EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
One thing I am interested in, on this side of the House, is the number of direct appointments to the Government of Nunavut. I wonder if the minister has information on how many direct appointments that Cabinet has approved in 2005-06, to date.
As of December 31, 2005, up to that date, there were 34 direct appointments and they were all beneficiaries of Nunavut.
Can the minister give me a number of how many requests for direct appointment that Cabinet did not approve?
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): The names that we received; they were all approved by the Cabinet. None of them were refused.
Just to go back to an earlier question on the review and commitment to table that review: do you have a timeline for when you think the review will be completed and available to table in the House?
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): We’re estimating maybe at the next sitting of the House. Not now, but at the next sitting they might be available.
I’m just going to follow up a little bit with my colleague’s questioning on casual hires.
I will just start off by saying I think not only for casuals, but also a lot for casuals over the years have received numerous concerns over the hiring process of casuals; individuals that felt that they should have, whether they even applied or not, questioned why someone else was hired. It appeared like there was considerable disregard for the hiring practices and policies of the government.
I raised an issue at the last sitting where it seemed that one wasn’t a casual, but the government hiring policies were not being followed.
I’ve received calls from people here in Iqaluit and lots of calls from people throughout the territory about casual hiring. Everything such as: that person who is in charge of that doesn’t like me, so I never make the grade; I never seem to get screened in; I never get offered a job. A lot of these people are beneficiaries with at least a high school education in the communities that are not even getting looked at when applying for positions.
I know you said earlier, in response to my colleague’s question, that you look forward to hearing if people have concerns or not, that you can listen to them. How do you react to them if there is no appeal process?
A lot of people don’t want to say anything publicly because they know and they are worried that they are going to get blacklisted as being a troublemaker and they want to get hired.
Other people won’t hire them just because they speak up about being improperly treated.
Or the system is being circumvented, in a lot of cases, for individuals to hire someone that they already had in mind prior to any competition, or anything happening going out there.
I know this is happening, but not only from here, but all over the territory.
A lot of these people in the communities, especially beneficiaries, are saying, “What is the point of having a grade 12 education if we can’t even get hired for a casual position?”
So what does the department do when it has received concerns like that, even though there is no formal appeal process, and what have they done to try and address that?
My deputy can respond more to your question, but we are not aware, nor have we been questioned about such issues about individuals not being given these positions or not being offered jobs.
All I can say is that when we are referring to casuals, it’s the government departments, for example, if they hire a non-beneficiary into a casual position, they have to justify the reason they placed that individual in a casual position when there are beneficiaries that are available out there.
In regard to your question, the Department of Human Resources is not informed about casual hires and their problems, Mr. Chairman.
I think the minister said his deputy could also respond to that and I wondered if the deputy wanted to follow up on his comment or not.
Ms. Okpik (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. (interpretation ends) The last deputy created a casual staffing officer that would basically start to oversee some of the processes and procedures that we have had in place, and hence there is the casual staffing review that has taken place.
So that’s been the first step.
We are hoping that with the review, and then with the recommendations that have come out of this review, that will lead us to see some changes that will be positive for the casual staffing process, and more so that it is Nunavut-wide across the three regions and in Iqaluit as well. So those are the steps that we have taken to look at the whole process itself.
I know here in Iqaluit, that through the new officer positions, we have started to look at how we interview casuals. Prior to that, Human Resources did the paperwork for the casual staffing actions.
And now, especially in Iqaluit and in the three regions, we have created binders of resumes because people who wish to be casuals have the option of bringing their resumes to the departments directly or bringing it directly to the Department of Human Resources.
So we have binders where we have beneficiary applicants and non-beneficiary applicants and a lot of times now, a casual staffing person reviews each CSA that comes in, and if there is a person that is identified that is a non-beneficiary, then we request a justification why there is a non-beneficiary. But more so, we refer them to our binders to ensure that they look at the full binder and they look at all the applicants or all the people that wish to be considered for casual employment.
They have also started interviewing people who dropped their resumes off and wish to be casuals so that they have an interview on file and that we know what their skill sets are.
Often times, we do receive a CSA from an individual department, and lets say it may be for a receptionist, then what we will do is we will review the binder ourselves and forward the names and resumes to the hiring department so that there’s an equal opportunity for beneficiaries to be utilized as casuals.
