Since the program was discontinued at the University of Saskatoon, like I said, we no longer have a supply of the individuals with the appropriate training to fill the role of the dental therapists. In investigating the role of the dental therapists and looking at providing better quality oral health for residents of the Northwest Territories, what became clear is that dental therapists were a school-based position. There was a gap that we were missing, and that was the youth or the children from zero to five were not getting support from the dental therapist positions, which were primarily school-based positions.

What we are looking at doing through the oral health strategy is actually changing it. We are striving to improve the use of our existing resources and changing to more of an oral health -- integrating oral health as part of our overall primary care services and suite of services that are available at the community level. This means working with our community health reps, with our local community health nurses, and providing them with additional tools so that they can provide more oral health services to our residents, and not having it as a separate service but being part of our primary care. That is the work being done right now.