EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
He stated that he’s aware of this concern and we will always have this concern which will probably never go away. But looking at the policy and the jobs that will continue to be advertised, how about grade 12 graduates who are often unable to find a job, what is Human Resources doing to encourage graduates to find jobs?
We’ll get to that concern.
We’re going to be initiating a summer student program and so we are training our youth and this is a way of training our youth to see what field they’d like to get into prior to their graduation.
This is to encourage them to work with government and it encourages them to look at what field they’d like to get into, once they have completed grade 12.
So we encourage our students to take on summer jobs to see what they would like to get into.
Mr. Iqaqrialu (interpretation): Perhaps I’m getting ahead of everybody but while we are here, just a brief question.
The minister stated that the students are encouraged to take on summer jobs and so, are they providing career opportunities or programs in the schools, does this department work with the school to provide information on different job opportunities?
Chairperson (interpretation): Mr. Kilabuk.  Hon. Peter Kilabuk (interpretation): Thank you Mr. Chairman, I will ask the Minister of Education when I see him.
We’ll get to that area under 4-7 and in 4-10 we’ll be able to discuss this further under the Inuit Employment Plan.
And we encourage our students to get into a career or we provide them with information and the Department of Education is also supportive of us to get involved in the schools.
Chairperson (interpretation): I don’t have anybody else on my list; we are on Human Resources.
Turn the page, Human Resources. Branch Summary.
Total operations and maintenance 6 million 37 thousand.
It states that this is a major program.
Major programs include staff recruitment and retention, summer student programs and staff relocation programs.
My question is, in the Department of Human Resources main estimates, under travel and transportation it’s 1 million 821 thousand.
Does this Travel and Transportation, is it geared towards the travel of staff or is that also used within other departments or does it only cover Human Resources?
Hon. Peter Kilabuk (interpretation): This is staffing within other departments for Travel and Transportation.
There was a question raised by one of the other members regarding summer student jobs.
Do I understand that all the high school students and college students in Nunavut and outside of Nunavut will have an opportunity to have a summer job this summer?
Hon. Peter Kilabuk (interpretation): The summer jobs are open to students that will be returning to school in the fall in the high school and also in university in and outside of Nunavut.
Mr. Arvaluk (interpretation): The minister stated that these jobs are open to students that will be returning in the fall.
Also, on this page under Purchased Services, I’m wondering what the purchased services is geared towards?
I have a lot of figures here.
I’ll try to explain to the member once I’ve figured out what these numbers are.
Mr. Chairman, I apologise.
Perhaps the member could rephrase his question?
Chairperson (interpretation): Mr. Arvaluk, could you please rephrase your question.
Under Purchased Services, 2 million 564 thousand dollars, under 2002/2003, I’m just wondering what this would be used for?
And thank you to the member for rephrasing his question.
This amount would be used for advertisements or communications, translation, job opportunity advertisements and for travel.
That’s what this money would be used for.
So the advertisements, do I understand that this money would be used for advertisements with that.
I think we need to realize that yesterday, when we were dealing with the bad gasoline, their concern about where the gasoline was purchased and as an individual from Nunavut, when you’re advertising a position, we’d encourage you to have them translated in layman’s terms in Nunatsiaq News, Kivalliq News, or other newspapers, so I think we’re still following the GNWT advertising practices and so, I’d just like to encourage the minister.
It’s not a question, just a comment.
Perhaps I could rephrase what I’m saying then.
When you’re advertising jobs in Nunavut, they should be very clear.
The job advertisements when they are available; today, we are trying to use three languages, and we’ll continue to do that.
Whenever possible it would also be in French.
The job advertisements are in three languages.
Mr. Arvaluk (interpretation): When the jobs are advertised, we read them in the paper but some of us from say Grise Fiord, it would take about three weeks to receive the paper.
All the hamlets nowadays have fax machines.
There are 26 communities, would it be possible to fax them to these 26 communities and all the hamlet offices have fax machines.
Can this be considered?
We are already doing that.
We know that the mail services can be slow.
Whenever there is job advertising, it would be translated, it will be in English and Inuktitut and sometimes we advertise through radio too.
Do you fax them to the hamlet offices whenever there is a job opening?
Yes, when the jobs are posted they are faxed to the hamlet offices.
Mr. Arvaluk (interpretation): There used to be in the past, in the 1970’s the Hudson Bay Company’s employees and the educators used to become government officials.
We taught them government responsibilities and we helped them out by getting higher jobs.
I think anybody can learn.
We can consider more on the training programs.
