EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
There’s no evidence, to my knowledge, that the Yukon Public Service Commission is any better than how we’re doing in Nunavut.
Just for the record, I’ll be voting against the motion. My comments will be in that direction.
In my opinion, the Government of Nunavut is too small to warrant a public service commission. Creating and maintaining a public service commission structure is costly and creates additional bureaucracy, leading to duplication and redundancy. We have done our jurisdictional research.
Saying that, balance may not be found between the need to avoid the appearance of favouritism through an independent public service decision-making in the recruitment and management of the public service and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement objectives for the fulfillment of “Towards a Representative Public Service.” That’s TRPS. People out there will find the TRPS reports on the finance website.
The Office of the Auditor General of Canada previously identified significant issues and challenges related to human resources functions when there was a standalone human resources department.
To pull human resources-related responsibilities even further out of the Government of Nunavut to an arm’s-length body public service commission could result in less oversight and more issues, such as delays in staffing positions.
The Government of Nunavut made changes to the human resources management structure only three years ago. The processes are improving and it takes time.
I said at the time that I didn’t pull any punches. I said that we were creating Family Services. We were splitting Social Services out of Health.
I said at the time that it’s going to take time.
Like steering a ship, it takes time to start seeing positive and effective results. I believe that it’s prudent to give this current structure some time to yield the desired results.
As the Premier mentioned, I think we’re two and a half years into our Sivumut Abluqta Mandate. We have about a year and a half left from here.
To me, this would be a fundamental shift with less than two years left in our mandate and that’s going to have significant impacts on our Sivumut Abluqta Mandate, which we all voted on in Kugluktuk when we were together as the Full Caucus, what we want to do in this government. We’re making significant strides in that area.
I believe that, instead of looking to create a public service commission that we hope will address the issues, it is better for us in Nunavut to look at ways to improve the existing human resource structure and processes.
This would be less costly and less time-consuming, and it’s what we’re doing with human resource functions under the present structure.
From a recent jurisdictional review that we have done, public service commissions, in their pursuit of objectivity and control, have the tendency to lose their focus on the provision of services to governments.
As a result, client service satisfaction is often unsatisfactory. Responsiveness to client concerns is problematic as public service commissions view themselves as accountable to the legislature and not the organization since they’re typically enshrined in legislation.
Some jurisdictions have public service commissions to deal with disclosures of wrongdoing within the public service.
The Government of Nunavut, under the present human resource structure, has already enabled the Public Service Act provision which gives public servants the opportunity to report wrongdoing through the internal processes as well as through the ethics officer.
Experiences with other governments from what we have come up with, the Yukon government established a public service commission that seems to protect the merit principle in hiring that has proven to be bureaucratic and somewhat inflexible.
I don’t know why Ms. Angnakak has latched onto that particular model.
We have done our research.
I don’t know if members have had the chance to do their research on public service commissions.
The Yukon Public Service Commission’s recruitments focused too much on formal education and qualifications and paper credentials.
These credentials were operated as a barrier to aboriginal recruitment and thereby undermined rather than honoured the merit principle. A variety of studies have been conducted over the years in the Yukon aimed at improving services in areas such as staffing, but very little real change has occurred.
As a result, the level of satisfaction with the public service commission’s services is low.
Despite significant efforts, the Government of Nunavut has a large number of vacant positions. To create an entirely new body such as a public service commission for HR responsibilities and to expect that it would be fully staffed and capable of handling the Government of Nunavut’s human resource needs is unrealistic and costly.
The federal information commissioner has commented in the past that too much publicly available information related to the public service type employees can affect the integrity of investigations and undermine the effectiveness of such public agents.
When public service type employees and their backgrounds are well known to the public, investigations and activities will be perceived to be biased.
Several jurisdictions do not have public service commissions.
Among those that do, many have placed responsibility for staffing and other significant HR functions either with an individual department, usually Finance or a treasury board, or were delegated to individual departments.
The Government of Nunavut is already working with departments and public bodies on improving the GN staffing processes.
Mr. Chairman, since the dissolution of Human Resources in 2013, the following events have occurred within the Government of Nunavut:
We have revised the Public Service Act on September 17, 2013, which includes the following:
Confirms the objectives of Article 23 of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement;
Places emphasis on promoting ethics in the public services through the Nunavut Code of Values and Ethics, and this was tabled in March 2015;
The Public Service Act elevates the Priority Hiring Policy as a mandatory policy of the Government of Nunavut. It improves staffing processes.
It creates a process for the reporting of wrongdoing and an ethics officer to receive wrongdoing reports.
As we saw from the ethics officer report I tabled last week, he was quite busy last year. His report was tabled in a timely fashion and we hope that will continue.
