EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
I just want to confirm and I think the minister had pointed out earlier that you say whether their parents or guardian or someone that had lived here for quite some time that that timeframe that is set out in the policy is 12 months.
Yes in order to be considered as a northern resident they have to have at least 12 months residency in Nunavut.
The minister also indicated that that program is going to be starting May 1st.
It was brought to my attention last year while we were well into June some time and students were still being told no we can’t hire you yet, you have to wait.
There were non-beneficiary students that again had lived up here all their lives.
Is there going to be a waiting game played again this year after May 1st, if a student applies for a position?
What process is going to go on there?
Last year there was set number positions that were identified for beneficiaries.
Is that going to be the same thing this way this year?
Given that will the number of positions that are available for non-beneficiary northerners will those be filled as quickly as people apply for them?
Will they have to wait and see again?
No they will not have to wait.
To clarify maybe I didn’t say it properly.
This will open April 1st because that is the government’s fiscal year.
Up to May 1st, the applications, we will be receiving the applications, even at this time.
We are advertising if students are interested in getting a summer job that they can start applying.
They will start receiving the applications in April up to May.
On that day, May 1st, if there is still more funding that might be left over then at that time we can examine the situation and also look at the different departments and see how many summer jobs they will have for students.
If they start earlier, the can be dealt with earlier.
Does the department have any idea how many student employment equity positions that they are going to have available this summer?
The money that we have identified I think I said $250,000 for the positions.
The positions that we have available are ten more than last year, but we have to wait for the Department of Health, Economic Development, and other departments to see how many summer students they wish to hire.
Once we get that information from the departments, and if we are lucky to be able to identify as to how many positions there will be; we can estimate at this time about 140 depending on how many summer students each department will have.
Does the department have a deadline in which to let Department of Human Resources know how many students are going to be wanted to hire, and if so, what is it?
They have to start identifying because we are aiming for May 1st and we want everything to be done by May 1st so that we will be able to identify as to exactly how many summer jobs there will be.
When they do finally figure out the total number of positions that are going to be available; are there going to be a certain number of those that are going to be set aside for beneficiaries and certain numbers set aside for non-beneficiaries?
And then if that’s the case; how are they going to determine what that is?
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): Thank you. My deputy can respond to that.
With the applicants for summer jobs, we always give priority to the beneficiaries and we look over the applications of their qualifications, especially if they have been identified by the department.
The people who work for Human Resources identify that they select maybe about five people to be interviewed and to prioritize as to which would be most qualified and that’s how we will look at it this year.
I will try to clarify my question.
Right now the minister indicated that they are estimating 140 positions to be available for summer student employment.
He had indicated that they are still waiting to hear from the departments as to how many they are going to want.
So once they finalize how many positions are going to be available out there; say it’s 140 for example, how many of those are going to be allocated for beneficiaries and how many of those are going to be allocated for non-beneficiaries.
How does the department determine what that’s going to be?
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): Thank you. I will let Ms. Okpik respond to that.
It’s kind of premature to say which and how many will be hired by the departments because as the applications come in, then we will designate so many because they will not be open at the same time; it will be as the positions open from the departments, then we will bring in the applications.
At this time it is kind of premature to say.
I know last year I think there were 17 positions that were available to non-beneficiary students.
I am not saying as each one comes along out of the total number of positions that are going to be available.
How does the department determine how many they want to fill with beneficiaries and how many do they want to fill with non-beneficiaries regardless of when the positions open, or which department they are in.
Is there a formula or something that they use in order to determine that?
We have not identified that we will hire so many Inuit or so many non-Inuit.
We haven’t made that distinction. What we will go by is who would be considered priority for the job.
I can say last year that 82 percent were Inuit and the remainder 18 percent non-Inuit.
In total, 105 Inuit and 25 non-Inuit.
It was like that last year.
I am assuming that the percentage will be very similar but we will go by their qualifications.
What the difference this year will be they will be able to go through the appeal process if they feel that they qualify and they didn’t get it.
If memory serves me correctly, there was a specific number last year that were identified for non-beneficiaries and the rest the department was trying to fill with beneficiaries.
What I am trying to figure out is if there is going to be approximately 140 jobs out there.
I know when we are done here the parents of the students are going to be asking me and other members of this House, how many jobs are going to be available for our children to apply for.
There was specific number last year.
I am just wondering if you have an idea of what it is going to be this year.
Is it just going to be just 18 percent again?
We haven’t made a distinction on how many will be for Inuit and how many for non-Inuit.
