EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
I compliment the staff for being patient in working with him.
But, the fact remains that he still can’t seem to qualify for a job.
I know his background, he’s worked in many places around the country in social services, and if he could just get that leg in the door, he could probably be a good employee.
It would save a lot of costs because re-locating people from down south is very expensive and you have to re-locate them back.
I hope that this individual and a lot of other people are given a fair shake across Nunavut, wherever they may be.
Another question I have relates to casuals, hiring casuals and overtime, and I want to pick on one department in particular, it’s Department of Health.
Across Nunavut, in last year’s fiscal year, they had spent over $5 million in casual hiring, I’m wondering, what accounts for them hiring so many casuals and spend over $5 million.
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): I will get my deputy to respond to that question.
Chairman (Interpretation) Thank you, Minister Tapardjuk, Ms. Okpik.
There are a lot of casual employees over at the Department of Health & Social Services.
Looking at the overall employees of the Department of Health, they have to have a medical background and because of the nurses going on holidays and being replaced by other nurses, looking at the type of job that they do, they have to have a replacement constantly.
I could say, at this time, we are working with the Department of Health to have a memorandum of understanding with them in regards to casual employees and we have to talk with the Nunavut Employees’ Union as well on that.
I thank the minister and assistant deputy minister for that answer.
I don’t think all of the casual hires are to replace nurses.
I know there are a lot of people in my community and other communities in the Kitikmeot; from the community and they don’t have nursing backgrounds or they are not medical professionals because I know a lot of them have worked a significant period of time with the Department of Health.
It makes me wonder how many of them are qualified to gain further employment with the Government of Nunavut and the Department of Health.
I am wondering, Mr. Chairman, if the minister or one of the officials could comment on whether Human Resources works closely with that department and other government departments to analyze each position that they hire on a casual basis just to see if there’s some merit in making positions more permanent rather than relying on casual hires.
Chairman: Ms. Okpik.
Yes, we can work with the Department of Health and Social Services to look into the concerns of the member.
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you, Ms. Okpik. (interpretation ends) Mr. Peterson, your time has expired.
I have two names on my list, Mr. Tootoo on page E-6 questions.
One of the things in this division they look at recruitment and that of staff and one of the concerns that has been brought to my attention numerous times over the last two to three years from day one was the length of time it takes for a position, once a department okays a position to go out, and it’s something like three weeks before it gets in the paper, and then another three or four weeks or even months before people hear on it and then applies.
I am just wondering if the minister or his staff could run us through the process of exactly what happens and why sometimes it takes so long.
I want Tom Thompson to respond to that question.
Chairman: Tom Thompson.
Yes, that was one of the bigger issues that was in the report approximately a year ago about some of the issues of service at Human Resources.
We have worked fairly diligently over the last year to address many of these issues, and we developed a standard of service to address all of the submissions of documents from departments with respect to job evaluation, labour or employee relations issues and staffing actions.
We have a standard of service now with respect to the staffing procedures that we are attempting in all cases to meet, which is eight weeks from the closing date of the published closing date of the competition and a employee will be identified and we’ll start.
It is conditional on a number of things that are sometimes are outside of our control.
Housing sometimes impacts that, as does the ability of departmental representatives to be available.
One small example, when we’re doing Assistant Deputy Minister competition for health, we had four senior managers on that selection panel and it was over the summer time and it was just literally impossible to get those four people to get in a room together for almost two months, simply because of prior commitments.
So, all things being equal and everybody being available, Department of Human Resources is endeavoring to assign a standard of service for staffing from eight weeks from the date of the published closing of the competition, we will attempt to have an employee in the position.
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Thompson.
What about the time from before it gets first advertised to one department, okay, so we need that the authorization to go ahead and get this out there.
I know there have been delays in that area.
I wonder if you explain what might have caused them and how they are being addressed.
Yes, those standards of service also apply to other divisions within our department.
For instance, the job evaluation department has a turn around time of five working days on any job description that it is going to send in for evaluation.
Once that job is evaluated, it goes to the staffing department and then drafts an ad or takes an ad that is already in existence.
We send that to the department for their approval. They must approve all the ads. Sometimes, that causes a delay when the department representatives for the staffing process are not available or don’t get back to the approval of that ad and then that ad has to be placed with our media broker.
That is done by a deadline, usually by the middle of the week and then that runs in the paper one week after that.
So, there are some time frames in there that, again, are outside of our control.
But, our standards of service, I’m happy to announce, our department is meeting.