We revised the Staffing Review and Appeals Regulations in 2013, which included the following:
We extended the staffing appeal process to excluded and senior manager employees.
We updated the process for staffing appeals.
We successfully negotiated a three-year collective agreement with the Nunavut Teachers Association, which was signed on June 30, 2014.
We’re currently in negotiations with the NEU for the Government of Nunavut.
There was a new Department of Finance website created in 2014.
A new standardized job posting template was developed in 2015.
We tabled the GN’s Human Resource Strategy on November 4, 2014.
I talked about it extensively here over the last three days, and I hope everybody was listening across Nunavut, all the officials and all the departments.
We have an implementation plan for the Human Resource Strategy that was developed and incorporated into the business plans for the departments and public bodies in 2015.
I’m sure everybody had a chance to review them.
We have made progress on the goals and objectives of the Human Resource Strategy and developed new and revised human resource tools.
There have been 20 so far and more are underway, but some of the key ones I’ll mention are:
Internal disclosure of wrongdoing;
Restricting competitions to strengthen our Article 23 priority hire;
Harassment-free workplace;
Workplace conflict management;
Harassment Free Workplace Policy;
Preferential treatment.
I could go on; there are quite a few, but I’ll leave it at that.
We’re working towards improving the interview process for job competitions in the public service and that was initiated in 2014-15. We’re constantly creating new resource materials to help people prepare resumé writing and write their resumés and help them to prepare for interviews. Going to an interview is stressful as it is, but we’re teaching people how to do that.
That was posted on the GN website in February 2016.
We have reduced the hiring time to fill positions.
Mr. Chairman, as you will recall, back in the OAG’s report, it was a long time before positions were filled.
This past fiscal year, we got the average hiring time down to 95 days and we could get it down to 70 if everything fell into place, there were no appeals, and everything went hunky-dory.
The year before that, it was down to 81 days, but we’ve got it under 100 days and we’re striving to improve it.
We have improved the number of positions filled in 2013-14. With 613 advertisements, we filled close to 60 percent of those jobs. In 2014-15, we advertised 403 jobs and we filled 84 percent, which is quite significant.
We have improved the number of job applications since 2012-13.
In 2014-15, for 403 positions, we had 12,715 applications, 2,157 of those were beneficiaries, so there is a lot of interest out there.
As I said, beneficiaries under Article 23, we have 100 percent of our job ads priority hire.
The summer employment equity program: since 2013, we have increased the summer students from 154 to 207 to 208.
We’re continuing to make improvements on that and trying to get it out in all the communities. We’re working very hard at that.
We have improved the tabling times for the TRPS reports. Without going to FMB and cabinet to get approval, we just post them quarterly on our website so that people have access to quick and timely information.
We have improved the tabling time of our Public Service Annual Report.
We improved the data.
With the data that the members are using and asked me some questions for, there’s always room to improve and we will continue to improve.
I intend to table that report in the fall of 2016, which is probably less than six or seven months after the year-end when it’s usually 10 to 18 months after the year-end.
Data is important and that’s why we need these reports.
The Nunavut Public Service Code of Ethics and Values was tabled on March 11, 2015, as I said. That information has been sent to all the GN staff and all communities. As I mentioned, there’s a little handbook that all employees have and I encourage them all to read it.
That’s what governs us. Workplace harassment and workplace behaviour are in there. Outside work is in there.
We appointed the ethics officer. We have implemented a return-to-work program to assist ill or injured workers back to work.
We have improved the long-term service award program. We conduct them annually.
Many of you have been to the long-term service awards in Iqaluit or Rankin Inlet or Cambridge Bay or wherever they’re held, but it’s very well received by all our employees. Employees like to be recognized.
Often in the past, they weren’t recognized for their long-term service and I would like to acknowledge all those long-term service employees across Nunavut who have given 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 35, 40, and 45 years of public service. Mr. John Quirke over there, thank you for your commitment to the public service.
We created and are delivering harassment-free workplace training programs for managers and employees. I have discussed that.
It has been rolled out over the last six to eight months and is very successful. I participated in two in my home community of Cambridge Bay.
I have been helping people distinguish between what’s workplace harassment, what’s bullying, and what’s performance management.
We’re currently working on a labour relations module. We’re cleaning up the job evaluation appeals, some as far back as 1999. We’re getting there.
As Ms. Angnakak has mentioned and Mr. Joanasie again today mentioned, there are two sides to a story.
Ms. Angnakak has come to me on occasion with concerns. I have listened to them very seriously. In fact, I have talked to some of the people that she sent to see me.
I have encouraged Ms. Angnakak and I told her, “You hear their side; you’ve got to get the other side.”