I keep emphasizing we go by our policy.
We have to go by who we think qualify.
I would like to state that we added from grade 10, 11 and 12 students.
On January 20 during the Standing Committee and I was asked by the Standing Committee that we were told that it should start from grade 10 so that we can also include the outlying communities.
That was one of the emphases that were given to us.
So that’s one of the changes that we have included and we are trying to go by what the Standing Committee recommended on January 20.
We are not saying so many percentage of it will be Inuit or non-Inuit.
We are just going by our policy and that’s what we will go by.
I am going to review Hansard from last year and I am sure the minister’s staff will be doing the same thing, but I am pretty sure that was a set number last year.
One of the concerns that were brought to my attention last year by a number of students was that the administration starts in May.
In April, people can send in applications at any time, and there were individual students that had the applications in right at the very beginning, and in a lot of cases, they were told, “We can’t hire you yet because I don’t have anything for you.”
In a lot of cases, most of these students work, use the summer months to be able to earn money to carry them through the next year of continuing education.
In some cases last year, I know a student just sat waiting for two months.
So like half of their only time to earn income to be able to carry them through the next year was gone because they were told: “We can’t hire you yet.”
I am just wondering how the department is going to address that issue.
Last year, I think it was both beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries that had to wait for their jobs because we were just setting it up at that time.
I believe is going to improve is that we are going to have a deadline in May 1st so that the student applicants can give us their applications before that date.
Last year, we didn’t set our cutoff date, but this year; we have stated on May 1st that we will start considering the applicants.
Last year, the problems that occurred; we met with the concerned parents and we listened to their concerns and got their input.
We met with the concerned parents about the problems that occurred last year.
After the meeting with the concerned parents, that’s when we set up an Appeal Committee where the students can go to.
The problems that occurred last year by using that, I believe that we are going to go smoothly this year by doing it that way.
As the minister indicated May 1st is their deadline for applications and does that mean then that anyone that applies before May 1st will get priority regardless of whether they are a beneficiary or a non-beneficiary over someone that applies after May 1st?
And I guess will he be accepting applications after May 1st?
Yes, we will start accumulating the applicants and we have already advertised that the applicants can apply now for summer jobs.
After May 1st, during the screening, as I kept trying to say that our priority.
We do have a priority policy as to who we have to hire.
It states that the beneficiaries of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement should be a priority for consideration of job applications within Government of Nunavut.
That’s still our policy for summer students and we will use that policy.
After May 1st it will be evident at that time how many departments will have summer student positions and how many applicants will be.
If we have leftovers we will also have to consider the applicants because some of the schools will still be within their school year.
Some of the schools don’t close for the summer until after June.
We will have to consider those students too.
For that reason, this system, during the summer, will be much better than last year.
I won’t argue that one of the things that led to a lot of confusion last year is there seemed to be different stories coming from different people.
It would depend on who they phoned and who they talked to, or whatever.
In order to try and alleviate that problem this year, would the minister be willing to somehow publicly make available, whether it be an ad in the paper or something, outlining the summer student program and how it works so that there won’t be the questions and the confusion on that this year.
This has been already publicized in last week’s newspaper, in News North and Nunavut News.
It has already been placed in the ad.
In there it states if you want further information these are the information websites that you can connect to.
So there is a website too that you can get some information.
Does that website have a current up-to-date policy on how it is going to work?
I know in some cases in some departments, I have been told by people that when they go there it is a dead website.
I just want to make sure that people are going there that it is going to have the up-to-date accurate information.
Also make sure that anyone that the public has to contract within the department, or any of the departments on summer student employment that they get the same information out there so that it does alleviate a lot of the confusion that it created last year.
My Assistant Deputy Minister, Tom Thompson will explain this further.
Yes the program is up and running.
We are waiting for, obviously, the budget to be approved so that we can start allocating those funding.
The program has been advertised in the paper commencing last week and will run for another month.
The program application and new program guidelines exist on the webpage, the Department of Human Resources webpage as well as the application form.
Human Resource Coordinators with individual departments have been fully briefed on the program as well as all the staffing consultants in the regions.
We just did that this week in Rankin Inlet at their staffing retreat.
I think that is excellent.
I think that this website will help alleviate all problems that we ran into last year.
People are all seeing it from the same page.
My next question deal with the overall numbers on D-6.
I am just wondering if the minister or his officials could give us an explanation as to why almost $3.5 million was moved from Travel and Transportation and the Purchase Services line items in there into Compensation and Benefits.
