Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, will be supporting this important motion that my honourable colleague has moved, and seconded by the Member for Hay River South. Mr. Speaker, the health care services in Canada is at a crisis point where private health care is going to be a hot topic in terms of our public dollars going into taking care of ourselves, because it seems like nursing in the Northwest Territories is going more into the private sector than us, as government, taking care of our own people in our own backyard. The new kid on the

block of agency nurses seems to be getting all the attention, because they are being taken care of quite well by their agency. As the Government of the Northwest Territories we have restrictions, limitations, and it seems that we are unable to compete against this agency, this super agency of nurses. Even with the comparison and we see the agency nurses doing quite well, if we look at our role as employers to our own nurses, we're not doing quite as well.

So I certainly hope that this motion would provide the Cabinet on that side to look at some of the solutions to maintain our nurses here in the Northwest Territories, and maybe come out of the 1960s and '70s era and into the 2006 era, providing nurses the quality of work they do in terms of incentives. That's going to be a tough job for the Cabinet, but we have to do something otherwise these agency nurses are going to continue around the Northwest Territories in their private billing services.

So, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to also say that the small communities are the ones that pay the price, because they have nurses that come in for two to three weeks, and another nurse comes in, and the patients in our communities have to go through the rigor mortis of telling all the aches and pains to a nurse again. So maybe they should just have a tape recorder in the hospital for when the new nurse comes in, the patient comes in, they could just listen to what this patient has gone through. Some patients in my communities, the nurses don't really get to know. So there's suffering in our communities, suffering in the Northwest Territories, so our quality of health care is in jeopardy. I think it can be saved. I think we have a strong government here. We have to shift our priorities, because health care is a moving target. We have to nail it when we can, and it takes that in leadership from the other side.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the Health and Social Services that the Stanton Hospital has initiated an Aboriginal Wellness Program in my region, and the Sahtu has supported that program 100 percent, so there is some creativity and there are some things going on that would support the health. I would like to see some time frames on this motion that the Minister would come back with Cabinet support in terms of things that we can do. So I will support this motion. Thank you.