Tom Beaulieu

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.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The career fair in Ottawa was one method that we were using to try to attract individuals to the North. They come to the North; they would be subjected to the same type of infrastructure and housing deficiencies as anyone else here.

We are also trying to advertise in the North. We have open houses. We’ve had one in Simpson. We’re going to continue to have open houses the next couple of months in all of our centres where we have career centres. We are going to have these open houses to try to bring people from these communities to the open house and talk about their...

Thank you. A public highway is a public highway. Any public highway, once it’s officially opened, is the responsibility of DOT. It’s fairly standard practice to put down the base of the road and not put the chipseal immediately, and in this case there would be driving on it and when it is appropriate and the weather allows, then it will be chipsealed, but up until the chipseal is completed, the contract is still there, but legally, at the time it was opened it became a DOT asset. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. There was not a design issue; the issue was with the installation of the bridge. The bridge was installed and the panels that sit on top the bridge were not totally lined up with the installation of the sides of the bridge. It took some time to make the correction, so that has been corrected. There’s no issue with the safety of the bridge or anything. The corrections have been made and the bridge is now properly installed. Thank you.

Thank you. The chipsealing will be done this summer during the summer construction season. Once that is completed if there’s a request from committee for us to debrief committee on the contract, then the department is prepared to do that. Thank you.

Thank you. This was a guaranteed negotiated contract. There have been no requests from the contractor for any change order to increase the costs of the work that was done on the Highway No. 4 bypass. Thank you.

The department has the Aboriginal Management and Development Program where we are advancing people into associate positions. We are starting at the director/superintendent level where we are advancing six individual Aboriginals into those positions. It gives them a good key position to be able to reach out and try to attract other Aboriginal employees. In the mix, we are also trying to add – we don’t have the money in the budget yet – the next level down and have associate managers. So that’s something that the department will be putting forward to the government. We have an Aboriginal...