Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Wednesday, February 7, 2007, I will move the following motion: Now therefore I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Hay River South, that this Legislative Assembly strongly recommends the Government of the Northwest Territories re-examine the pay, benefits and working conditions of its full-time health care professionals to ensure they are treated equitably as compared with temporary contract workers, and to ensure that full-time status is seen from the workers' point of view as the preferred alternative to temporary contract work; and further, that the Government of the Northwest Territories continue to focus efforts on developing an NWT-based pool of locum health care professionals.

Mr. Speaker, at the appropriate time, I will be seeking unanimous consent to deal with this motion today.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Notices of motion. Notices of motion for first reading of bills. Motions. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Speaker, I don't have the motions.

Motions. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to deal with the motion I gave notice of earlier today.

The Member is seeking unanimous consent to deal with the motion he gave notice of earlier today. Are there any nays? There are no nays. You may proceed with your motion, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. WHEREAS health care workers provide an essential service to the residents of the Northwest Territories;

AND WHEREAS recruitment and retention of health care workers in the competitive Canadian labour market continues to be a challenge;

AND WHEREAS differences in pay scales, benefits and working conditions between permanent full-time workers and temporary contract workers who often work side by side have contributed to low morale, turnover and burnout amongst permanent workers;

AND WHEREAS lack of a consistent health care staff in many small communities prevents patients and workers from having the time to develop trust in relationships needed to ensure quality of care;

AND WHEREAS Northwest Territories residents expect and deserve a high quality of health care, as do other Canadians;

NOW THEREFORE I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Hay River South, that this Legislative Assembly strongly recommends the Government of the Northwest Territories re-examine the pay, benefits and working conditions of its full-time health care professionals to ensure they are treated equitably as compared with temporary contract workers, and to ensure that full-time status is seen from the workers' point of view as the preferred alternative to temporary contract work;

AND FURTHER, that the Government of the Northwest Territories continue to focus efforts on developing an NWT-based pool of locum health care professionals.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Motion is on the floor. Motion is in order. To the motion.

Question is being called. All those in favour? To the motion. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Obviously I'm going to be supporting the motion. This last two and a half weeks we've had a number of questions to the former Minister of Health and Social Services and the new Minister of Health and Social Services in regards to health care here in the Northwest Territories and where we're going with that. I was happy to see the Minister come up with the action plan for the future. I think it's a good step, although I think we are missing a key ingredient and that is the staffing, and I think it has to go in conjunction with any type of action plan, you have to and need some surety on the staffing and the levels have to be there in order to provide quality care to our residents here in the Northwest Territories. I think the reliance to just pick up the phone and dial 1-800-NURSE and get agency nurses in here is just a practice that is done I think far too often just because it's the easiest thing to do. I think we have a lot of room for improvement in the area of recruitment and retention, especially when new nurses move to the Northwest Territories, fast-tracking them so that they can get jobs and they can get on the floor and be providing the quality of care that our residents need. I think any delay in that regard should just not be acceptable, Mr. Speaker.

Again, I want to thank my colleagues for putting this motion together and getting it on the floor of the House. We can have some discussion and we can send a clear and a strong message to the government that we have to be doing more than we are currently, especially in terms of staffing. Our residents deserve the best that we can deliver, Mr. Speaker, and I think we're not doing it right now. We need to focus our efforts in the area of staffing, recruitment and retention of health care professionals here in the NWT. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. To the motion. Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I also support this motion. Mr. Speaker, we are very well aware of the challenges in the health care professions area in terms of the shortages and the competition for health care workers. That's why when we do manage to recruit health care workers, or we have long-time health care workers in our system, that we have to do everything that we can to treat them with respect and fairness. When there are so many options out there available to health care workers in other environments, in other jurisdictions, we have to do our utmost to ensure that there are not sometimes what may even seem small in view of the big challenges, small issues, but it's these things, though, that cause people to despair. It causes the morale to go down and it causes people to start looking elsewhere. We cannot afford to have that happen. We can't afford to lose anybody from the system. It is a mobile workforce out there; the opportunities are limitless. I would like to see our government consider the uniqueness of the North and consider unique solutions to ensure that we do recruit and we do keep the health care professionals that we need to operate a very high quality system in the Northwest Territories. So with that, Mr. Speaker, I hope that the government will take note of this request and this motion that is coming forward today, and taking it in the spirit which it is intended. We're trying to make constructive recommendations. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. To the motion. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. To the motion. Honourable Member for Range Lake, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to add a few comments in support of this motion. The motion, as it is written, it quite broad and it's aimed at a comprehensive action plan on the part of the government to deal with so many different issues related to recruitment and retention of the health care professionals. But also, I believe this will have implications to the allied health care professionals and other care providers, as well.