My Deputy Minister will respond to that. Ms. Okpik
Yes, there’s been a big change in the funding.
It seems like there’s a huge difference in there, because we just re-allocated the funding.
(interpretation ends): The relocation budget for the staff, the relocation expenditures and budgets starting in the 2005/06 year, the relocation budget of $4 million and the future expenditures in the next coming year will be recorded to employee new benefits under the category of Compensation and Benefits.
In past years, the relocation budget was recorded in other expenses category by types such as Travel and Transportation, Purchase Services, Fees and Payments and other expenses.
However, expenditures for the yearly accruals and removal of costs were being recorded in the compensation benefits category as employee benefits.
This caused the mismatch of the budgets in the expenditures.
As a result, the periodic expenditure manage reports does not reflect the collect report of over spending or under spending from the relocation budget.
It’s a re-allocation of just moving budgets to put it under compensation and benefits under staffing, so it’s a relocation budget and this is the recommendation of the Auditor General, so we’re complying with one of the recommendations from the Auditor General.
Chairman: Thank you Ms. Okpik.
Your time has expired, Mr. Tootoo.
I don’t have names on the list.
I like to thank the Minister and his officials for coming today.
I had a question, a follow up from the other night when we had the Minister of Health and Social Services before us.
I was talking about nurses and how they hire the agency nurses, contract nurses and indeterminate nurses.
I heard a new expression from the Deputy Minister that night, he talked about delegated hiring.
It’s a word for nurses, and they said that Department of Human Resources had delegated the responsibility of hiring nurses to the Department of Human Resources.
I wondered if the Minister or his officials could explain what delegated hiring entails.
My response was under the Public Service Act.
The Minister of Human Resources is responsible for our employees of the government of Nunavut.
The Minister is given the authority to delegate hiring some of these responsibilities have been given to the Deputy Minister.
We have also given some of the responsibility to the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Social Services.
The Health and Social Services has also been given the authority and, I’m just re-reading what I said yesterday.
Mr. Minister, I wasn’t in the House yesterday and we just got our Hansard, so bear with me.
How does delegated hiring benefit the Government of Nunavut?
How does it help the department?
How does it prove the delivery of programs and services to Nunavummiut?
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you Mr. Peterson.
We have Tom Thompson who is responsible; I’ll have him respond to your question.
Chairman: Mr. Thompson.
Yes, the member is correct, and as the minister pointed out, MOU’s were created with the Department of Health and Social Services and the Department of Education at the time that we dissolved the Boards of Education and the Health Boards.
We delegated the authority for staffing to education for teachers and principals and to Health and Social Services for nurses and doctors and certain other identified medical staff.
The reason this was done was the departments felt that the expertise in those fields lay with them.
The Department of Human Resources, the minister at the time, we agreed that the areas of medical practices and teachers and principals, that that expertise did lay with those Departments.
So, MOU’s were agreed to and signed off delegating that staffing authority to those two departments for those specific positions only.
If the minister could clarify, so delegated hiring to the Department of Human Resources is for all nurses, whether they’re contract, agency nurses or indeterminate nurses.
Yes, that’s the case Mr. Chairman.
So the indeterminate nurses would be covered under the Collective Agreement but the agency and contract nurses would not be covered under the Collective Agreement.
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): That’s a very excellent question but we don’t know the answer to that and we’ll give you the information once we have it.
The thing that I’ve been hearing a little a bit about in my region is you have indeterminate nurses who are full time employees of the Government of Nunavut and then you have agency or contract nurses who could be there for six weeks or less.
You possibly have contract or agency nurses who are in charge of supervising indeterminate nurses.
That seems to me that that it could lead to potential conflicts between their reporting relationships. Then management relationships would lead to conflicts that could possibly result in grievances and appeals.
It could cause a lot of difficulties for your department.
I’m wondering how if we delegate the hiring responsibility to health for nurses, how you overcome that to ensure that the quality of human resource services is maintained throughout the entire hiring continuum.
I will have our Assistant Deputy Minister respond to your question.
Mr. Chairman, it would be my belief that under the PSA Act, all the nurses would be managed by the Collective Agreement and the Public Service Act, they are public service employees.
The contract nurses are a little different.
As I said, we know the answer to that.
We will only seek to find that out.
But they would have some definite finite times for their employment because they are, as you know, on contract.
