Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said, we know in the books we’ve had at least 1,100 or more vacancies because of PeopleSoft. The Human Resources Minister has just mentioned, you know, well now we’re maybe talking about 500 or more. Fifteen percent, as I said, is close to 800 job vacancies here in the Northwest Territories.

The fact is, unemployment rates continue to rise and the only thing that brings unemployment rates down is people give up looking for work. Not employment rates have risen; unemployment rates have dropped strictly because they have just given up.

So how do we fix the population...

I didn’t have a chance to write those numbers down, but if we put them together they sound like about 500 jobs.

Why are there only 70 jobs being advertised on our public website? Is this government not interested in hiring people to ensure that they can feed and take care of their families?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First off I’d like to join you in recognizing Hunter Tootoo. He’s been a good friend over the years that I’ve gotten to know, and as well, he’s flanked by two women amazingly time has stopped for, Christy Sinclair and Wanda Norwegian. I’ve known them a long time and they look as young as ever. I don’t know how I keep getting older. It’s the truth, though; that’s the problem. Same as Mr. Ramsay there, I too wish to recognize Sean Ivens. He’s a very well-known businessman. We grew up together in Fort Simpson. He spent many years in Hay River and certainly in Yellowknife...

Mr. Speaker, while the Department of Human Resources was sorting through those 700 resumes, while they found time in some form or fashion to hire five people, were any of those five people that they hired direct appointments? I want to know the credentials of these types of appointments and how he got them. Were they direct appointments or were they true competitions where Northerners could have applied for and at the end of the day the government wasted probably a lot of money on this? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to continue with my questions to the Minister of Human Resources. There was a fair bit of information that he left on the table. I am not sure if he just felt bad that he gave me the original information of PeopleSoft and felt that, boy, we have to stop giving this guy information so let’s just ignore stuff so hopefully he will go away.

I asked, repeatedly, the details of the job fair money and the results, so let’s get to the bottom line here. What were the results of the southern job fairs and what did it cost the people of the Northwest Territories?

We have just under 5,000 people employed in the Northwest Territories with the GNWT. We know that it’s a typical figure, 15 percent vacancy at any one time. The Minister only talks about the back end of the employment process. At the front end of the employment process is the same amount of people coming in as going out. So we have a constant number of about 700 or more vacancies in the Government of the Northwest Territories at any one time, but yet we only have 10 percent on the webpage being advertised.

Let’s get to new results and find out where we’re going with this problem. What did the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the spring this year the Minister of Human Resources had conveyed to Members that there were just over 1,200 vacancies on the books. The Finance Minister had said on the record that they were actively pursuing half of those, and that was 571 jobs. On further drilling down on those books there were 800 vacancies, and may I remind this government we have a 3.4 percent unemployment rate in Yellowknife, but we also have more than 30 percent unemployment rate in the communities. We need these jobs, they’re critical.

So let’s first start off from the Minister of Human...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Frankly, I just can’t figure out how the Minister is proud of the job he’s doing and how he keeps saying we are doing a good job when he only builds one house per community per year on average. Those statistics speak for themselves. We’ll let Northerners judge the Minister, Mr. Speaker.

In summary, 19 percent of the houses in the Northwest Territories are in core need; 31.6 percent are houses with problems of some sort. Declining funding is a terrible thing, but it is a terrible crutch to lean on that as, oh my goodness, the funding has been drying up. We have seen...

I appreciate the answer from the Minister. So, we are talking approximately, if I got his numbers correctly as I wrote them down, we are talking about 38 new houses in the Northwest Territories that will change the market in a positive way for Northerners. It doesn’t matter if you live in Yellowknife, you have affordability issues, you have suitability issues here; it doesn’t matter if you live in Paulatuk, the issues are the same. People are struggling for good options.

How does the Minister justify, on average, slightly more than one new house per community in the Northwest Territories as...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to make mention of several Yellowknife Centre constituents. I’ll start on the end with the NWT Status of Women. We have Annemieke Mulders, Lorraine Phaneuf and I believe Samantha Thomas also lives downtown. She’s shaking her head, but I’ll take her anyway. Sitting next to them is the lovely Ms. Katherine Robinson. She’s devoted many great years of service here at the Premier’s office and to help many Members here, and she’s done a wonderful job. So, thank you very much for each and every one. Thank you.