Mr. Speaker, I think we are very well aware of the challenges we face, but it's an ongoing task that the government has to work even more stringently than they have done in the past.

Mr. Speaker, also, I think this motion is very broad in terms of trying to get the government to work on this issue that encompasses small communities, as well as the large communities, small nursing stations all across the Territories, as well as a big acute care facility like Stanton Hospital. We do have many, many serious challenges, and I believe this government is already spending a whole lot of money and I think if we could do a better job of spending the money that we are already spending, we should be able to get further ahead.

Mr. Speaker, over the last couple of weeks, the Members have raised questions and brought issues forward about what's been the issues faced in Stanton Hospital. I have already indicated the meetings that I've had, where we've had some real dedicated nurses who have been here for 10, 14, 15, 20 years who are really feeling like their services and what they have to offer are not as appreciated, due to various issues being faced at the hospital. I am looking forward to working with the new Minister and the government about how we can address that issue.

As the chair of the Social Programs committee, I have had preliminary discussions with the Minister about the time frame and the action plan as to how the survey and the review of the human resource management issue there will be conducted and brought forward to the committee and the rest of the Members, and I'm looking forward on quite a tight time schedule to make sure that that happens.

Another issue is the fact that one of the cornerstones of recruiting and retaining nursing professionals has been the Nursing Program at Aurora College, but I have brought up issues dealing with some of the benefit packages for these new nurses that are not at the level that it should be to make sure that they feel wanted and welcome, and also that they get the resources they need as they start their new career. Also, in an effort to incorporate these new nurses, we're asking the more senior nurses to take on extra responsibilities of incorporating these new nurses into the system, and I think that we cannot lose sight of the fact that we are asking the more experienced nurses to do more on top of what their normal job is, and the government has to look into how their needs are addressed.

Of course, Mr. Speaker, we have a continuing issue dealing with a lack of nurses in many, many communities, and the over-reliance on the use of agency nurses, which is bringing up a whole lot of different issues in terms of the differential treatment between the agency nurses and those long-term northern nurses who are here to stay and who have given a lot of their professional and personal life to the well-being of health care delivery in the North, but they're left feeling like they are being treated less fairly or less equitably than the fly-in locum nurses and agency nurses.

I think, Mr. Speaker, we're well aware of the fact that agency nurses and locum nurses are necessary in our day and age when we need to rely on their services, fill the gaps, but I think the current state of affairs is not working well in terms of how we fit in all of the new nurses and the more experienced nurses and agency nurses into this picture. So, Mr. Speaker, I support this motion and I am doing that in an effort to ask the government and the new Minister to look at this issue thoroughly and see where we could improve the system to make best use of the resources we are already spending, better coordinating, and addressing some of the grievances and concerns that the health care professionals will bring forward not just in the human resource revenue that's going on at Stanton, but some of the issues that the Members from smaller communities have brought forward

to this Assembly during this session. So, Mr. Speaker, that is my comments to this motion. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. To the motion. The honourable Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, stand and support this motion. I thank my colleagues from Kam Lake and Hay River South for bringing the motion forward, Mr. Speaker.

I know a young lady, the first day of school at the University of Alberta there was a big fair and a lot of the hospitals had display booths there. A nice, big display booth from Dallas, Texas, a picture of the hospital and just top of the line. I'm not sure what ours from the Northwest Territories would say. You know, come work, 40 below, if you decide to stay, we'll pay you less.

---Laughter

You know, Mr. Speaker, it's not about agency nurses. I mean we appreciate the service they do provide. You can't blame them if you're working down south and you get an opportunity to come north and make some good money, and go back south where the cost of living is cheaper.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. To the motion. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, stand to support this motion mainly in terms of recruitment because something happened in Paulatuk when the nurse left the community and they didn't have any recruitment coming up at the time. It's cases like that when we really need to recruit and retain some of these nurses. So I appreciate my colleagues here for bringing the motion forward.

I would just like to say also, Mr. Speaker, in Yellowknife, for this first year, there is one lady from Tuktoyaktuk that is taking the Nursing Program. I appreciate what she's doing. She's going to go through a few years, I imagine. I give her all the support she can have. Just briefly, Mr. Speaker, I will support the motion.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. To the motion. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.