There are sometimes the ways that are outside of our control, but we attempt our best to minimize to those.
You said a certain length of time that a position ad or an ad for a position has to be run or advertised for?
Is that like a offer for tender or set time periods for positions being advertised for there, like maximum and minimum times at all, and if so, what are they?
Mr. Thompson: Mr. Chairman, yes, typically ads are run and then closed two weeks together.
That’s to allow for the ad to saturate the market so people have time submit their resumes and hopefully their job application forms and so that we have a fairly wide range of candidates to select from.
There have been situations where departments need, Mr. Chairman, an employee to be or a position to be filled on a quicker basis.
We have short tracked closing dates one week from publication.
And that has occurred, but typically the industry standard is two weeks from the date of publication.
Does the department keep track of the ones that they’ve short tracked and have an explanation there as to why?
No, Mr. Chairman, we don’t keep statistics on short track competitions.
It is a case by case basis as discussed with the department and their immediate needs.
We try to attempt to explain to the department that two weeks is the industry standard which allows for better saturation of that competition throughout the market.
One week is a little tight for people.
Although, as I said, the competition does have a published closing date, we would accept applications right up until the moment which the competition is screened.
Does the department keep track of your standards of service that you have indicated, you know like for five working days and eight weeks, are you keeping track of whether you’re meeting those and or not, how many you are or how many you aren’t and I want to know as you indicated there are reasons why, but do they keep track of that information?
Each competition is run, does have some inform where they indicate when the ad was placed when the competition was completed, when the interviews or screenings were done, when the interview was completed, when the job offer was made, and when the candidate starts.
We developed the standards of service last summer during our business planning session and during our performance management review this year for employees we will be reviewing, at random, some files in the divisions to determine what type of compliance rate we have.
Just for the record, I guess, and I know and I acknowledge the minister’s comments over and over again about the government’s obligation to meet its obligations under Article 23 and I don’t have a problem with that.
I think it’s great that that’s there.
Given that we have a priority hiring policy in place and when positions are advertised, I am just wondering if I can get the minister or one of his officials to go through step-by-step once the ad gets put out.
I know they have to go out and they say priority is given to beneficiaries and they leave it up to the individual to identify themselves as a beneficiary in their application.
But just to go through step-by-step right from when the applications are received, letters are sent out saying we acknowledge your application bang, bang, bang all of the way through to job offers being put out.
I will get Mr. Thompson to answer that question.
Yes. Departments identify vacancies in their divisions or their departments, they fill out a staff action request which they submit to the Department of Human Resources with the job description; that job description is reviewed for the duties and assign the report rating on the modified ace system that we use for job evaluation.
The department also verifies that the staffing record has been signed off by the proper authorities and he indicated that the standard of service for that is five days.
Once the job has been evaluated, it’s then submitted to staffing for competition.
The staffing division; they are assigned to various staffing consultants based on their departmental assignments.
Those consultants are in contact with the hiring department, the submitting department to determine if it has had a successful or competent ad, that ad is then placed with our broker, the ad then runs in the newspapers as the industry standard is two weeks for closure.
Upon closure of the competition, the staff consultant communicates with the hiring department and sets up a meeting where those applications are screened, and as I said, we will accept applications right up until the moment of screening.
The applications are then screened, and then candidates are identified and interviewed applying the priority hiring policy, reference checks are done, and then job offers are made, and if they are accepted, then our corporate services division kicks in and does the employee relocation.
Once those applications are received, are there other letters sent out to the people that applied for these positions acknowledging receipt of their application?
Mr. Thompson: That’s a difficult question to answer so I will explain how that happens in that process.
It’s the answer to know.
Only those people that we interview are actually contacted.
However, as more and more resumes and applications come in online, there’s an acknowledgement sent out because many of these candidates are also asked for job descriptions, but all candidates who apply in a competition who are eligible for appeal rights are informed of that to any position, and then if it’s a beneficiary or a current Government of Nunavut employee, they all have appeal rights.
So any candidate who has applied for a competition who does have appeal rights is notified of the successful candidates and notified of their appeal rights, and of course, all of the candidates who were interviewed are contacted by mail or in person to issue the staffing regret and of course, the successful candidate is contacted as well.
We do not send out form letters to every single application, we just don’t have the resources to do that.
Some of our competitions generate, literally, hundreds of applicants.
We hope that the development and implementation of P2K system will at some point allow some automated service where there is acknowledgement to every single applicant.
