Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, at the present time, I could not give you each nurse that we hired there, their ranking, years of history, work experience, and so on. But I believe that we have tried to recruit experienced nurses. Those that have less experience would not be put into, for example, community health stations, right off the start, we would like to have more experienced nurses in those centres. We know that there is much pressure put on those. That is one of the areas we are finding difficulties. Most of our vacancies that are occurring are in the smaller centres. So we are trying to attract the staff that has the professional expertise and adequate experience to work in those situations. As mentioned on numerous occasions here and other forums, that we are having difficulty attracting those.
That is why this government and all of us, as well as Members from the other side have worked together to try and come up with a competitive package that will attract nurses to the North. I think we have gone that step and we are trying to show we can support them as much as possible. But as well, in my Minister's statement, I suggested, and I state, and I think we should be clear on that, the wages are one portion of our Recruitment Retention Program. I think we all have duties, right from this level to the community level, to show the nurses, no matter if they are northern nurses or new nurses to the North, that we appreciate the work they do on behalf of us. Until we do that we are going to continue to find that we are going to have a hard time staffing these positions. A lot of times these nurses, whether they are from the north or from the south, have a fair bit of difficulty adjusting to working in the smaller centres and locations, and they need the support from the communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.