I know I don’t envy the department or the individual that is doing this review. I think it’s quite clear that there are a lot of concerns and problems with the way casuals are hired or not hired by the departments, recognizing that sometimes the Department of Human Resources has little or nothing to do with it other than putting information into the system.
I think a review like this is crucial and that they should look at adopting some kinds of policies or guidelines to ensure that the departments are following the policies of this government when they are hiring casuals.
When you look at some recent cases, they are still in the courts.
I think there was someone working in Pangnirtung that got fired and I think that there’s a court case now that’s probably something that we can’t talk about. I think it’s crucial that those things are done properly to avoid that. It’s not like we have an extra $250,000 here, an extra $500,000 here to pay for lawsuits if things are not done properly.
So I think this review is overdue and I think that the department, being the central department for HR for the government, should play a stronger role in scrutinizing the casual hiring practices of the departments to make sure that the policies and procedures are being followed and not being manipulated.
Sometimes they just put in any kind of excuse they want for why we didn’t hire a beneficiary such as the person did not show up for the interview or something. You can put anything in there and I have heard some good ones. That would be interesting to see if you could provide the documentation on the rationale for all of the non-beneficiaries that were hired; I bet you we would see some pretty good ones in there.
Again, I commend him on this review and I very much look forward to seeing it tabled as soon as possible as the minister committed to earlier. But I really believe that this is something that the department has, as the central hiring department, to take a very serious look at stronger policing on the departments hiring casuals.
That’s just a comment. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): I hear you and for your information, we have a Priority Hiring Policy, which is being used for casual hires.
If you are going to have a casual hire, these policies apply and who should be placed as a priority. Once the review is completed, we will tighten the department and see where we can make improvements in our casual hiring practices.
I guess, then, in looking at that, aside from court cases that are before the courts right now, have there been any problems identified by the Department of Human Resources in casual hires, and what have they done about it, for departments or individuals that didn’t follow the policy?
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): I’ll refer your question to my deputy minister.
We have not received any concerns.
I would like to advise the member that casual terminations have now been delegated to the Deputy Minister for Human Resources.
Can I ask what that change was about?
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you. Ms. Okpik.
As the person being delegated to do dismissals within the government, we took it one step further and the minister has now delegated termination of casuals to me to make it consistent.
Was that change just done out of the blue or where there some issues that identified the need for that to happen and what were they?
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): I’ll refer the question to my deputy.
Prior to Christmas, we had done a review of delegation, and that was one item in the delegation that had been changed.
Again, was that just a regular review or is there something that sparked that review to happen?
Ms. Okpik.  Ms. Okpik: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It was a regular review.
I’ll leave casual hires alone right now.
On just the regular staffing process, I know this is again something that I brought up in the past where positions are advertised and then changed or pulled.
Maybe the minister or his officials can elaborate on the process that is used once the competition has been advertised and people have applied for it, and the closing date has come and gone. What process is used in changing or cancelling a position or changing it to a different type of position?
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll have my deputy explain.
Any departmental deputy head can initiate a request to cancel a competition.
Myself, as Deputy Minister of Human Resources, I have final authority on all competition cancellation requests.
Some of the reasons for the cancellation of competitions may be due to reorganization within a department, if there is a funding issue particularly around vote 4/5 funding and possible Article 23 considerations.
I guess on the reorganization, I didn’t hear anything in there, and I will use the example of a competition that I questioned the Minister of Finance about here in the last sitting.
There was a position that was advertised here, there were beneficiaries that applied for it,- and it was cancelled, and a non-beneficiary was transferred into that department from another department to fill that position.
In a case like that, I don’t feel that would fall into any of the three areas that the deputy mentioned.
I am just wondering, are those other areas, if that’s the case, then what happened in that particular case?
In this one, it wouldn’t apply to any of those three reasons.
Why would that one have been signed off on then by that department?
Ms. Okpik: Thank you. The whole issue of confirmation of a competition, I don’t think really was an issue, but it seems like we were getting a fair number of them.
So that was the process that we had put in place.
So this is one cancellation that happened prior to us identifying the full process for a cancellation of a competition.
All these processes seem to take place after something is done that shouldn’t have been done, but I guess in this particular place, I guess things were, but she had indicated that she has to sign off on all these competitions.
Did she sign off on the cancellation of that one and what was the explanation that was given to her by the sponsoring department as to why it was necessary?
I think that was more of a comment.
