Tom Beaulieu

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.

The departments manage their own human resources. They do it using the vacant positions. Sometimes they maintain a home position for an employee that may be under an assignment. So that home position would be considered vacant. They may need other priorities that need to be met by not just by the Assembly but also the department priorities and they use the position by filling some casual positions to meet the mandate. They support other positions that are required, other priorities that are required and also sometimes if the department had some vacant positions, they may keep the positions...

At this time many of the dormant and inactive positions are not funded. They’re unfunded positions or just PYs that appear in the PeopleSoft as dormant and inactive positions. We are undertaking an analysis with all of the departments to determine if any of these positions are funded and with the ones of the inactive, dormant positions that have funding attached to it, what is happening specifically with that funding and for what other personnel use is that money used for.

The job evaluation process is used to determine what qualifications are needed to do this particular job, so if this particular job is out, has certain qualifications that are required, those are the qualifications that must be met. So if there is a priority 1 candidate that meets the qualifications, then those are the individuals interviewed. Once we have a number of priority 1 candidates or even one priority 1 candidate eligible, regardless of whether or not priorities 2 and 3 have higher qualifications, we do interview the priority 1 candidate and attempt to try to increase the affirmative...

Mr. Speaker, in the Deh Cho, which includes another riding in the Assembly, there are 34 positions that we are trying to actively recruit for. Seventeen of those positions need a university degree and 10 of those positions are college or trades. Very few of the 34 positions are entry level positions, so I hear what the Member is saying.

One of the things that we are looking at with the regional recruitment is to see if individuals who have a high school education with some training for over a year can fill one of the positions that has a greater education requirement, combining experience and...

Mr. Speaker, the Department of Transportation is now providing residents with the option to access driver and motor vehicle services from the comfort of their homes, workplaces or from anywhere else with an Internet connection. On-line driver and motor vehicle services are part of the government’s Service Innovation Strategy. Effective and efficient government is achieved by reducing red tape and connecting NWT residents and businesses with the information and services they need.

It has taken over five years of dedicated work to modernize the Motor Vehicle Information System. Now we have been...

The money remains there, the money is there to perform the tasks that are the responsibility of the individual that is now on a transfer assignment. Those are some of the priorities that are assigned to the department that would be a part of that. So that’s what the money is used for. I don’t know what else that money could possibly be used for other than to perform those tasks in this particular case. Thank you.