I made an offer yesterday at the witness table, “Any MLA, if you have a constituent or a concerned person with their file, if they give you the authorization to look at their file and they confirm that they know what’s on their file, we will make their file available in a secure location where a human resources officer will allow you to look at the file and you can make your determination.
There will be no cameras, no cellphones, no pens or pencils. You just get to look at their file. You can read through it.”
I don’t read through the files, but I get the binders with the information.
I can assure everybody that people are treated fairly and equitably. We have more protections than ever before in the Government of Nunavut for our workers.
We also have the union and the collective agreement with the NEU and NTA that offers protection to their employees.
There are processes for everybody to follow.
It’s unfortunate that some people feel that they must go to their MLA and must go to the newspaper when they don’t get their way or if the results don’t go their way or the outcome doesn’t go their way.
I could sit here all day and talk and I would have to blur the names and things, but I could tell you some real horror stories going on in the workplace that some of the employees were engaged in or causing stress to other employees and to managers.
Some of our managers have been threatened and bullied, and the GN safety office has recommended that employees be removed.
There are cost implications to what Ms. Angnakak’s motion is recommending. Having been through the restructuring process the last time around, it is costly, it takes time, and a lot of review has to be done.
Given that we’re in the midst of our capital planning and main estimates process already, plus we are trying to fulfill our Sivumut Abluqta Mandate, to me, a recommendation like this is unachievable at this time.
I would concur with the Premier that if the new government in the Fifth Assembly wishes to pursue a public service commission, we shall leave it to them to make that determination.
Mr. Okalik (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would also like to thank the mover of the motion.
We are starting to hear that we need to abide by the land claims agreement.
I remember when this issue was first dealt with and NTI was informed, they were quite concerned about the dissolution of the Department of Human Resources.
We have to follow the land claims agreement and try to support it.
I was very pleased to read in the news that the federal government is looking for Inuit employees through the Internet.
This individual who was working for the federal government stated, “Let’s make Article 23 stronger.” We should practise that as a government, to strengthen Article 23.
With that, I will be in support of the motion because the system we use today is not good enough.
When we see Inuit trying to be in the workforce and be bullied, we’ve never had any avenue to go by.
Even though we feel for Inuit employees, we have policies or regulations that we run across as barriers. We should try a different system.
As a Member of the Legislative Assembly, I have to help and take part in looking for alternative ways. As the government has to be accountable to us, we can make recommendations on how they can better operate.
According to the right that I have, I will be participating in support of the motion because the government has to be accountable to us.
I will be in support of this motion.
The system is not new to us because it has been tested and tried outside of the Nunavut territory.
I know that the Inuit will be represented by this entity.
I will be very pleased if the motion is carried and also on behalf of the Inuit, who are in the workforce, so that they could get more support.
After this motion is carried, I’m sure it will create a better workplace.
I urge all of my colleagues to support this motion.
I will be brief with my comments.
We all know that Nunavut is unique.
That would be my first comment.
We wanted to be different from other governments, including the territories, when Nunavut was created.
This was already made clear earlier; I just wanted to restate it. Article 23 of the land claims agreement spells out what is required for the government regarding Inuit employment.
At the same time, as Members of the Legislative Assembly, we have to look at all the people of Nunavut, not just a few.
We cannot just take action in reaction to the views of a few.
We also know that when we’re drafting a bill to change the Public Service Act, it could take a long time.
We already know that putting together legislative proposals is a lengthy process, having experienced that with a number of bills.
Bills always originate from the same place.
I agree with the members who spoke about these issues and the fact that this would incur significant changes.
Furthermore, when we’re talking about the 2017-18 and 2017-2020 main estimates, I can only state that it would reach to the beginning of the new government and the new government would be sort of (interpretation ends) handcuffed, (interpretation) kind of like a prisoner.
We cannot force the next government into that decision as they will need to formulate their own direction.
We cannot unilaterally decide that and (interpretation ends) cannot handcuff the next government.
(interpretation) As per my earlier statement, the (interpretation ends) legislative proposal (interpretation) is never finalized immediately.
If we’re going to be making changes to the main estimates, it’s too much of a concern because we can’t handcuff the new government and we can’t make the changes overnight.
I wanted to make that statement, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Since we are in a debate, I am quite pleased to be involved and I want to provide some commentary on the land claims agreement.
Back when the Nunavut government was newly established, even when I had no idea I would be in government, I held challenging positions within organizations under the Inuit associations.
Once when I was travelling and passing through Toronto, I happened to see an advertisement for a position with the GN. When I took the time to completely look over every aspect of this job advertisement, I found out this position would get housing.
I am talking about a situation many years ago.
When I returned to Iqaluit, since I was living in Iqaluit and I cannot recall if I was the president of QC or NCC, that particular job advertisement was also advertised in Iqaluit.
