Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is an area in which the department has been working very closely with Health and Social Services and Stanton to not only reduce the rapidly growing costs

but also to develop our own northern workforce. I think that over the past three years or so this program has been in place we’ve been very successful. Agency nursing fees are down 70 per cent. Projected costs have decreased by about $1.5 million. We do have 422 nurses in the casual nurse float pool. These are further broken out into two categories: a pool to cover the community health nurses and also hospital nurses. I think one of the biggest successes has been the Aurora College nursing program, which generates about 20 fully trained nurses on an annual basis.