Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to return to item 7 on orders of the day.

---Unanimous consent granted

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Health and

Social Services and are in follow-up to the questions my colleague Mr. Ramsay asked earlier. Mr. Speaker, the Grad Nurse Placement Program was intended to offer all northern graduates an offer of employment in the Northwest Territories. It did not guarantee that those nurse graduates would be offered a job at Stanton. I think when the original promise was made by the Premier of the day, the intent was that we would be able to fill some of our community positions where the need truly lies. Unfortunately, you will notice that most of the placements occur in Fort Smith, Hay River, Yellowknife and Inuvik. What are we doing to actually facilitate grad placements into communities where a real need lies? Our real staffing difficulties, Mr. Speaker, are getting nurses into small communities in the Northwest Territories. What are we doing to help facilitate grad placement in those communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Graduate Placement Program is being delivered by HR on our behalf and we work with HR to address the issues that the Member is speaking about. When the nurses graduate from the college program, they need additional on-the-job training and often they work in Stanton because they do want to have some emergency and hospital setting so they become more comprehensively trained and be ready to go out to communities, because a community health nurse needs a different set of skills that they might learn; well, additional skills than what they learn in the school setting and the hospital setting.

The short answer to that is the Department of Health and the health authorities work with HR and the potential graduates to finish their training and make them employable to jobs available. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I know that HR delivers the programs on behalf of Health and Social Services, who actually administers or actually holds the budget for health recruitment and retention. My question was pretty specific. I want to know what the Department of Health is doing, even if they are doing it through the Department of HR, but what is the Department of Health and Social Services doing to facilitate the placement of northern nurse graduates into community health centres throughout the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we work through the Graduate Employment Program to look at their training needs, and if there are any out of the graduating program, match them with jobs available.

Mr. Speaker, I was wondering if the Minister could give me a sense of over the last two or three years, how many northern graduates have actually gone into community health centres through grad placement. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I have to admit I am unclear about exactly what he is getting at. Mr. Speaker, I said earlier that we placed 11 nurses out of the Nursing Grad Program last year. Nine of them are in Stanton and two in Hay River. I think the Member is aware because his background is in HR, and especially in Health that different nurses have different requirements and where it is necessary, we work as an employer to match training and employment situations. Mr. Speaker, I think I need more information on exactly what he is getting at. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will tell the Minister where I am going and then I will ask a question. Mr. Speaker, the department has money for and runs a program called Community Health Nurse Development Program which is designed to help northern nurse graduates transition from school into community health centres. We have used it in the past. In fact, I know that we have placed at least three northern nurse graduates into community health centres in the Northwest Territories in the last five to seven years, but I haven’t seen it working lately. I haven’t seen northern nurse graduates entering this program and transitioning into the communities. It is a program that works. It is a program that is valuable. We have so many grads coming, we need to be proactive. We need to make sure that we are doing things to help them transition to communities. At what point is the Minister going to place great priority on a program that we know works and will get nurses from the North into our northern communities? When, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker, now I see where he is getting at. Okay. Mr. Speaker, we have a lot of success in HR training for health care professionals. We graduated 11 nurses last year. We are expecting 19. We are expecting way more over the next couple of years. CHNs, as the Member stated, we have trained them and we have placed them in communities. I would be happy to undertake to get that information for the Member. I think actually now we have embarrassment of riches for nurses because we have been so successful with the Nursing Program.

As we go forward, what we see now is we need more community support workers and home care workers. I think part of the review that our department has to do is to work with HR and see what our HR health care training needs are and we

will continue to work on that. Mr. Speaker, the point being is our department works very closely with HR and Education to make sure that people we train are in line with the demands that our system will require. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to go back and see if I could get some specific answers to some of the questions I asked earlier. I would like to address these questions to the Minister of Health and Social Services. I am not talking about a specific case. I would like the Minister to try and think globally and think a bit beyond any specific individual or group of individuals. Firstly, I would like to ask the Minister if she can give me the name of the policy that addresses the provision of housing for NWT residents who require assisted living. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will get back to the Member on that specific point, but the Member knows already because we have had many communications between the two of us that we have programs available and we do provide assistance to those residents in the Territories who need support in living situations due to their disabilities. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, thanks to the Minister for telling me what I already know. Yes, the department has programs. Those programs, however, are absolutely full. I don’t believe there is any more than maybe one vacancy within the whole of the NWT for somebody who needs to be placed in assisted living. I am trying to get the Minister to think beyond what we know and to go into the future.

We know there are many people coming forward who are going to require independent living, assisted living as adults and we want them to stay in our community. I would like to know from the Minister if she can tell me why they would not go to the NWT Housing Corporation and ask to work in conjunction with our housing provider, which is NWT Housing Corporation, to build houses to house the people who need independent or assisted living. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I don’t think there is any disagreement between the Member and myself that there are more demands than resources available. I am thinking that the Member is thinking that I should just go and build some more or something like that.

The way the programs are being delivered, we have lots of providers. We have NGOs who have group homes. We don’t build housing. It is really about resources. It is not about lack of policy or programs or intent. We have more demands and supply and on a case-by-case basis, we work on our residents and we assess them. We place them where we can and we try to support them as much as possible. I don’t think it is lack of policy, program or will. It is always about resources. Thank you.

Thank you. If it is about resources, I’d like to ask the Minister is she planning for the future, and I would hope that she would say yes. If she says yes, I’d like to know how the Minister intends to accommodate the 20 or 30 individuals in Yellowknife alone who will need accommodation in independent or assisted living in the next five to 10 years. Thank you.

The Member has been here for three and a half years. She knows how we get resources. It’s through the business plan process. All the departments and programs make business cases. There are unmet needs, yes, in Yellowknife, but there are unmet needs in every community. We have lots of people in our communities who could benefit from having supported living that are being taken care of by families and friends and communities. I have met them in every community in the Territory. So one of the ways we are doing that under Foundation for Change is including home care programming. Respite care is one of them.

Giving them housing is just only one option, Mr. Speaker, and the solution to that is not the Department of Health and Social Services getting into the business of housing, because we have organizations like the YWCA and YACL and private homes who could take care of them. It’s about priority decisions, Mr. Speaker, and it’s not lack of intent or desire or the will on the part of the current Health Minister. It is about the Department of Health and Social Services with $30 million in deficit, with huge demands, and the entire government under fiscal pressure which is a responsibility for every Member in this House, not just me. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Your final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

Thanks, Mr. Speaker, and thanks to the Minister for that passionate response. I was not suggesting that there was not will to accommodate these people. I’m asking the Minister to look to the future and to try to envision a different method of accommodating people who need assisted living, and that means supervision for some of those. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, no question.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to use this opportunity to pose a couple of questions to the Minister of Human Resources. As he knows very well, I believe strongly in a diverse and representative government and certainly our government’s efforts to reach out to all communities, the Aboriginal community, the disabled community ensuring that we’re an equal opportunity employer for everyone. Mr. Speaker, some of the questions that I’d like to ask are specific to hiring policies and how we encourage a culturally diverse workforce. I’d like to ask the Minister what does his department do to encourage a culture of both awareness and harmony to ensure that we’re hiring people with diverse backgrounds, whether they’re Aboriginal or disabled, but through an environment that they enjoy, they like working for and they feel respected. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.