Chairman: Thank you Mr. Thompson.. Mr. Tootoo.
Let’s just say for numbers sake, we’ll use the tabled document Return to Oral Question that Mr., the Minister made to Mr. Curley, just to follow, we can numbers to go with here and follow up through the process.
On that particular position, there were 48 applicants, 19 were beneficiaries. 29 were non-beneficiaries and the selection committee, I would assume, have decided to interview five beneficiary candidates.
Would then that assume all the other candidates that applied for the position were screened out because they weren’t qualified for that position?
That’s a particular competition and I have the data before me.
The five Inuit candidates who were screened in were invited for interviews.
I understand from that competition none of those candidates successfully passed the interview.
At that point, the department met with Department of Human Resources and they looked at hiring the top two candidates as casuals, to help them develop some of the skills that are performed in the duties of that job.
Any candidate, as I said, who applied has appeal rights, and that would include all Nunavut Land Claim Beneficiaries, as well as all current Government of Nunavut employees, they would have been informed of their appeal rights in that situation.
Chairman: Thank you Mr. Thompson.
Out of the 29 non-beneficiaries that applied for that position, from this then, that would indicate that none of them were qualified for that position.
None of them met the screening criteria, is that correct?
Mr. Thompson: That’s not necessarily correct.
When the staffing consultant reviews the file, they would attempt to identify all Nunavut Land Claim Beneficiaries first.
And if we had, in this case, five Nunavut Land Claim Beneficiaries who were qualified, we wouldn’t necessarily look at the other candidates.
We would be looking at those because of the Priority Hiring Policy.
If we were unsuccessful in finding a successful beneficiary candidate, the department then is able to look at the non-beneficiary candidates.
As I said in this case, this was the Department of Finance, they were very cooperative and really wishing very much to find a beneficiary for that job, so, they indicated that they wanted to attempt to take the top two scoring candidates and hire them on a casual basis, they hired one which didn’t work out.
They’re hired now the second candidate and I understand that person is working out.
But, these were candidates who had beneficiary status.
So, it doesn’t mean that some of the non-beneficiary applicants weren’t qualified.
It simply means that we found candidates who met the Priority Hiring Policy Standards, as well as met the criteria for the screening.
We would look at those candidates first and exclusively, until we’ve exhausted that, and then we would move onto other candidates.
Chariman: Thank you Mr. Thompson.
As far as meeting the criteria, I understand how I think I understand how Priority Hiring Policy works is that if any beneficiary that is screened in for an interview achieves 60 or more on interview, regardless of whether a non-beneficiary applicant achieves higher than them.
That beneficiary would be offered first crack at position.
Like I said, I have no problem with that. Mr. Petersen indicated earlier and talked about an individual case that you’re aware of where the person is competent, but he has a hard time in interviews.
But in this case, if you are indicating that one of things that you have to achieve to be able to meet the criteria of the priority hiring policy of 60% on the interview, and if they didn’t, then you’d also said that the policy, you go to the non-beneficiaries that applied for the position.
And if I can read between the lines here and this on is that, the department and the government didn’t even bother looking at applicants for that position in particular, but the numbers in front of it that were qualified and that were non-beneficiaries.
Even though after applying, the priority hiring policy and the screening and interviewing applies beneficiary candidates, none of whom passed, is still disregarded the applications of the non-beneficiaries that were qualified that applied for the position, is that correct?
Mr. Thompson: Essentially, yes, Mr. Chairman.
With what I’m trying to convey here is that departments throughout the Government of Nunavut are making what I consider to be legitimate and honest attempts to find beneficiaries to fill the positions, especially positions that we might consider entry or mid-level.
In this particular case, the member is correct, the five applicants who are beneficiaries who are not successful, who we are interviewing, who are not successful in the interview, normal process would indicate that you would then look at the file and identify perhaps the non-beneficiary candidates who met the qualifications, the screening qualifications and interview them.
That would have resulted in a non-beneficiary being made a job offer to a position that we probably feel better could be met by a beneficiary.
So, the department at this point and time has not staffed the position, to the competitive process, they met with our department and indicated that they would like to take the opportunity to take the candidate in the interviews who scored the highest mark, even though they weren’t found suitable, tut found that they had the highest mark and work with that candidate and hope that they could, while on the job, develop and train some, learn some necessary skills to be successful in that role.
I understand the first attempt of that was unsuccessful.
