Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm not sure if the folks at Stanton actually understand or know how that works, because that is a concern that was brought to my attention. I think it's something that's very serious now. If managers are having to deal on a day-to-day basis with staffing issues, that's not really a good thing for them to be doing. Maybe a communication, or something, to your senior staff there at Stanton to that effect. I mean they should put the staffing issues where they belong and continue to manage the ward or the area where they've been hired to work. I think that's something that we need to get out there and we have to make sure and ensure that the managers are managing. That's very, very important, Madam Chair.

The other thing I just wanted to touch on, in terms of the social side of things and the new program, the one that's coming back to Yellowknife. When is that Social Work Program going to be up and running here in Yellowknife? When is the first intake going to be? Because on the website I haven't seen anything about it, the Aurora College website, to indicate there is a program coming to Yellowknife or anything like that. I mean it doesn't even mention Yellowknife when you look up social worker on the Aurora College website.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the Social Work Program being delivered through Aurora College here in Yellowknife, I believe the first entry will be September, so this fall coming up, but that can be confirmed with the Minister of Education.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd just like to ask the Minister, in conjunction with the Department of ECE, what type of rollout or advertising or campaign is the department going to undertake to try to attract as many candidates to this Social Work Program as it possibly can?

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We are working with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment around this and how we roll it out, so there's a joint working group putting that together before the intake takes place. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Ramsay.

Just one other comment in this area. We've heard it in the House here in the past, the dependency on agency nurses. I think we're also developing a dependency on the northern nursing graduates in trying to fill the gaps. I don't know what we can do. We've got to be doing something better to attract and retain. I think the retention side of it is the most important, and we do spend a substantial amount of money in the area of retention and it just doesn't seem to have any life or develop into anything. We also seem to be talking about retention. We've had strategies in the past. Obviously they're not working. I'd like to ask the Minister, into the future what is he going to be doing? This money has to be obviously delivering something and I'd like to ask the Minister what his plans for the future are in terms of retention.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I guess first and foremost is one for retention side, is our remuneration package we have available for our nursing staff as well as for staff overall government-wide. We've always been challenged since the days of the 13th Assembly where we reduced our expenditures on that side of the scale when we removed the Housing Assistance Program as well as the VTA or

the vacation travel allowance packages. But we've been quite competitive on the salaries side with other jurisdictions. That will always remain a challenge when you look at the actual cost of living in many of our communities. So it's something we're going to have to continue to focus on.

But when you talk about long-term, and we're talking not next year but 10, 15 years out, trying to look that far down the road. The idea, as we've talked about, is having as many northerners trained and hired and working in our facilities than the need for recruiting from other jurisdictions becomes less and less. Meantime we're going to have to continue to do that and look at how we can fill those positions. At one point agency nurses were the tool that could be used to ensure we provided an adequate level of service. In fact, that was worked to a certain degree maybe too well, because now we're starting to actually fill beyond emergency level services and that's something we've worked with the health authorities on, is to ensure we're filling what needs to be filled. But we have other areas that we're working on, and the community health nurse development program is the next sort of stage where we take nurse graduates, give them the additional training and put them into these communities, as well as our nurse practitioner program. That is another one of those areas where we take the more experienced nurses and give them even more experience so that they can work in the smaller facilities and provide a higher level of service to people in the communities.

It's going to be a challenge, especially when you look at the age groupings out there. There's a large contingent of nurses getting close to the retirement years, and that will be a challenge for all jurisdictions to address that. That's why a lot of focus and emphasis is on the nurse graduate program and developing young nurses from our regions and communities to then hopefully work in our communities as we proceed. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a couple other things here. I wanted to ask the Minister, and I'd like to just understand a little bit better how this works. It would seem to me that as a hospital, Stanton would be able to come up with a staffing template or something to that effect that would ensure adequate staffing in that facility. Now from there, that would go to the Department of Health and Social Services and it may cost more money to staff certain areas or do something, but I'm just wondering how come that hasn't happened. How come there hasn't been a staffing template or a staffing model developed by the people who are actually there doing the job at Stanton? To me, that would make sense to do something like that. I don't think we need to study it to death. I know you're going through a survey and you're going to come up with some results from that, but I think action needs to be taken and staffing is certainly a big issue.

The other side of that, too, is the requests for funding from Stanton. They go from Stanton, and I must say, Madam Chair, I'm very happy to see the new governance model that is being set up at Stanton. I think that's a step in the right direction, and I do believe a board, an authority is required at a hospital that size to ensure that there is that comfort level for accountability. I think instead of just bouncing back and forth between the CEO, the DM and the Minister, I'd like to see that layer in there so there is some additional accountability. I think it's a step in the right direction, what is happening and transpired under your watch, sir. Again, I just wanted to ask that question. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I thank the Member for comments in that area. The change that we've made recently is one that I feel does add a level of accountability, because ultimately the buck stops here when it comes to health care in the Northwest Territories. As a Minister, it needs an arm's length from an operation. It's either we're all in, or we operate the way we are. So that's why I took the step I did in that area.

The area of client care I guess, or how we set up our facilities, the nursing contingent, the specialties that are needed, is something that we do work with with our organizations. Ultimately, all of the health care delivery in the Northwest Territories has to fit within our integrated services delivery model, and each facility will have a different level of care of what can be done in a region, working all the way up to our territorial facility.

One of the other areas that we plug in is this patient care services. Although there's not showing money in it in '07-08, it was started with four of the main hospitals and the three, because they've been smaller, we've been able to do that. At the same time they were started in all three facilities, it was started in Stanton. We expect that to be done by the end of March, and that would be one of the tools that we can use again for the delivery process in our facilities. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister Roland. Next on the list I have Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I look at this and I see we've got $2.2 million going to recruitment and retention in human resources, and I see across the page there we've got $5.8 million to human resources. I'd just like to ask the Minister to explain to me why we have...Does the department have their own human resource section? My understanding is we set up the Department of Human Resources to look after the recruitment and retention of government employees, and I'm just curious to know why we have so much money here dedicated to human resources. Is this money we're transferring over to the Human Resource department so they can look after the recruitment and retention or do health and social services agencies plan on having their own human resource department again?

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the comparison, as we do in this area, as I highlighted, is in fact for the hiring of staff. We work with Human Resources. They do all the benefits side of it, the hiring process, working with the unions and so on. The money identified, we still need money to pay for actual positions that get put into our facilities as well as some of the training initiatives.

The reference to the $5.856 million, that falls into a number of categories and that deals with, for example, and I touched on it earlier, the Aurora College contract we have, professional development initiative and that's the further training of our staff in facilities; graduate placement mentorship program; locum relief pool and that's to deal with doctors and the bursaries. That is the money that's being used in those areas. It's not HR function. It's to pay for the additional training and that end. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks to the Minister for that thought. I just see the word human resource and I think it's for a human resources function, hiring and staffing of the human resource section of Health and Social Services. If that's the explanation for it, I am willing to accept that. I would suggest maybe we find another name for it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Somehow I was actually sitting there as the question was coming up, we probably need to change the terminology or how we would call this. Ultimately in the department, even though we've given the function of human resources over to the Department of Human Resources, we are ultimately responsible for how the system works, I guess the accountability portion. That's why we see it this way. We look at the wording of it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.