Nunavut must do human resource plan, MLAs say

Nunavut has 120 days to tell MLAs how it plans to address “critical areas” in its human resources plan.

When Fred Schell delivered the standing committee’s review on the 2010 report of the Auditor General of Canada on human resource capacity in the Government of Nunavut March 2 in the Nunavut legislature, he said the GN must state how it plans to:

• provide reports to the legislative assembly how it will improve the human resource capacity of the government;

• set a new date for when the GN will have a “fully representative level of Inuit employment in the public service, across all occupational categories in its departments, Crown corporations, and agencies;”

• review the long-term sustainability of annual increases in the number of positions in the territorial public service;

• table departmental documents, including the government’s Public Service Annual Report and its quarterly Inuit employment reports in the legislature; and,

• clarify its response to federal funding levels in relation to the territorial government’s obligations under Article 23 of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement.

Schell said the standing committee agreed with the recommendations made by the auditor general about the GN’s lack of capacity and floundering levels of Inuit employment.

Except for the Department of Education, the GN’s various departments and agencies do not know what they need to know to fill its numerous job vacancies and meet the Inuit employment objectives of Article 23, the Auditor General of Canada, Sheila Fraser said when she tabled the report in March 2010.

According to statistics in the government’s quarterly Inuit employment reports, a total of 925 beneficiaries were employed by the GN in June of 2001. By June of 2010, this number had increased to 1,524, Schell noted.

This represents an increase of almost 65 per cent in less than a decade.

But Schell said it was “important to note that ground [in Inuit employment] has been lost in some occupational categories in recent years.”

In June of 2008, 18 beneficiaries were employed in the executive category, he said. By June of 2010, that number had dropped to 14, he said.

In June of 2008, 34 beneficiaries were employed in the senior management category. By June of 2010, that number had decreased to 29, he said.

The GN has set an interim target of 53 per cent Inuit employment by March 31, 2012, but Schell noted this target is a government-wide figure.

“The government does not anticipate meeting this percentage in the executive, senior management, middle management, and professional categories,” Schell said.

In order for fully representative levels of Inuit employment across all occupational categories to be achieved, a total of 1,800 new beneficiary employees would need to be hired, assuming a fully staffed public service, he said.

And this also assumes that the GN would not lose any of its existing Inuit employees, he said.

That is not “a realistic assumption,” he said, given that the government’s most recent Public Service Annual Report indicates that the annual departure rate for GN is close to 20 per cent.

And with 1,500 non-beneficiary employees within the government, an 85 percent level of Inuit employment in a fully staffed public service would mean that the government would also require 900 fewer non-beneficiary employees than it currently has in its workforce.

The report also questioned the GN’s increasing the number of its positions from 2,818 in June of 2001 to 3,910 in June of 2010, an increase of approximately 40 per cent. During the same period, however, the government’s overall vacancy rate consistently remained between 20 and 25 per cent.

“Members [of the standing committee] questioned why the government continues to add new positions when it cannot fill almost a quarter of its existing ones, “ Schell said.

The GN should also find ways to speed up the amount of time it takes to fill vacant positions, which the auditor general estimated at 318 days, and use different policies for hiring in headquarters and communities, he said.