They then move to the second candidate and I understand that that has been working out much better for the department and I hear from them that they are contemplating a direct appoint of that candidate which would put a beneficiary in that position, which is what we’re all here trying to accomplish.
So, I recognize that is outside of the normal procedure of the competition process, but we certainly are happy that the department came to us with that request and that we worked with them to identify and help to develop a beneficiary to fulfill that duty.
Mr. Chairman, in the minister’s opening comments and in the Hansard from December 1, as a number of times where they say that all hiring in the Government of Nunavut is guided by a priority hiring policy and guidelines are developed and in place to insure consistency and fairness and departments are required to comply with that.
It appears that the assistant deputy minister just indicated with a situation that didn’t follow those guidelines and I’m not saying, I’ve seen lots of cases like this happen over the years and a lot of times what departments will do is they will offer a non-beneficiary a term position and work with the beneficiaries that applied to be able to train them, so that at the end of that term that beneficiary can do the job and is qualified and able to do the job.
But, my concern with this, and I believe it is one of the responsibilities of the Department of Human Resources is to ensure fairness and equity and to ensure that policies and procedures are followed and they are there for a reason, so that we don’t get sued.
I’m just wondering if the fact that the job ad didn’t state for a beneficiary only; does that open the door up because of what happened in this particular case and the potential for liability or a discrimination claim to be made on the government, and I think that that’s something that we have to be very careful to steer away from and that’s why our policies and procedures are in place.
It looks like in this particular case you just opened the floodgates wide open for, I am not saying it will happen, but if that’s followed, again, that has the potential of happening, and I think it would be remissive of any of us to not try and identify areas of concern like that where we could, as a government, end up being liable for not treating people properly according to our policies and procedures.
It’s a valid point and we recognize the complexity with which the staffing process undergoes with all of the demands and pressures on people to work as hard as we can to find Inuit employment.
We are sensitive to non-beneficiary applicants.
We are responsive to that process as I pointed out earlier.
This situation is not ended, I mean this employee is currently a casual, and because they need to do these as a job to be fulfilled.
So the person is occupying a job as a casual.
So it’s very easy for us to go back to our regional office in Rankin Inlet and meet with the departments say: ‘How do we want to proceed with this?’
We can go back to the active file, we can look at the non-beneficiary candidates, we could identify a candidate who is suitable for the job, hire that person on a term to train the casual person who seems to be working out fairly well, and that would be a good solution to that.
So I very much respect the member’s point; it’s very important that we are aware and we will take every step to ensure that those processes are adhered to and then followed.
In a case like this, I believe it’s, with the system that the minister indicated, it was the department that came forward with that proposal.
Would it not be the department be obligated to inform them that it did go outside of the procedures, and then offer the different solutions to them, and that action that they did something like that would and could potentially open them up for some type of a claim of a discriminatory action?
So did the department do that to the Department of Finance?
Did they inform them that by doing that action if that’s what they would actually be doing?
Mr. Thompson: No, Mr. Chairman.
What I would like to express is that the department needed a person in that position so they hired they say now the second candidate as a casual.
The competition has not been filled; that position still remains as an indeterminate position, vacant.
We will go back to the department and talk to them about the very thing that the member has raised that if they want to follow procedures, we would be of course insisting on the fact that they go back to the file, look at the non-beneficiaries, find somebody who may have the suitable qualities to perform the duties of that job, hire that person on an interim basis to train the candidate that seems to be successfully being able to develop those skills.
So I would say that this situation has not yet been resolved, it’s still open only because the employee is occupying a casual position and has not been offered a full-time permanent position.
The department has suggested to us the possibility of a direct appointment.
Our advist to them will be along the line to what Mr. Tootoo suggested that it would be wiser, with respect to the procedures, that we hire a non-beneficiary if they qualified on a term position to train the beneficiary candidate.
Chairman: Mr. Tootoo your time is up.
Yes, Mr. Chairman, I look at the stats here, you appear to be doing slightly better than previous years if the information I have on this public service annual report is correct. We now have on or about 45% of the Inuit beneficiaries working for Government of Nunavut.
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): Yes, it is up to 46% Inuit beneficiaries working for the Government of Nunavut.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you, Minister Tapardjuk.
Mr. Curley: That still says to me that stats only indicate the Inuit beneficiary employment status.
It does not say non-beneficiaries government employee, so I would try and indicate that there is probably roughly 64% of the government employment is still non-beneficiary, so you quote far from your objective, if your objective is what, what is your objective in the long run?