When I saw that ad, it stated that no housing was available for the job.
This caused a great deal of concern to me, but I rarely see that happening anymore.
I want to provide some comments that pertain to my election to this position and this motion. During my campaign for the Pangnirtung Riding, I was very candid in informing the residents of Pangnirtung that if elected as their representative, I would focus on the implementation of the land claims agreement.
I can provide a specific example.
For many years, NTI fought to take the federal government to court over the lack of implementation of the land claims agreement, where they requested compensation of $1 billion for losses. It took many years for this court case to fulfill the process.
There were no additional funds to assist with economic development as promised in the land claims agreement. I believe nothing really happened in this front for about eight or ten years.
At the end, they were compensated over $250 million a couple of years ago. This government worked closely with NTI and I saw that firsthand.
Out of the process, $250 million will be flowing into their coffers over the non-implementation of Article 23 and although it wasn’t quite $250 million, it is still much better than having no funds to implement it.
We also heard that only $5,000 was set aside for training purposes, but I may be mistaken.
Nonetheless, what I want to state here is that there were negotiations for the land claims agreement, Article 23 was researched, and the Makigiaqta training corporation was created.
This is the first time I am involved. I was elected in 2013 and I don’t see the need to make any changes, as there is room for improvements.
If the federal government had not been taken to court, the $250 million would not have surfaced and we may have lost funds that would have been put towards this goal.
However, this process played out already and I am happy to see that.
As Nunavummiut, our ultimate goal is the full implementation of the land claims agreement. I have not given up on this goal of the need to hire Inuit.
This initiative will finally produce results as we now have funding specifically for this, as it was not even funded previously.
There was nothing set aside for training programs.
I have not seen any successes outside of Nunavut which I want members to know.
I have no sense of pride in programs operated outside of Nunavut, as I cannot participate in other jurisdictions.
This particular attempt to create the commission is something I like as a system, but the particular motion in my opinion will set aside all the progress we have made to date.
We are finally seeing progress on Article 23.
The first, second, third and fourth governments did not have any programs toward this goal, and I can ask myself what the previous government was doing.
What was their ultimate goal related to the land claims agreement?
This is why I note this motion does not even mention the land claims agreement in any way, which is the only means for Inuit to realize their goals.
I will be opposing this motion, which I want members to be aware, based on the comments I am currently making, especially in light of the fact that I have finally started to see progress on this front and specific funds geared towards implementing Article 23.
Due to this reason and the contents, which I am not saying are misleading, our role is to work towards that, obviously.
Due to these issues, I wanted to voice my concerns and that I will oppose this motion.
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you very much. (interpretation ends) Comments to the motion.
Ms. Angnakak: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank everybody for their comments.
I would like a recorded vote, please.
All those in favour, please stand and then sit down when I have called your name.
Ms. Ell-Kanayuk.
All those abstaining, please stand and then sit down.
Members, the results of the votes are as follows: number who voted for the motion, 12; number who voted against the motion, 8. The motion has been carried.
Hon. Paul Quassa: Mr. Chairman, I move a motion to report progress. (interpretation) Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mikkungwak: Mr. Speaker, your committee has been considering Tabled Documents 73 – 4(2), 116 – 4(2), 140 – 4(2), and 70 – 4(3) and would like to report that Documents 73 – 4(2), 116 – 4(2), 140 – 4(2), and 70 – 4(3) are concluded and that one committee motion was adopted.
A reminder that there’s a meeting of the Standing Committee on Legislation at ten o’clock tomorrow in the Nanuq Room.
Speaker (interpretation): Thank you. (interpretation ends) This House stands adjourned until Wednesday, June 8, at 1:30 p.m.
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Pages 2145 – 2214
Opening Prayer 2145
Ministers’ Statements 2145
Members’ Statements 2150
Returns to Oral Questions 2159
Oral Questions 2160
Written Questions 2186
Tabling of Documents 2188
Second Reading of Bills 2190
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters 2190
Report of the Committee of the Whole 2212
Third Reading of Bills 2212
Assent to Bills 2213
Orders of the Day 2213
Wednesday, June 8, 2016 2145
140 – 4(3): Consultations on an Act to Replace the Corrections Act (Peterson) 2145
141 – 4(3): World Elders’ Abuse Awareness Day (Taptuna) 2146
142 – 4(3): Safe Travels This Summer (Savikataaq) 2146
143 – 4(3): Atausiuqatigiingniq Inuusirmi Stakeholder Summit (Ell-Kanayuk) 2147
144 – 4(3): Clyde River Cabinet Retreat (Taptuna) 2148
145 – 4(3): The Nunavut Coastal Resource Inventory (Mike) 2148
146 – 4(3): University Feasibility Study (Quassa) 2149