We agree that we have infrastructure challenges, which is why we have taken the planning steps that we have in terms of two years of fiscal discipline so we can, in fact, put more money into infrastructure. We have a $3 billion infrastructure deficit. We’ve identified and we’re starting to put some very serious money into Stanton and we’ve acknowledged that it needs a midlife retrofit. It was built at a time when the population was a lot lower. That’s going to be a $200 million to $300 million project and we’re on the road to taking care of that. We’re building long-term care facilities. In this budget, we’ve put in millions to better staff some of the existing facilities in Smith, Simpson, I believe, and Yellowknife. We recognize that as well.
Once again, I don’t think we should use the amount of money we spend as the clear comparator. That we’re going to compare ourselves, okay, it’s not 42 but it should be 30.
I say again that I think we have a level of services in this territory that are without equal in this country. We have to compare what you are getting for the money we spend. When you combine all the things we put money into to assist people, I think that’s the test we have to look at. It’s too simplistic to say Ontario spends this much on health care, we have to spend something like that or, for some reason, we’re not doing enough even though we have the best seniors benefits in the country, we have some of the best student financial assistance in the country, the best pharmacare, the best medical travel, we have midwifery as an insured service that is going to grow now to other parts of the territory. Most other jurisdictions don’t even have that as a service. I think we have to be very careful how we move on this. We can do this if that’s the will of this Legislature, but we have to be prepared to make those trade-offs as we do that.
We do have nurses. One of the challenges is to get all the grads to want to work someplace other than Yellowknife, and come up with a training program that allows new grads to be given another component to allow them to be able to go into a community as a nurse in charge.