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Overview

The Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) is seeking input from Indigenous governments, Indigenous organizations, and residents of the Northwest Territories to replace its Affirmative Action Policy with an Indigenous Employment Policy and an Employment Equity Policy.

Have your say

The Department of Finance will be engaging with the public, Indigenous governments, and Indigenous residents to provide more information about these proposed changes and get feedback.

Residents are encouraged to complete the online survey below. The GNWT will also host public engagement sessions in the following communities:

Background

The GNWT Affirmative Action Policy offers priority hiring to candidates belonging to eligible designated groups that are under-represented within the Public Service.

Despite being in force for over 30 years, it is unclear how much the Policy has helped the Government of the Northwest Territories meet our objective of a ‘competent public service that is representative of the population it serves’.

The Minister of Finance has committed to a thorough review of the Affirmative Action Policy during the term of the 19th Assembly. The GNWT has heard from Indigenous Governments and the public about the limitations of the current policy and the interest in seeing opportunities for meaningful employment within the public service for Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Territories.

It should be noted that the Policy is only one factor of many involved in how the GNWT workforce is constructed. Other factors such as education, community of residence, positional requirements, and accessibility of the hiring process, very likely play as large or even larger roles. In addition, the GNWT’s aim of a representative workforce has been supported in recent years by a suite of focused programming.

Taken together, these factors, programs, and strategies make it challenging to assess the effectiveness of the Affirmative Action Policy because there is not a clear understanding of the degree to which the Policy has influenced the composition of the GNWT workforce.

At the direction of Executive Council, the Department of Finance is actively reviewing its approach to creating and maintaining a competent and representative workforce. to ensure that the GNWT applies best practices towards achieving the goal of a public service that is representative of the population it serves.

Next steps

The engagement was open until April 28, 2023. Feedback from the engagement will be used to inform the finalization of the Indigenous Employment Policy and Employment Equity Policy.

A What We Heard Report will be released in Summer 2023.