The Department of Human Resources does have a role to audit the Department of Education and Health and Social Services with respect to those MOUs to ensure that staffing practices meet our standard of service as well as our compliant with the priority hiring.
Last summer in Cambridge Bay, we had a situation where I think we had seven or eight nurses who were upset with the interference, if I can use that word, interference from the Health Department Administration.
They were so concerned that they wrote a letter and seven or eight of them signed it, I guess maybe for protection.
There was combination of contractor nurses, agency nurses, indeterminate nurses.
They were, from what I understand, a little bit concerned with the working conditions.
They didn’t know how to bring that forward to their employer.
Your department delegated hiring to the department.
How would nurses in those situations, who were upset with their employer, because they don’t know their responsibility due to mixture of all those types of nurses. Bring forth their concerns and be assured that they would be dealt with fairly, without repercussions for trying to improve their work conditions?
I will refer this question to my Deputy Minister.
At this stage I believe they work more in that field.
Ms Okpik (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I can’t really refer to that because we haven’t heard anything about it.
In the case of the nurses, they can go to the Union with their concerns.
You can rest assured that happened because I received a copy of the letter.
It was signed by seven or eight nurses.
In my community health is a high priority and we like to ensure that our nurses, our medical professionals are happy.
So when you have these kinds of situations that develop, it leads to a lot of concern and frustration amongst our population that the nurses are upset.
You might have two or three good nurses who decide that they would like to work somewhere else, and then they leave.
We have this constant turnover. I think in all Nunavut communities we need long-term continuity so the nurses get to know the patients, get to know their files, and they don’t have to rely so much on agency and contract nurses.
The incident did happen.
That is what my concern is.
They delegate the hiring but somewhere your department should have overall responsiblility for ensuring that our workforce, whether they are nurses, or doctors, or whether they’re engineers or teachers that they are all being treated fairly and squarely by the employing department.
I am wondering how you ensure that throughout the hiring process.
The Department of Health and Social Services, will take your concerns seriously and if there is any problems afterwards we will make sure that it doesn’t happen again.
For your information the Public Service Act was not made in Nunavut.
It had been grandfathered.
We will be reviewing this Act and amend it.
To have it amended so that these problems will be dealt with accordingly.
I look forward to seeing that information and getting a report on your findings, discussions with the Department of Health.
My next question concerns the appeals staffing process.
I have a constituent, I think he is well known to the minister, I won’t mention names who has been trying to find a job, get hired in a government department.
He has been trained by the Nunavut Arctic College, he has a diploma.
He has many years experience in the field he is pursuing.
I think he has applied to this particular department at least four times or more.
For one reason or another, he just can’t seem to make it through the interview process, although we all know that he’s qualified for the job.
He just can’t that minimum sixty score.
You know how it is in interviews, you go in there and you have four people interviewing you, you get nervous and fidgety and the mind goes blank.
It happens in the House here quite often as well.
So, you how it goes.
I’m wondering how a person who obviously is trained and qualified, has experience can’t get a job with the Government Nunavut, in the department that they’re pursuing.
How do they get over that sixty score.
I know a lot of the scoring, when you’re trying to get that 60 per cent is subjective.
So, you might get an 80 from one individual and then you get a much lower score from another.
How do you overcome that? If people were to go to Nunavut Arctic College, or graduate with a diploma, you got years of experience.
How do you help them get a job in the government department?
Chairman: Thank you, (interpretation); Thank you, Mr. Peterson.
Hon. Louis Tapardjuk (interpretation): I will refer the question to Tom Thompson, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Thompson: Thank you Mr. Chairman.
I’m well aware of that situation, Mr. Petersen, and I’ll be as cautious, you know, not to reveal candidates’ names.
I’m also aware of what you’re referring to, I think I’m having one of those moments right now.
But, I can assure you that in those situations where that candidate is unsuccessful in competing for jobs, they do avail themselves of the staffing appeals process.
In no other cases that we’ve examined were any of those appeals upheld.
That doesn’t address the issue of his employment, but there are, and we’ve had many conversations with this person to invite him or her into the government offices, to talk to about performing better in interviews, preparing better, all of those things that would help his or her performance improve during the interviewing process.
That process can also happen through the department of education, in the Career Development offices in various regions.
We have had some discussions with the department about the possibility of examining direct appointments for certain employees who have struggled with interviews.
And we’ve had some success in that area as well.
Thank you, Minister and Mr. Thompson.
That’s good to know that there are services available now, to help people pick up some additional skills to get through the interview process.
I know this particular individual has taken them.