Marci cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today, my Member's statement is about doctors in the NWT healthcare system. Currently, only 45 per cent of NWT residents have a regular doctor, which means that just over half the population goes from one doctor to another to another as they try to address their own personal health issues. The rest of Canada has not faced the same issue, as the national average sits at 83 per cent, according to the 2017 Statistics Canada report.

Mr. Speaker, the department started working on creating a territorial pool of doctors that would lessen the use of locum doctors, but today it seems as though we are no further along than we were when we started.

Mr. Speaker, our residents are lacking medical consistency, which leaves them vulnerable to shorter life expectancy, higher infant mortality rates, and fewer opportunities for cancer screening. Due to a lack of access to, and long-term relationships with, health professionals, our residents are getting less medical service than what is normal in the rest of Canada.

Mr. Speaker, the idea of having our doctors living and practising in the NWT is very exciting and would have positive impact on the health of our residents, not to mention the benefits that we have in our communities and our housing markets. I'll give one example. Let's say that the new Hay River Health Centre has a full complement of six doctors, but could only find three doctors willing to live in Hay River. Under the territorial pool, the system could hire six doctors who would live in Yellowknife, and they would practise half-time at the new Stanton Hospital, and practise half-time in Hay River.

Mr. Speaker, another bonus of such a scenario would be patients from Hay River, if referred to Yellowknife, would have a very good chance of seeing their own regular doctor here at Stanton. Mr. Speaker, the government needs to hire more doctors to live in the North. With a lack of full-time doctors, I believe doctors are facing challenges with heavy workloads. I urge the Minister of Health to engage with the NWT Medical Association on working on a strategic plan to attract physicians to move to the North. We need to address this issue and work towards recruiting and retaining doctors for the North. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.