Rather than saying that they don’t have any experience, I think we can consider and plan to hire someone who will do on the job training.
Our operation today is different from those years.
Today’s system for example from their experiences or the knowledge, would consider the people who can use their experience for developing in their jobs.
There used to be a lot of people who used to work for the Hudson’s Bay Company that are now able to become things like deputy ministers and even ministers.
I just want to elaborate on what I said earlier.
On the summer students, students in grades 11 and 12, have they been informed of this program?
Are they informed about the summer job programs or are they going to be using like you know, the summer jobs, how do you inform the students on this program?
We will help the different departments this summer so that the students can have summer jobs.
We are giving out the information to each hamlet council so the information will be available to each community.
Grades 11 and 12, just using them as an example, if they are given to high school students as well, I want you to keep in mind that we want the high school students to be included.
I want to say in another area, on staffing recruitment, I’m sure that they do a lot of interviews for this as well as I said earlier we have a language barrier at times.
We have different dialects if there was a court party from here and they go to, this is what I said earlier, if this person wants to speak in Inuinnaqtun or if this person speaks in Inuinnaqtun and because I don’t understand in Inuinnaqtun, can you talk to me in English, I just want to use this as an example in Kugluktuk.
Like if you are in Kugluktuk, would you have the selection panel for positions do you include someone who speaks Inuinnaqtun or who can ask questions in Inuinnaqtun?
Hon. Peter Kilabuk (interpretation): I will.
The member is understandable as to where he is coming from and when someone who knows this language is there, they have to be available.
If there should be any problem within the language bureau, if the applicant wants to use his or her own language they can do so.
We can issue directives for interpreters to be included in these selection interviews.
Chairperson (interpretation): Are you finished?
Mr. Iqaqrialu (interpretation): Just briefly.
Although it was touched upon, I won’t be asking in regards to the figures here but to date, according to the Human Resources minister’s comment, nowadays we keep hearing about Nunavummiut needing to be educated in order to be hired in Nunavut and that’s what the department is saying, that they need to be certified.
This is even to the people who used to be in the work force for the government who are no longer working there and I was wondering why this is the case and why the department has made it that way, or was it done unintentionally?
Hon. Peter Kilabuk (interpretation): I apologise Mr. Chairman I don’t know which page he is reading from.
Mr. Iqaqrialu (interpretation): Perhaps we moved, I’m asking about the figures on page 4-7.
Hon. Peter Kilabuk (interpretation): I apologise, he caught me by surprise.
I will look for the Inuktitut pages he read from.
In regards to his question, I don’t know whether the question applies to individuals, if he’s talking about individuals who are trying to apply for a job, perhaps, if he can explain his question again. Because what I’m reading is that it describes what the department roles and responsibilities are under 4-7.
At the top in Inuktitut according to the description, I’m not talking about the contents of the description; I’m talking about individuals’ experiences in Nunavut.
Nunavummiut have lost their positions within the government workforce although they are very well versed in their positions because of the requirement to have paper qualifications, they are losing these positions, and my question is: why is this the case?
Hon. Peter Kilabuk (interpretation): Thank you Mr. Chairman, we still have employees who are long term employees within our government who are still unilingual, but these are things that we can deal with, but this policy that I alluded to earlier, this priority hiring policy is still going to be in effect and the things that I spoke about, if an Inuk does not have paper qualifications, an individual who has no certification is seen as equally certified and qualified people according to the level of their experience and knowledge.
I can’t say the procedure we follow today, I can’t tell you now that we need to hire only the people who are highly educated.
So, our procedure that we follow is usually the other way around, we usually support individuals who would like to get in the work force.
Yes, thank you for clarifying that to me because Nunavummiut are voicing their concern, saying that I thought once we get the Nunavut Government everything would be more Inuit friendly so that I was talking along that line.
Also in regards to his opening comments, 6.9 million for Inuit Employment Plan or strategy, that’s quite a huge sum of money to train the Inuit people to get into the workforce.
And it states looking at the total here 6 million 37 thousand, total.
What does it mean when we are talking about two related but separate things?
I did not understand the member and what he means, but if he can clarify his question.
Chairperson (interpretation): Please clarify your question.
In the opening comments of Mr. Minister, it says 6.9 million dollars for the Inuit Employment Plan, training and staff development.
Looking at that and looking at the page under 4-7 under staffing the funding figures in here are totally different from each other.
Chairperson (interpretation): Just to clarify.
Inuit Employment Plan is still on the other pages, it will be on page 4-15 but I will allow Mr. Minister to respond.
