Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Madam Speaker. There is no further outstanding work to complete the bridge. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am pleased to present the Department of Human Resources’ main estimates for fiscal year 2014-15.

The department is proposing an operations expenditure budget of $23.6 million. This is a reduction of $18.5 million for 2013-14, a decrease of 44 percent. This reduction is largely the result of the transfer of employee-specific services such as pay and benefits, including regional roles, Helpdesk and human resources information systems to the Department of Finance. The transfer includes the compensation and benefits for 78 Department of Human Resources staff who are...

I would be pleased to provide that information to the Member within the next couple of days.

The money that will be used to continue to upgrade the road is from the regular maintenance budget. We could look specifically into the access road budget, as well, this coming year since that is all done by proposal. We would look at the Jean Marie road through the DOT Access Road Program as well. But there is no plan that I’m aware of in the immediate future to upgrade it to the regular highway standards that we have on Highway No. 1, for example.

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.