Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The health boards are encouraged to staff dental therapists positions. As the community health representative, it is considered an integral part of the team. However, our ability to influence the number of individuals who are taking the training through the dental therapist school...it is very much a federal program.

Fortunately, we were able to, as with the community health representatives, be able to see considerable lead in the number of positions that we had in the Northwest Territories when it was offered as an ongoing program. We have not done that for quite some time. Community health representatives are just now being recycled and we are looking at instituting a program to ensure we have an ongoing supply of community health representatives.

With the dental therapist program, it is actually operated under the program in Saskatchewan. So we are really looking at a recruitment and retention issue in order to be able to recruit these individuals. I can commit again to providing more detailed information as to how many and where they are located. Thank you.