Yes they are on the other pages they’re not under staffing here.
So, once we get to that page we’ll give him some clarification at that time.
Staffing under 4-7 when he did his opening comments, I heard the local radio station broadcast in one of my constituency communities.
I heard the people who went on the local radio station expressing their gratitude to the Nunavut Government because they will be hiring summer students again.
They are happy because their children will be working over the summer and they were very appreciative.
And these parents were very appreciative for having their children working over the summer with the program but I have heard as a Member of the Legislative Assembly quite a number of different stories and some parents are quite concerned about their children.
Many parents come to talk to me about their concerns.
The communities, the parents in the communities, their children don’t go to school anymore and if they drop out when they try to apply for a job and since they are not attending school they don’t qualify to be hired under the summer student job program.
Under staffing, the goals and objectives of this program, can we include the young people even though they have dropped out of school, I’m asking your objective here to see.
It does not include all the youth.
It only includes youth that are in school.
It seems like this is not fair so what’s your goal in this, whether this young person is in school or not, could they get be included in the summer job program?
Whether they’re in school or whether they’re not, as long as they’re Nunavummiut it applies when we do our other employment opportunities.
The program we’re talking about is for summer students and this program is only for school students.
Last year it continued and it’s slightly increased from last year because the funding we had last year was insufficient.
The figure has doubled this year because we want more students to get into the summer job program.
For staffing, under this branch in your department, since your department is responsible for staffing.
According to our human rights, I know it’s evident that youth want to work in the summer time, even some young people who are not in school.
Their parents care for them and since your department is responsible for staffing, they know their children are not in school.
And these parents care for them.
So what kind of program would you have for students that are no longer in school or for students that have dropped out but will get back into the school system?
We don’t want to hurt anyone.
It’s evident that we want to be fair.
Since you’re responsible for staffing, how can we include these young people so that they can work during the summer?
This program was geared towards the students that will be returning to school.
If we look at last year’s, it was half of this figure.
Last year’s funding for this program was insufficient.
At this time, we’re estimating we can hire approximately 140 students during the summer and spring.
The funding we have made available continues onto this year to encourage the students to get into the work force so they can have some work experience prior to them completing their education working for the government.
Also, according to the studies that they’re doing and we keep hearing about in the House, how can we train the people more on job employment opportunities?
So this is to support those sorts of things.
Thank you for considering that briefly.
Students from high school and students from elementary schools, I think that was the question already posed.
I might have been out of the chambers when that question was posed.
The students from Arctic College, who are taking some training, are you thinking about that age level.
Is there an age criteria in this, if they are 55 or 60 year old, if they happen to be taking Arctic College training courses are they eligible?
Do you also include those adults like if there were 50 to 60 year old people who are taking training courses through Arctic College, would they be eligible under this program?
These are geared towards high school students and also Arctic College students and also the students that are going to the university.
There are no age criteria providing that they are students.
They’re eligible under this program because this program is for students and there is no age criteria because they need to be more experienced and they need to take on further training.
Since your department is responsible for staffing, I’m grateful that we do have such a department.
My question is, if we are going to be using these main estimates, once approved for the coming year, but we don’t want to make long term commitments.
As the Department of Human Resources are you looking at getting additional funding in the future for this worthwhile program?
It’s obvious that there are a lot of people who would like to get into training, to further their training and to get into apprenticeship programs and of course with the GN. We will do all we can to provide the required training and we will give full support to all the government employees who wish to upgrade their skills and to further their education.
We’ll provide money for as long as we can so that we can give them that support.
I have a very brief question under staffing.
The major programs include staff recruitment and training, summer student programs and staff relocation programs.
When we’re talking about our young people and when there are interviews within the community, do they include a hamlet representative to sit on the interview team?
I don’t want to mention small communities.
But we are talking about the regions, or about the smaller communities with government offices, we haven’t identified any representatives at this time.
My question is, no matter where you are, whether it’s a larger community or smaller community, there are the District Education Authorities, the hamlet councils and other entities at the community level.
Do they have representatives sitting on the interview team if they’re interviewing for candidates that would work under that particular entity at the community level.
It can make a big difference.
For example, there was one time that I got interviewed by the hamlet council and it helped tremendously to have a representative sitting there.
Would your department consider using this route when you’re interviewing likely candidates?
I apologise, I had misunderstood your previous question.
It depends on the type of job that we’re looking for.
There are times when there are representatives sitting on the interview team depending on the type of position that we’re interviewing for.
