Robert Hawkins

I would say stand by and we’ll see where that goes.

The next item is a little further on the NWT Child Benefit. Is the Minister able to tell us today how many people actually receive this? Thank you.

Maybe I’ll just pass at this time. I agree it needs to be reconsidered and I would disagree by saying that I believe we have enough time to reconsider something like this. Unfortunately, I can tell you, though, I doubt the will is there. That’s the problem. I share the same concern as Mr. Dolynny. I think analysis needs to be taken into effect into the burden of who should carry the taxes here and who best would put the money into whose pockets. In other words, I think an additional $1,000 in the working family pocket goes a lot further to the economy than it does to the government’s.

Sorry. I just want to make sure. Are we talking about two different things? I’m talking about the cost of living tax credit and I thought I heard him say payroll tax. I just want to make sure we aren’t talking about two different things. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The public easily gets to meet their MLAs, their school board trustees, their city councillors, their town councillors, their mayors. The list goes on.

Would the Minister be willing to step up to the plate and show a little accountability from a Minister’s point of view to direct the college Board of Governors to have open town hall meetings and welcome their students? I don’t know why this seems to be such a difficult challenge for the Minister to provide this type of direction. The students deserve the opportunity to speak to their Board of Governors in an open forum...

Thank you. I look forward to being informed when it’s officially done.

I’ve asked the Minister to encourage or, better said, to tell the Board of Governors to meet with its students at each of the campuses. How better to get an understanding of who you’re supposed to be helping than meeting them?

Has the Minister told the Board of Governors that it would be a good idea to meet with the students at the three campuses?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister had mentioned how some of the money migrates into O and M and, frankly, this is concerning because I’m trying to find ways that we can either turn these empty jobs into training opportunities where we find ways to find folks or even evaluate them through the decentralization policy to find out if that makes sense.

Would the Minister be willing to see if he can help calculate and capture an actual real dollar amount of the money that is not directly being spent on human resource money through the normal staffing of positions so we can get a grip on this...

So if we had almost $60 million floating around in the bureaucracy in some form or fashion that’s never being tapped into, does Human Resources not have a policy about how money should be spent? So in other words, if money is dedicated, passed through the budget process in this very Assembly for human resource dollars, do we not have a policy that ensures it is spent only on human resource dollars? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to talk today about one of my favourite subjects which is jobs. I know probably most of you expected either power bills or certainly the cost of living to be on the topic. But you know what? Frankly, what better relates to them than jobs?

According to the Minister’s numbers the other day, we have 466 jobs that they are presently working on in some form, stage or consideration, and again according to the Minister’s numbers, he said the total number of vacancies on the books is 1,038 jobs. To be clear, that’s about 20 percent of the NWT government’s workforce. That...

While that detail is being provided, can someone take a look at how long it’s been in place at the current rate? It looked like it’s been adjusted a bit due to inflation, or is it a drawdown? Maybe we can look at how long it’s been in place.

Is that the door opening to an agreement that they would find a way to do it if committee asked for an economic analysis? Is that the answer from the Minister?