Thank you, Madam Chair. I will just pick one component of the system that pertains to nurses and I will indicate some of the problems if I can use that as a starting point for the Member. Where we have community nurses in the past, given the shortage of nurses and in order to recruit them and to come up even on a short term, we created a system where we would bring in locum nurses, casual nurses, pay their travel in, cover their accommodation and their food and fly them out every three weeks, six weeks, three months, whatever the term was. What we've created, as we look at training northern nurses and we've done away with VTA, housing for long-term staff, we've made a bunch of changes and by attempting to deal with the immediate pressing problem of getting nurses into our communities, we've created a longer-term problem in terms of beginning able to get nurses to stay because now many nurses prefer to work on a three-month basis where they get flown back to BC, Alberta or wherever they may be hired from. So that's one issue. We've made significant gains in terms of training nurses, but we have to get them out into the communities.

Regarding doctors, we have a very, very competitive package but in some areas we still have trouble recruiting some of the specialists. They are very hard to find and that's a national/international issue and problem. We have some problem in the more specialized areas dealing with radiology and pharmacists, where there are not a lot of them, the lack of a pharmacist can shut down a hospital. The problem there is that we have businesses, drug stores and big chains coming in and I suppose they come in and recruit the pharmacists. They offer them whatever they are making, plus more. It's a significant incentive. We have to deal with that as well. So those are some of the areas that cause problems in terms of the longer-term recruitment.

Another issue in the communities is we have negotiated an agreement with the unions to be able to use agency nurses, but the problem with that is it's a very expensive remedy because we have to pay the agency $500 a day finder's fee, plus pay the nurse's salary and all her costs. So when we import a nurse from an agency, it's a very expensive short-term remedy, one that we spend the money on, but it's one of the other problem areas in terms of getting nurses into the communities. The nursing component in the larger centres is not as difficult, but the smaller communities struggle. Thank you.