Thank you, Madam Chair. The Department of Health and Social Services does recognize the importance of language and culture in all aspects of daily lives throughout the Northwest Territories. In many of the small communities, it is indeed a struggle to recruit and retain health care providers in any language. We do strive to offer services in all official languages here in the Northwest Territories.

However, because of capacity issues, this is obviously sometimes quite difficult. We have a multi-lingual website which offers a range of information in all official languages here in the Northwest Territories. We continue to post more information to this website in the Aboriginal languages all the time and we will continue to do so.

The department is also working with the departments of Education, Culture and Employment and Human Resources to implement the strategic plan on French language services and communications, which is one of the reasons you see some of the increases in front of you today.

By way of example, the Stanton Territorial Health Authority has an Aboriginal languages division that coordinates some language services within the facility here in Yellowknife. The regional health and social services authorities do have limited numbers of bilingual employees within their facilities, within

their communities; however, they also have a list of interpreters and translators that they have under contract and who can provide services when required.

We also have a toll-free Helpline which offers services in other languages through an interpretation service. I believe it’s called CanTalk. However, they do have some limited ability to facilitate services in some of the Aboriginal languages. So there are a number of things we are trying to do to ensure our residents are receiving the services they need and that language services are available. In our health centres when we have individuals who do speak the language, we do provide them with bilingual bonuses so they can help us in communicating with people who are maybe unilingual as well.

So there are a number of things going on. Thank you, Madam Chair.