Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There is obviously a lot of issues that come under the department, but I don't think I can mention all of them. I do want to highlight a couple of things for now. The first one has to do with home care and the need we have to look at enhancing that program or setting up a new program. I think in the South or in other jurisdictions they have some type of assisted living programs.

Mr. Chairman, there are a lot of people in our communities who are in need of some additional support to have their day-to-day living without having to rely on more expensive services like the hospital or institutionalized care, but people who could be self-sufficient in their communities in their own homes, if they could get some help. I'm sure that this type of service would be not only beneficial for a city like Yellowknife, but would be even more beneficial for many communities without the level of care that we have in Yellowknife.

Mr. Chairman, the previous Minister agreed to the Home Care Program or expanded the Home Care Program and also instituted a pilot program on respite care. All those are very useful and really maxed out in their uses, but

those are very limited. For home care, for example, a lot of them are nurses and they take care of patients who have been discharged from the hospital who need some care. But there are people like elders with dementia, or I have a constituent who is virtually blind and she lives in her own apartment and she does what she can to live day-to-day life, but obviously there are lots of things she can't do. She's on income support and she mostly relies on the Council for Disabled Persons or volunteers to do things like shop for her. She uses the van that's available for people with disabilities for transportation, but she needs help to get around, and volunteer services are not reliable for somebody who has a condition that is chronic, for something that's not going to go away. We don't have a private assisted living care here either where people with means could access. I know that we have limited resources and we can't always add on programs after programs after programs, but I think this is the kind of situation where we could look at the...It could be used to offset the cost of hospital care or institutional care or professional care that would often cost a lot more. I would like to encourage the Minister to take a look at what is possible to do some type of assisted living program.

The second thing that I want to spend time talking about are the many issues surrounding the nursing profession. I know and I am pleased with the progress we're making in terms of the human resource review going on at the Stanton Hospital; that review. But that review is more general, because I think we intentionally did not want to focus on one profession or one area of practice or in one institutional setting where everything might become more pointed at a group of people. I didn't want to do that. Obviously there are lots of other...I mean, anyway, the human resource review was for the entire facility to give every employee a chance to put their opinion about what kind of things could be done better or what their concerns might be, because we did get input or we were getting calls from people in different sections of that hospital. So that work is progressing and we'll continue to work on that. But I want to focus on the nursing profession in general because, over the last number of months, I have been getting calls from every level of nursing profession, whether they be nursing students graduating from the Nursing Program, or the new graduates that are working at the hospital, or nurses that have been in the practice for a very, very long time. I don't know exactly what the issues are, but I do know that the Nursing Program at Aurora College is sort of the hallmark, the flagship of this government. Often whenever we talk about the measures that we are taking to address the nursing shortage and the difficulty in recruiting and retaining our nursing professions, our previous Minister made a point of pointing to this program as one that would give us hope. But I have to tell you that the calls we're getting and the complaints we're getting about the nursing profession is totally unabating and I don't know where the issues are.

The Minister is aware, and I was invited to attend the reception at the hospital to show appreciation to the nursing grads in my capacity as chair of the committee, and I think I was struck by how many people were involved in assisting this nursing assistance. I came to think that maybe there are too many people involved. There were people from ECE, there were other people from the department, there were people from the hospital, there were people from the Yellowknife health board, and on and on and on it goes. I tell you, the nursing grads have lots of concerns about whether they will be able to work in the profession. The new grads that are working, the first year, second year nurses, they're telling me they feel like they're not being supported for the work that they've done. They've been told for years that they're wanted and they're valued and there'll be jobs for them, and then within a year or two they go in there and they get...and mentors. I mean mentors are under pressure too and we are trying to help the mentors to do their job of mentoring the young. But they're exhausted so we get complaints from them. I just had coffee with a new nurse who feels like the entire establishment is trying to get her out of the field. She was asked which section of the hospital she would be interested in working on. She named three places and she was put in a completely different place. Then another person who asked for the position that this person got, the other person didn't get it. Then we know -- I think the Minister may have facts on this -- we know that there's not enough openings at the hospital to fill all the grads we have. I'm saying I understand that we can't always do, I mean, you know, you get out of school, you can't always guarantee where you're going to work, but my question is, is the hospital doing enough to prepare? You could do the hiring of those positions on a one or two or three-year term in anticipation for new grads coming in. Now, I know that the Minister will say, well, with the new grads we may not be able to put everybody in the hospital, but they could get a job in communities. But if that is the case, then the Minister may want to step in to say, okay, maybe we should have a rotational program. You know? Like, the nurses have to be part of this whole human resource structure. Maybe the Minister should come up with a plan where for the nursing grads they'll have a year or whatever at the hospital so that they can get the experience in the hospital setting and then they may have to, they may be required and maybe there's incentive to work in communities for a year or something and we could have rotating nurses. I'm not in the field; I don't know what it is. I am sure that everybody involved is working as hard as possible to make this happen, but I'm telling you the issues surrounding the nursing profession is just unending. I'm not sure if the human resource review that we're doing in a broader term is going to be able to address the issues that these nurses are bringing up. I don't know if we should just assign one person whose job it is just to make sure that ...It's just that nurses feel like what they have to say and their concerns and where they want to practice and what they need to enter into their business market and to get the training they need so that they feel comfortable working as a nurse, none of that seems to be being answered to. So I need to say that to the Minister for the benefit of these people and I'd be interested in hearing what he has to offer. Thank you.