If we were given a specific one, this one had come to our attention before the actual process for cancelling a competition had come into effect and I did not specifically cancel this one.
Mr. Tootoo your time is up for questions.
First, welcome to the Minister and his staff.
In reviewing the Business Plan for both Human Resources and also for Executive and Intergovernmental Affairs regarding decentralization, there are enough unanswered questions and enough questions to keep us going for another good month or two for something that was supposed to have been finalized much earlier in the past few years.
My question to the minister: in looking at the Business Plans for Human Resources, which has the responsibility for the relocation and staffing and other training programs for our workforce, now, is this department working closely with EIA for the outstanding decentralized positions that have not been going to the communities yet?
Providing that there’s funding for relocation, the Department of Human Resources is responsible for only part of that; for transportation or removal of their staff.
My next question is: because I know that there are a good number of positions that are outstanding for my constituents, does Human Resources have a total number of positions to be moved to Pangnirtung yet?
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): No, we don’t have a figure as to how many positions are moved to the communities.
The Premier is responsible for that.
I’m not going to pretend that this doesn’t give this department its fair share of challenges because I think it’s quite obvious that without those unanswered questions, there would be some challenges for this minister and his staff, if you want to work with your budget and deliver it in a timely manner.
I think it’s also important that this department knows how many positions they are looking at so that they know that they have enough funds to relocate the staff required, and also to do the advertisement of these positions.
Unless those costs are left with the deputy minister that was said to be responsible for the outstanding positions, which was stated to this House by our Premier on Friday, are the budgets for theses outstanding decentralized positions separate and kept within EIA and Human Resources?
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): I’ll have my deputy respond to that question.
Ms. Okpik: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With respect to decentralization, any type of move would be done with our normal relocation budget that we have allocated for any type of move or any type of hiring that is going to be taking place. So it would be a normal course of our relocation budget.
As I indicated earlier, there are some challenges for this minister and his staff, because it is also very frustrating to see the community that I represent not know how many more jobs are coming to Pangnirtung because this has been very slow, as I have made a point of mentioning in this House a number of times over the course of the past couple of years.
The people of Pangnirtung would like to express to this government what kind of jobs they would like to see, or what kind of positions that they would like to prepare for. It’s very hard for them to make these plans if nobody is willing to tell them what kind of jobs will be coming to the community.
So I’m not going to ask another question on this until I have had the opportunity of forwarding more questions to the minister responsible for the warrants, Secretariat of Decentralization.
But I will end by saying that I hope his department will take the initiative of working with EIA to help identify both positions and also to develop a schedule of when our community of Pangnirtung can expect those jobs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We can’t really make changes as to what we had stated earlier on decentralization. The Premier’s Office is responsible for decentralization and they have the jurisdiction over it. EIA has all of the figures from each department.
When EIA is responsible for decentralization, we can provide our support when it comes to Human Resources issues, but the Premier’s Office is responsible for decentralization and we have no jurisdiction over that. We can’t hire and make plans for that department.
Just a comment; like I said before, we are going through a challenging time. It’s not a matter of who they are; it’s that the two departments, EIA and Human Resources, don’t seem to be working closely together to have all of the facts and information because we should have one understanding. And I feel that they should work closer together so they can have all of the information because this should have been completed a long time ago.
That was not a question. Minister, do you wish to respond?
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): We are waiting for the Auditor General’s Report and we will certainly have to consider this. We will be able to identify which positions will be required. By then, we should have a better picture as to what positions should be put out after the Auditor General’s Report.
Chairman: At this time, I would like to welcome our Law Clerk, Susan Cooper, to answer Mr. Curley’s question.
I received a written question from Mr. Curley and the question, as I understand it, is how the senior levels of the public service are to be recruited. I understand those to be positions below the deputy minister level.
The Public Service Act does answer some of the questions. It indicates that members of the public service are appointed by competition to be held by the minister. However, under Section 18 of the Act, on the recommendation of Cabinet, appointments may be made without competition.
The Act, in addition to the deputy minister, also exempts certain people from being members of the public service whom you might think otherwise are members of the public service, and those categories are set out in schedules to the Act, and they deal with employees of such agencies as the Workers’ Compensation Board and the Power Corporation.
The regulations, which are enacted pursuant to the Act, speak little about the process. To every provision that deals with selection, it indicates the selection of persons for appointment to positions in the public service and employees who are to be considered for promotion or transfer shall be based on merit.
