Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'm quite interested in some of the program delivery support mechanisms as provided by the Department of Health and Social Services. I've spoken to them several times in this House, as well as during our opening comments with respect to deliberating Health and Social Service's budget here. Just like my honourable colleague Mr. Ramsay speaking about many employees having like one foot out the door kind of approach to living and working in the North, and I'm not too sure why that's there. Maybe there's some uncertainty. It would probably be prudent enough, I don't know, I would say to at least conduct some kind of interviews, or even exit interviews, with the people that are leaving. I'm not too sure of the standard practice in the department to conduct exit interviews, but at the time when we need to track nursing and get them up in the North, and even to the smaller communities, it would be appropriate to find out what would have made them stay longer just to help design a better retention and recruitment policy.
Some of the things I spoke about often are even like the community of Wrigley who really wants professional attention from nurses and doctors, even looking at activities like a rotation system into the communities for short periods of time. Even making it an option perhaps for some of our new nurses that are graduating, because I've paid great attention to the dialogue, as well, the Minister and the Honourable Mr. McLeod from Inuvik, their discussions this morning when they were talking about graduation rates and how do we keep our youth in the North, even get them into the communities. So this is one of the ways of doing it, is I would suggest rotate them in perhaps with some of their peers into the smaller communities because, granted, certainly the way of delivering services and having the help delivered in the communities is different when it's a very small community; especially if there's language barriers there, as well.
Part of the cultural aspect of our aboriginal people is there is a lot of trust involved and once you gain that trust, then I'm sure it will make the job easier for our health professionals that are trying to get out there, but it's getting out there on a consistent basis is what I hear often, too. They're coming in, but they're only in for a couple of hours and people are saying, well, why don't they stay longer, or even plan for an overnight visit. Some of those things go a long ways, you know, in that they're willing to be part of a community, that they're willing to pay attention to us. I think that's all it is, is just the ability for our health professionals to be there and to pay attention to our people. It goes a long ways in that sense.
Of interest to me, as well, too, was Minister Bell was in the news earlier today talking about looking at some alternative ways of getting policing into the communities. That helps the nursing profession too because that's always a concern that I relay to the communities. Yes they want a nurse, but in order to get a nurse you have to get your police, but you can't get your one police, you've got to get your two police. Even that's not good enough; you have to get 2.5 police because you need somebody to spell them off in between. So it seems like a huge bureaucracy problem. But in the end, all the people want, Madam Chair, is just to be taken care of and protected as well, and just to have their ailments taken care of and looked at. In the end they want security; they want that service there all the time.
In fact, there was an incident this winter in one of the communities that I represent where it was felt that proper care wasn't given. I brought that up with the Minister, as well, and I think part of the incident there is what's the root cause of that? Has the department looked into this situation and found out the root cause of why the proper care and attention wasn't given? Just by exploring those root causes and doing the exit interviews, I think the department will find it very, very beneficial in creating proper programming, more current methods and it will help with the recruitment and retention of the professionals that we want in the North.
Just touching on a few other programming issues that I guess caught some attention is that as the communities I represent, they're small communities so often our people are travelling for their medical needs either to Fort Simpson or to Yellowknife. They're often saying, well, the translators or else family members are sometimes deemed, I don't know who does it, but sometimes somebody deems those family members or translators, they're not allowing them to go even though they have a translation problem. It just goes back to what I spoke about initially when I was first elected, was that the elders appear, they really do appear that they're understanding because you're talking with them, they're nodding and they're saying uh huh and uh huh, but culturally it's a polite thing. That doesn't mean that they're understanding very technical explanations and instructions because going through airports, you know, it's quite stressing. You talk to about 30 people before you finally get into a taxi, and to someone that doesn't have a good command of the English language, that can be very, very stressful. In fact, often they get stranded. They just get stuck at the airport, and that's happened on more than one occasion to constituents of mine.
So I don't know who's been making the judgement calls, but there's got to be a better way of doing it to say, yes, you know, that person really does need that translating and it's not just somebody wanting to go on a trip to Simpson or wanting to go on a trip to Yellowknife, because often that's the focus. But the focus should be on the client, not on who is going travel with them to provide assistance.
Quite often, too, the clients are travelling and they've got no contact information with them. There was a case in the fall time where the client was travelling from Yellowknife back to Fort Simpson. Due to difficulties and missing connections, that person was actually at the Fort Simpson
airport in excess of two hours; no contact information, nobody to phone. Quite often I think that we should provide a listing of phone numbers or contact information if you run into difficulties while en route from your community. Often it's on the weekend so it's not during the weekdays where these things occur. So that would help because I know that even in Fort Simpson and in Liard, there's people designated as on-call personnel. So if their numbers were given, then at least the clients could call to their home base and find out how to get assistance, instead of just sheer luck.
In fact, last fall there was a taxi driver that showed up at the airport for some other reason and he noticed that there was an elder sitting there and he said, well, how long have you been here, and that kind of stuff. But I'm grateful for that taxi driver for being there and understanding that language was a barrier and that he'd been there for in excess of two hours and bringing him to town and trying to get attention for that person. In fact, even the cab fare, right? That was like $20 and who's going to pay for that, right? But in this instance, the cab driver didn't worry about that for the moment. The main thing was to take care of our people and that should be our focus all the time, is that we should be taking care of our people, Madam Chair. So for the regional and community services we could always use improvements. That's one of the things that I think will help out, but the main thing is I think that we have to keep applying ourselves and looking at innovative ways of which to provide professional services like policing and nursing in our communities for extended periods.
With that, Madam Chair. I'd like to hear the Minister's comments on some of those ideas. Mahsi cho.