Tom Beaulieu

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. The first thing that we are doing is that we are looking at community-by-community statistics and determining whether or not in a particular community that the numbers of affirmative action positions are low and then we are trying to fill the positions that are vacant in those communities with Aboriginal employees by various strategies that we are undertaking. One example would be the Regional Recruitment Strategy. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, even though the position is vacant, the job still has to be done. Often the positions are filled with a casual, and also when we have some vacancy rates, we create some money for summer students so we are able to hire summer students. It is very important to us as a government, when these kids are out at university or college, when they come back to the Northwest Territories that we try to employ them so they have a better chance of success when they go back to school. Last year we employed 308 summer students. If we had every position filled to the max all the time and there was...

Mr. Speaker, they are not a secret, so it would be difficult to answer a question that leads with why is it a secret. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, it does matter; I agree. This is a reason why we are trying to put infrastructure into the small communities.

In some of the larger centres, we do have very good employment rates. An example is the employment rate in the city of Yellowknife is over 80 percent; across the country it is 69 percent. The issue is not really because we don’t have infrastructure here, we don’t have infrastructure in the small communities. The low employment numbers in the small communities are due to education and housing and other office space and other infrastructure that’s needed to attract people...

The Department of Human Resources does work with all departments in trying to fill the vacant positions in the small communities. We are well aware of the employment rate in the small communities, that they are very low.

If we could fill all the jobs in the small communities, we would do that, and we constantly work with the departments to determine which jobs can be filled, which jobs we’re having difficulty filling and so on. In the small communities, I recognize, as a Member from a small community, we need to have jobs in the small communities, and we are doing everything possible to fill...

As far as the new building goes, I don’t know what will be available, but one of the things that we have determined as the group of departments working together that it was very important for us to do our communications to the NWT Arts Council. They seem to have their membership communicating with the memberships right across the territory throughout the arts community, so any communications that this government has in order to determine what would be displayed and which buildings will be communicated to the NWT Arts Council.

The first thing that had occurred was the two content management TV display systems were created and put out. Essentially, a TV screen, one at the Yellowknife Airport and one in the Public Works office in Inuvik, and they display art. They have had discussion with the NWT Arts Council. This group of departments had discussions with the Arts Council and are working on what will be displayed, for what type of period they’ll be displayed, how many different things would be displayed and so on.

In as far as the policy goes, ECE will be developing a policy, working with Public Works and ITI, and...

I am very pleased to announce that for the second year in a row the Government of the Northwest Territories has been chosen as one of Canada’s Best Diversity Employers. This award is presented by Canada’s Top Employers at Mediacorp Canada Inc., which manages the competition in partnership with the Globe and Mail and recognizes employers across Canada with exceptional workplace diversity and inclusiveness practices.

Mr. Speaker, diversity is a core value of the NWT public service. It enables us to create a workplace that represents the population we serve, that is open to contributions from all...

The money to hire employees for the GNWT is there and we use that money for that purpose only. We don’t spend it on other things. Tomorrow morning we will be able to demonstrate in committee the full program of vacancies, hires, and we can do comparisons with the main estimates. We are prepared to do all that. We had promised committee we would do that work and we are doing that tomorrow morning. Thank you.

No, I cannot guarantee that all of those 571 jobs will be on the career website and advertised soon; however, I will guarantee that we will be doing a full presentation to committee on exactly what the issues are with the vacancy rates and our complications with filling all of these positions and why these positions are vacant, where they are vacant and where we are having difficulties recruiting. I will assure the Member that tomorrow morning we will be putting a full presentation together and talking about all of the vacancy rates. Thank you.