Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’d like to follow up on the questions that were asked by my colleague Mr. Bouchard, from Hay River North, regarding the lack of resident physicians in Hay River.
This is not a new problem. This has been ongoing for some time. I know the health authority does the best they can with getting locums, and some of the locums are actually rotating in and out on a six-week in/six-week out basis, which is certainly better than no continuity. So I do commend the efforts of the health authority to try and address this difficult situation.
The Minister referred to the challenge that physicians we would like to potentially recruit may not want to live in smaller, remote communities, which I guess Hay River would still be considered remote. I’d like to ask the Minister what currently exists at the departmental headquarters level to assist the regional authorities with recruitment efforts.
We used to have a full-time person on staff in Hay River who did recruitment, but what overarching, territorial, department-wide emphasis or initiative is there within the department to help us find resident physicians? Thank you.