Robert Hawkins

The Minister seems to be missing the opportunity. Here is the chance for us to publicize things like our business building capacity section as highlighted in the socio-economic agreements, our cultural and community well-being results. Why doesn’t the Minister seize the opportunity and start publicizing these annually in a newspaper to show the everyday citizen who wants to know are Northerners being employed, are they meeting up to these agreements, and what is the government if they’re not. Will he consider that and do that?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is a clear expectation, and I certainly will say a right and correct expectation of the public that the Government of the Northwest Territories is monitoring, managing and certainly enforcing the socio-economic agreements. But frankly, the everyday person doesn’t know where to find these things, and thank goodness we have the research to help us track these down.

By way of example, I’ll say De Beers, in a 2012 report – by the way, it was a 40-page report – said that they were almost meeting their targets of 300 NWT residents working for them. They were at 275. That...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to stand up and use this occasion to revisit the issue of junior kindergarten. Last week the Minister made a statement, and that was his second statement in this particular House where he talked about junior kindergarten will be available for four-year-olds starting in the new year, and of course, it will be rolled out over three years throughout the various communities.

Let me first get the biggest issue out of the way. I don’t know anybody who is against junior kindergarten. There is nobody on this side of the House against junior kindergarten, and sometimes in...

There must be some of those salary dollars not being specifically allocated to human resources, because when you have the rolling vacancy that means there’s a vacancy. Yes, sometimes it’s 9 percent and sometimes it’s probably down to 4 percent, other times it must be 15 percent. That’s why we pick an average to work off of and that’s why I asked the department about the average. How much of that money isn’t being allocated to human resource dollars and where is that money going?

Thank you. Is there any specific allocation for the unfunded positions and where would I find that, on what page? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Two areas I’d like to question. I guess the first one we’ll get out of the way. I had the same questions in the previous pages and I guess we can probably save a lot of time if the Minister can provide the same information and the same detail, as requested, under each section under compensation and benefits. Would he do that?

Thank you for that. If we may work with just under $6 million, then, as a figure, if there is just under $6 million in resources in the department wrapped up in the rolling average of vacancies within the department, does the department have a utilization plan specific to those types of dollars and how is that money spent?

Thank you. Is there any commitment to finding out how many there are of those relief positions, and furthermore, what do they cost? Thank you.

Thank you. If the offer is on the detail of how long they’ve been vacant and the money attributed to that specific position, that will be all I require.

Not all employees are created equally and there’s an average being used. I mean, a deputy minister’s salary is much different than a clerk’s salary and certainly a correctional officer’s salary is different than, say, a director’s salary, so it’s difficult to know what reference he’s using or not wanting to ask. Is there a reason why he doesn’t want to assist with the clarification of this number?