Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Ms. Meade.

One of the reasons I ask that question is because we have gone to a four-year degree program with our northern nursing students now and one of the concerns that I’ve heard is that there aren’t the jobs, the jobs aren’t posted. Even though we’ve got locums and we’re relying on agency nurses, the jobs aren’t being posted. They’re not out there. For new grads coming into the work scene, it’s a pretty scary sight when you’re graduating from a four-year Northern Nursing Program and there are no jobs to be had on paper. Then you see all these locum nurses and agency nurses working in the Northwest Territories. If I was a student, I’d be asking some questions, too, about what the government’s priorities are. Are they with the locum nurses or are they with our graduating northern nursing students? I think they should be with the northern nursing students.

I’d like to ask the Minister how the department is going to take the northern nursing grads and integrate them into this system. Are we going to make every effort to decline the amount of reliance there is on agency nurses in the Northwest Territories and how are we going to do that?

I did ask the Minister to answer that question and I’ll perhaps ask some questions to the Minister during formal session when I can get some answers from the Minister on where exactly the game plan is to integrate northern nursing grads into the health care system here in the Northwest Territories. I appreciated the deputy minister’s response, but I want to hear it from the Minister and I’ll ask her when I get a chance sometime this week, hopefully.

I wanted to also ask a couple of questions about the new working protocol with the Government of Alberta, how our patients that are requiring service in Alberta are going to be taken back to the Northwest Territories sooner than has been the practice in the past. They would stay there until they recovered, but now we’re going to be recovering more patients here in the Northwest Territories. I don’t see a corresponding increase in the budget for allowing that to happen. I also don’t see a corresponding increase in the budget anywhere to look at the increased cost that it’s going to take for our medevac patients into Alberta. There’s, at the very minimum, ambulance costs that are going to be involved from the international into the city. There may even be helicopter service required. That’s $2,500 a shot. I’m just wondering how the department puts this into the budget, so that I can understand where it’s at here.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. I think that last question actually refers to the next section in the budget, but I’ll go to the Minister anyway.

Just for the record, after the deputy minister spoke I was going to go back to the Minister. I think she wanted to answer your first question but I skipped over her. So I apologize to the Minister for that and I’ll go to the Minister for a response on both questions, I imagine.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The first item about nurses and how we’re going to make it possible for them to work here, obviously, as a government we are committed and wanting to make sure that we hire and keep as many of our northern nurses as possible. One thing the nurses are actually doing, we have communicated to the nurses who have written to us, is that they should not, actually they should, it’s not a bad thing if there’s local nurses being hired because that

means there are jobs there for them to take. Secondly, they wouldn’t be responding to jobs advertising for nurses positions. They wouldn’t be applying for those jobs upon graduation. They would be in a different stream, the Graduate Nurses Employment Program. So we are committed to doing that. Thirdly, I want to tell you that we are working with HR to have someone go in and talk to these nursing grads so that we can provide them with the information that they need about what the next step is in terms of finding jobs and have them stay here, because that’s what we want to do.

The second thing I want to say about medical travel... MLA Ramsay I think referred to two things. One is the 48-hour rapid repatriation policy that Alberta has administered. We’ve been working to adapt to that change. In the longer term the investment in facilities in Hay River and Norman Wells were in anticipation of what we know will come in future. All of the jurisdictions, especially Alberta, are under pressure and it’s important for us to be ready. So that is the medium and long term.

In the short term, the deputy minister is in daily contact with CEOs on a daily basis to make sure we are managing our beds properly and adequately and that we have a full picture in place every day with respect to the movement of patients.

Lastly, regarding the medical travel question about Edmonton airport, as the Member knows, the Premier of Alberta committed, and the mayor of Edmonton when he was here reconfirmed, that this airport is not going to close until we have a plan in place, and the quality council is working on coming up with the recommendations to the Premier. We are involved in that process and there will be a plan in place as to how we deal with the medevac of patients out of the international airport before the last runway closes.

With respect to what the extra costs are, we can’t put something that is not going to happen for a year or two, or even three years from now, in a budget. The health system responds to demands. We pay for what is required for patients to move around and between now and then, a lot of things could change. We hope to have more patients staying in the Territories. Alberta is going through their change. They are pushing patients out of Edmonton. They are revamping services in other places like Grande Prairie and such, so you know there is lots of moving parts there. The important thing is that our system is organic, it is a living system and it is our job everyday to respond to it and we do. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Lee. Mr. Ramsay, your time is up. I can put you back on the list if you want, but for now I will go to the next Member on the list, which is Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a specific question here in the area of audiology

services. This seems to be a perennial topic because we have had such problems delivering these services and I want to ask the Minister where we are at with this in the Northwest Territories, specifically with the positions we have here at Stanton and in the Yellowknife Social Services Authority, if any. Where in this budget are we addressing the gaps and filling them, knowing what we must know by now? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The issue there is the challenge we have had in recruiting staff for that program. We had gone out with advertisements for competitions at least twice, I believe, and we were not able...were not successful in getting the trainee for the audiology aide, so that is where we are but we are committed to continue to work on that.

Do we have an audiologist position and is that filled at this time? Thank you.

We do have the position, but it is not filled. Thank you.

Are there any other audiology positions that we have and are they filled or are they vacant as well? Thank you.

As would be the case with other positions, we would use locums to fill those positions as there are no permanent ones. Thank you.

So just to be clear, I believe there is one audiologist position and one aide position; both are vacant and the audiologist is probably being served, it sounds like, by a locum. I am wondering what is that costing us compared to these positions should they be filled, if that is known, and how long have these positions been vacant. Thank you.

There are a couple of questions there that I need to get back to the Member on. I don’t know how long it has been vacant and I don’t know how much money it costs to use a locum as opposed to having our own. Thank you.

This sounds like a particularly difficult profession for finding qualified people in Canada. Perhaps that is the case. I know we spent a couple of hundred thousand dollars on this retention and recruitment, recruitment and retention website last year. Have we had any bites in the area of audiology or any return on that investment in this area?

I don’t know if we have had specific requests or information seeking that position, but I could undertake to try to get some stats on what kind of feedback we have received on practicenorth.ca website. Thank you.

The earlier questions on the audiologist and the costs and so on and how long they are vacant, I will look forward to that information and perhaps I could broaden my question, although I would welcome any specifics on the website business. I would appreciate any update on how that is working for us and if that has actually gained us some ground here. We will leave it at that, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Yes, I will get that information for him. Thank you.

Thank you Minister Lee. Next on our list is Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to go back to the question I was asking earlier in the questions that Mr. Ramsay had been following up on. When I was talking earlier, I was talking about getting statistics on specifics and different things and not just agency nurse statistics but also our locum pool. I just want to confirm a couple of things so that we can make sure we get the right information when you are coming back to us with the locum pool. Does the Government of the Northwest Territories still maintain a pool, a locum pool of nurses that we use in our authorities but also in our departments? Once upon a time, the Department of Health and Social Services through Human Resources, was running nurses through IAP and other programs so that they could become part of our pool, our Government of the Northwest Territories relief pool, and we would hire those people to go out to the communities instead of using agencies. Is this still true?

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Deputy Minister Meade.