Mr. Chairman, I will be blunt. The health care system in the Northwest Territories has taken a major shift. The shift of health care in the Northwest Territories is now becoming a large urban, regional-based health care by way of dementia centres, care facilities, hospitals. You name it, they have it. But when it comes to the small communities who basically are striving just to get the basics, there is no consideration for those small communities. You give us all the excuses in the world why you can’t deliver health care in small communities, but yet you can find the money to build dementia centres, build $1.5 million there ongoing and yet you can’t even find a nurse for a small community. For me, that is a total cop-out by way of the government, who basically administers health care service for a few in light of the program services for people that basically are just trying to ask for the basics. Yet you don’t give us the basics because you are saying, sorry, recruitment or retention, we can’t find people to go into your communities because all the nurses, doctors and people that are specialized in those areas want to stay in those larger urban centres.

This problem was not a problem a number of years ago where we were part of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. After division, this problem is definitely out there. Because we continue to put a lot of capital investment into those larger centres, it is taking away those dollars that could have been spent to improve on the recruitment and retention and providing the health care systems, the long-term care facilities and those types of facilities for our communities so that those people don’t have to leave our communities for health services and that they can be diagnosed and administered at the local health care clinic or local nursing station. The way the system is being set up, all we are doing is referring people from our communities to a larger centre and then to southern Canada because that is where the facilities are. Because we made that shift, it is now about time the government took a 130-degree turn here and look at the community challenges we face and deal with those issues separately from the issues in regard to running these larger facilities.

Are there any plans in regard to reviewing the care, the facilities we have in the Northwest Territories and also not give me the argument, sorry, Tsiigehtchic only has 170 people, we are not going to put two nurses in there because somebody in Inuvik is afraid you might have to leave the community. I would like to know what the Minister is going to do to restructure that system. So now you are delivering services to 33 communities, not five or six.