Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member knows, his constituent wrote to me on February 14
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at 10:23 a.m. and I responded to her
at 11:25 a.m. on February 14
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. I stated to her that
given the questions and concerns that the graduating class has expressed and some of the confusion that might have created because of the discussions being held here, that I have asked Department of Health staff as well as Human Resources staff to go into the classroom and meet with the new grads so that they get full and comprehensive information about the employment opportunities available to us. We are, as a government, fully committed to using and hiring all of the nursing grads. We have done that before and we will continue to do that, but we need the students to work with us, because there are many jobs in many different places in different communities and different practices.
So let me just state, clearly our nursing program is a very good program. We graduate highly qualified, skilled, competent grads out of that class. We hire those grads, but nursing jobs all over the Territories are different. A nurse’s job at Stanton is different from a nurse in Jean Marie River or Fort Good Hope or Inuvik. Being a nurse in charge in Aklavik is different from being a nurse in Smith. So at no time did I say that those nurses are not qualified to do the job, there are just so many different jobs that a nurse would take on and we do have programs that would have them be practice ready, which is different. So I think it’s important that we treat our nurses well and we respect our nurse grads and we do that. I have indicated to the staff that we need to meet with them so that they have all the information and not go by what’s in the media clips coming out of this House. Thank you.