All these questions started when it came up about some of the grad placements and our true need, our true area of focus here, is we need to get nurses into community health centres. Nobody could deny that. We’ve got continual turnover of locums, we’ve got continual turnover of nurses in there and we need to find solutions and solutions to train Northerners for northern jobs.
The Community Health Nurse Development Program is a great program that puts indigenous Aboriginal and non-Aboriginals in community health centres with the training and the skill they need to be competent and professional. I find it offensive that the Minister tells me that one position expends the entire budget for that division. In ‘11-12 that person, I believe, is actually graduating for ‘11-12, so I’m kind of offended that there’s going to be no intake for ‘11-12. The money should be there, it should be for the program, we should be out pursuing Northerners to take that training. So quite frankly, I don’t understand anything the Minister is saying. It doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever. It seems completely, you know, devoid of sense.
I think the department needs to take a better look at this Community Health Nurse Development Program in light of the fact that we’ve got so many grads coming our way. We have got so many grads and we have so much need in the communities and here’s a program that’s doing it. Unfortunately, I
also know that the department has cancelled the Community Health Nurse Development Program bursary, which was an incentive for people to go into the program. So they’ve cancelled the bursary that would encourage people to go into the program and then they claim they’re over-expended on the program and they’re only running one person through it doesn’t make any sense. I’d defy any accountant in the world to look at this and make any sense of it. It’s crazy.
Now I’m going to come back to the Introduction to Advanced Practice. That’s the one that doesn’t appear in the catalogue at Aurora College. That’s the one that I believe Mr. Ramsay was talking about, and I also find it completely insane that our enrolment is going down in there because a lot of the people we put through there were short-term placements and they leave. So I know there’s a need, I’ve heard people say there’s a need, I know that the students at Aurora College want to take the program because the Introduction to Advanced Practice gives them some skills that will be valuable and assist them in their future careers, but I also do know that once upon a time we used to ask our staff to take that program, especially our staff in the community health centres and I know we’re not asking them to do that anymore.
So the reason the enrolment is down is because we’re not requiring it anymore and that, to me, is a concern that everybody who lives in a community should have. Those people that live in the communities want to be sure that those nurses are competent and professional and, yes, they are, but that skill set they get from advanced practice introduction gives them suturing skills and gives them skills they don’t get through their normal schooling practice. So let’s not get rid of the Introduction to Advanced Practice. I think it’s the wrong direction, I think it’s a mistake and anybody who thinks that taking away that training is going to be good for the people of the Northwest Territories because our enrolments are down, they’re down because of the way we’re doing business, not because the actual need is down. I think the department needs to seriously look at these things. It’s crazy to be taking away the programs that work, add value and put people in our communities.
I’d like to see a briefing note on how they justify this, I want to see a briefing note on how they justify the spending on the Community Health Nurse Development Program because, quite frankly, one person does not make a program. The program was designed to run four or five. How one person has consumed the whole budget screams mismanagement to me, mismanagement by the department. One person for the $400,000 budget is crazy. It’s crazy.
Our communities are more important than this. We need to make sure they have competent, qualified
professionals in there doing the work and this program is the one that’s going to help them and it’s going to put Northerners in there. I’m so tired, tired, of putting Southerners in these jobs when we have Northerners who with just a little bit of support could do this work. So stop making excuses and stop talking about lowly subscribed when your department mismanaged the funds and allowed one person to consume an entire budget. Fix it, make it run and go and let’s get Northerners back into these jobs. I mean, everything that is being said doesn’t make sense, Mr. Chair. It’s crazy.