Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, colleagues. I would just like to ask the Minister on the human resource management and recruitment issues at the hospital specifically. As you are well aware, we are doing a human resource review at the hospital and we are waiting to hear the responses on that in terms of where the staff at the hospital feel that there could be improvements in terms of their working conditions. I don't know what it is, but we do know that there were some concerns raised last fall and we were hoping to get to what the issues are and what the possible solutions are. That process is laid out and we are following that process with the Minister of Health and Social Services.

Having said that, just generally we have a lot of issues coming to us from nurses, especially nurses, but other health care workers at the hospital who are feeling they are not being listened in terms of the way their work environment is. That's an issue we want to find out from human resource management. The bottom line is they feel they are not being appreciated as much as with all the talks about the importance of recruiting, especially retaining workers, that a lot of decisions being made or things being told are working against the principle of what people are saying in terms of keeping them, but they don't feel like they are being treated in a way they would want to be kept.

We are also dealing with nursing students at the Nursing Program at Aurora College where it's an excellent program where the government committed a lot of resources to hire our northern nurses. It's one that we are gong to rely on to address the recruitment and retention issues for nurses. This is a separate issue, but I want to ask the Minister what work Human Resources is doing and what role does it play in working with other departments like Health and Social Services to work out an effective recruitment and retention policy. I have to question whether we are working together. When government says we are training students so we can create our own northern nurses so we can have them in our hospitals, I am not sure whether there is enough resources being placed on the receiving end so that there are accompanying steps being taken at that other end so they are prepared to receive the grads coming out of Aurora College which is as a result of the government policy.

For example, we have been getting a lot of letters from nursing grads at Aurora College. When they show up to work, it's either that they are not getting enough support or coordination or have a say on their training plan or they

would indicate what areas of the hospital or practice areas that they would like to work in. They give top three priorities and they know that they can't get it all. They know that, but they would like to feel that the employer would be interested in listening to what they have to say. This is especially problematic when they know that they apply for positions and they are told there aren't any spots for them and then, just before they get there, the positions they were looking for have gone to somebody else who is not from here.

I am just interested in hearing what role Human Resources is playing in coordinating the government policy of training our professionals and then putting them into our workforce. Thank you.