Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, although the workforce has stabilized right now with nurses and social workers, our efforts in the department for recruitment and retention continue. There are a number of initiatives and activities that we have undertaken to address this issue and to ensure that it remains stabilized.
There is quite a list of them. Again, I do not know how much of this you would want me to list off. I will just highlight a few of them here.
One of the things of which we are very proud of is the effort with Aurora College in terms of training a northern workforce. We have had very good success of the expansion of educational opportunities for people.
An interesting idea came up yesterday with the Northwest Territories Health Care Association, and that is perhaps looking at women. In particular, women who may have raised a family in their younger days, and now their families are grown and they may be looking at re-entering or entering the workforce for the first time. We were thinking that would be an interesting group to target as well. They may want to attend college. We usually think of college recruitment in terms of young people coming straight out of high school.
There are quite a number of initiatives here. Again, I could provide this list to the Member if she would like to have it. Everything from support to the people that are in the workplace already. There is also the development of a website so they can have an interactive communication between health care workers. The establishment of a three nurse educator consultant position to support nurses that are employed by the nine boards of health. That is another area where we provide support to these workers to ensure they are able to do the best of their ability. Thank you.