer term. If he sees this road becoming a highway standard, then it’s something that we would have to bring back to the House because it would probably be a substantial cost.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the years, after the Jean Marie access road was made passable through all seasons, an additional $1.5 million has been spent on that road to try to upgrade it. The department is going to continue to work on that road and continue to try to improve the road so that it is passable 365 days a year. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to speak on a couple of these items brought forward by the Member, then I’m going to ask the deputy to speak on some specific details. I will ask that she speak specific details on the Youth and Student Strategy and also more elaboration on the career fair.

We do attend other career fairs within the territory, but they are hosted by others. The Department of Education will host career fairs and often when those career fairs are occurring, then Human Resources would come in and piggyback onto their career fair and we would have people there from Human...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The regional recruitment was something that the people from the departments have been talking about at the open houses. We’ve had one open house; we’re expanding to open houses in all the regional centres where we have service offices. We’re going to have two days of open house here to cover the city of Yellowknife and because regional recruitment is the intent of that, the strategy is to fill the regional positions, positions out there in the regions that could be also in the communities. It was not discussed in Ottawa. The career fair in Ottawa was not specifically to...