Wendy Bisaro

Mr. Chair, I guess I missed that conversation. I don’t remember being asked what I thought. I guess I would suggest to the Minister that we need to go a little further afield than just MLAs when we’re getting input on whether or not a campaign school should be held more often.

My second question has to do with page 34 where it references a review of negotiating mandates. One of the things that have concerned me for a while is the position of the federal government with regard to funding of not negotiations, but funding of the agreements. They have a policy called Fiscal Harmonization Initiative...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a couple of questions here. Mr. Moses has already referenced the increase to the Native Women’s Association and to the Status of Women Council of the NWT. I’m glad to see that a couple of organizations which do work outside of government have been given an increase. I gather that it’s up to each organization within each department to kind of scream and holler for money, and that’s unfortunate. I would urge the Minister, as Premier, to look across government and maybe set something in place so that organizations are evaluated more often than every five years...

If I heard the Minister correctly, a position has been identified by another department and the Department of HR then assists in recruiting for the position that has been decentralized to another community. That suggests to me that these are unfilled positions that are being transferred. Is that correct?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of questions. The first one has to do with direct appointments and I think there was some discussion about direct appointments earlier. My understanding is that we have changed how we are using direct appointments recently. I would like to know from the Minister if he could explain what that change is and why. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. I will say okay, fine, but I look at page 227 when we are looking at the whole department and again the whole department has gone up.

So if we have gone from ‘13-14, $19.5 million to $23.7 million in ‘14-15 and $24.3 million in ‘15-16 and presumably the 71 positions have been accounted for in this budget on page 227, the loss of them, and yet the budget still goes up. This is where I am having difficulty and I suspect my colleague is as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m going to follow up on where Mr. Dolynny left off for a bit. I may have mentioned in my general comments about passive restraint and that I don’t think it’s working. On top of the fact that there’s an increase to this budget, and I see in this department or this section alone under directorate it’s about $100,000. But there was a transfer from HR to Finance of a number of employees. So in spite of the fact that we had a section transfer out of this department, the department still went up overall some $680,000 and in this particular section $100,000.

I really have to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We would like to continue with consideration of Tabled Document 188-17(5). We would like consider and conclude general comments and then get on to the departments of Human Resources and Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations, time permitting. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the deputy minister. My other question has to do with retaining employees. There’s been a fairly large emphasis, I guess, from what we hear from the department and what we sort of see in the budget, an emphasis on recruitment, but I would like to know what we are doing in terms of a retention strategy. Do we have one and what efforts is the department making to keep people in the workforce as opposed to losing them? Thank you.

The office of a seniors advocate could have a key role in supporting a shift in public attitude by promoting and celebrating the positive aspects of aging, including the invaluable experience and wisdom that comes with older age. I urge the government to consider this initiative and to respond. Thank you.

What is that time frame? Eight weeks? Six weeks? Ten weeks? Twelve weeks?