This, of course, would be subject to any sort of affirmative action program, including, of course, the provision of the Land Claims Agreement.
I hope that assists the member.
Chairman: Thank you, Ms. Cooper.
I would just like to thank our Legal Counsel, I thought it was important that we get a clarification of that process because the government clearly indicated to us that they didn’t have the interpretation or the provisions right in their midst. So I would like to thank Sue Cooper for coming up and explaining to us.
Thank you, Sue Cooper.
We are still on page D-6.
Total Operations and Maintenance. $5,084,000.
The last time before I ran out of time before Mr. Kilabuk’s questions, I was asking the minister or the deputy minister about a certain competition and she had indicated that she hadn’t signed off on that one.
At that point, I guess I’m just wondering, was there a requirement for the Department of Human Resources to sign off on cancelling competitions, or basically was it a free-for-all for the departments to do whatever the heck they wanted?
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): I will let my deputy respond.
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you, Minister. Deputy Minister, Ms. Okpik.
Prior to October 13, 2005, there really wasn’t a process in place for the cancellation of competitions.
This was one position that had been cancelled prior to October 13. As of October 13, 2005, we instituted a process to be put in place for any type of cancellation of a competition.
I guess in reference to that, competitions got cancelled or reclassified for whatever reason could be thought up at the time by the department. Up until October of this past year, it was strictly the department’s call on that and that the Department of Human Resources had nothing to do with it, is that correct?
Prior to October 13, it was almost always exclusively the departments, but working together with the Department of Human Resources, I don’t think there were a large number of cancellations that had occurred prior to this. This was one issue that was identified and we needed a process put in place for this. So we sent the directive out on October 13.
Mr. Tootoo: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m really getting confused. The deputy had indicated that it was solely up to the department, I know she indicated that in conjunction with the Department of Human Resources.
So I would ask maybe for some clarification on that because I know of three competitions, two of which I have asked questions about here in the past where that has happened, and another one in the same community as the other one that I asked about where the competition was cancelled.
An individual that had applied inquired as to why it was cancelled and was given a letter by the sponsoring department saying it was cancelled and that Human Resources had cancelled it, and was given a letter by Human Resources saying that the department cancelled it.
So you can see the confusion where this poor individual who is trying to get a job can’t even find out why that position was cancelled.
You have the Department of Human Resources pointing a finger to the department and the department pointing the finger at the Department of Human Resources.
Meanwhile, this poor individual still doesn’t know what happened other than they can only assume that they didn’t want him, even though that individual is qualified; I think that probably happens a fair amount.
I’m sure all my colleagues have heard concerns from their constituents about being able to get jobs in the communities. This reaffirms what I had indicated last sitting; that it appears the Priority Hiring Policy is a policy of convenience for his government, maybe not of the Department of Human Resources, but as a government as a whole.
I’m not pointing the finger at anyone, but it seems to be that if there is a way around something, the department has no problem finding a way around doing whatever it wants to do.
If they have someone in mind that they want to hire, they make it wait for three, or four, or five months before getting back to an individual.
I’ve heard some cases where it takes six months before an individual even hears anything from applying for a position.
I’m pretty sure the minister or his officials, either last year or this past year, indicated, I don’t know if it was in a Minister’s Statement, talking about the turn around time; the time involved in following through on a competition from when it’s advertised to when someone is hired, it certainly wasn’t six months.
I know that in the last year, that’s happened.
There are all kinds of concerns I have. I was asking questions the other day about unsolicited references. If the department became aware of someone that had provided unsolicited references on an individual; one; how did that individual even know that this other individual is applying for a job?
I would assume that’s confidential information.
And, even if it’s from within someone in the department, and that happens, that’s not supposed to happen, what do you guys do about it?
Is the person just given a slap on the wrist? Don’t do that. That can happen so easily.
Everyone knows this is such a small territory. Everybody knows everybody. Some people have chips on their shoulders against other people for whatever reason.
All it has to take is they find out someone is applying and they fire off an email saying you shouldn’t hire this person for whatever reason. To me, that’s not right.
And if an individual doesn’t make the interview because of that, there’s something wrong.
I know that you know that this has happened.
I would like to know what you do in a case like that.
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): I’ll let my deputy respond to that.
Deputy Minister Ms. Okpik.
Two things here; the first is the cancellation of a competition.