We can review this option.
It’s a very good idea and it’s something that we can take into consideration.
We will seriously consider it and we totally agree with the member’s position on this issue.
Mr. Chairman, I guess this is probably according to our turnover rate, probably our busiest division within the Department of Human Resources.
I would like to just ask the minister how many, in the last year, if he has a number of how many positions that they’ve put out competitions and out of all the ones that they’ve advertised and put out there, how many of them were they successful in filling?
If we look at the past year, 2001/2002, there were 185 positions that were advertised and 92 of those were advertised down south, 113 positions were advertised in the northern newspapers.
It is very expensive to advertise that many positions.
We’re looking at approximately 920 thousand dollars to put out those ads.
Mr. Chairman, he said there were 185 positions advertised.
How many of those were actually successfully filled?
Out of the 185 positions, I don’t have the information in front of me in terms of how many were successful.
I could give you the information once I have it.
Mr. Tootoo, anything else?
Hopefully we can get that information fairly quickly.
But I guess just looking at that number of 185 positions in the last year and if you look at say roughly 2 thousand employees we have right now working in the government and the 28 % turnover rate of 560 people leaving the government.
And in the last year, 185 advertised positions, depending if they were all filled or not, 375 more people that we are bringing on stream.
I know it’s just a numbers game but if that is any indication of where we are going, I say we are in big trouble and we need to do something about it.
Can the minister tell us what they cost, an average cost to hire an individual right from the beginning of when the job goes through classification or whatever.
The beginning stages of the process to the ending stages of the process where the individual is actually in the communities, can you give us an idea as to the average cost to hire and fill the competition?
We did provide the numbers at an earlier date but I’ll have my ADM respond to your question.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you. Mr. Thompson.
Yes, recruitment and retention are issues in our government, there’s no question about that.
Retention has actually gone down from 1999-2000 where our retention rate was 31% but it has actually improved to this year where it’s 28%.
So our retention rate is actually improving in the government.
I don’t think the numbers reflect exactly that interpretation.
Many of these employees in some cases are not necessarily leaving the Government of Nunavut.
They often apply for other positions within that come up, promotional positions, some people move from one job to another job and we do count that in some degree as retention issues, people moving from job to job.
We’ve done a couple of studies on calculating costs.
We’ve heard the number 50 thousand talked about, with respect to running a process to hire a position.
They also used another number, 108 thousand; it’s just a number that we used to talk about when we were developing IEP in dollars to submit the budget for training.
To start from scratch as the member asks and to get somebody in a workstation, at a job, including the recruitment costs, a formula for average costs of salary, removal and relocation, housing, the infrastructure of the actual office space and the computer etc. whatever it takes to get them at a site is approximately 108 thousand per employee.
Mr. Chairman the deputy indicated that their rate has gone down and I know that it was 31% in the first year but 28% was actually or 29 and that year there was a percentage of people that actually left the department or left not only the department but left the government completely.
And I’d like to ask the minister or the deputy of the 28% that he referred to, the latest number if that includes the overall turnover rate including those that have left the government and have moved from one job to another in a department or what is the rate just for people who have left the government completely?
Hon. Peter Kilabuk: Yes, the figures that we presented, the 31% for the year 2000 was for those that left the government.
So 560 people left working for government last year and we only ran 185 advertisements for competition.
We have a long way before we start making any forward progress.
I guess the other thing, I wouldn’t mind and I know that’s been asked before but is the department looking at doing as they indicated in the past that they are starting to do exit interviews to find out why people are leaving the government?
I would like to ask are they doing that now, in every case and are they tracking the results of those interviews?
We’re going to have an employee who will have that responsibility for gathering data and different types of information including exit interviews.
We are gathering data, and that will be the responsibility of one of the new employees, one of the new employees who will be filling in a position that will be his or her responsibilities.
How many new positions are we looking at in this division?
In total, I apologise Mr. Chairman there will be one full time and 15 students.
I’m sorry again, one permanent employee and a summer employee.
Just for almost 500 thousand dollars?
Out of the positions that have been advertised 185 positions, how many of those positions have been advertised more than once?
Unfortunately, that is information we do not have here, but something we can supply to the member also.
Mr. Chairman maybe they can add on to that, with the positions that have been advertised more than once for positions that didn’t have staff housing available to them and also, as we all know recently there’s been many of the positions that have been advertised without housing in certain communities especially here in Iqaluit.
What kind of a success rate are they having in filling those positions that have been advertised without staff housing available for them?
We’ll get that information once we have the details.