Mr. Speaker, earlier this year, a young Indigenous woman went into Stanton Territorial Hospital complaining of extreme pain. The pain was so bad that, in the emergency room, she doubled over in agony and was curled up in the fetal position crying. It was then a nurse told this young woman that she was being dramatic before calling a security guard over to force the woman to stand up.

Medical records reveal staff indicated her unnecessarily hyperventilating and dramatically yelling. Only after this humiliation was the young woman diagnosed with 8.3-millimeter kidney stones, as well as strep throat.

Mr. Speaker, this experience was shared with me by one of my constituents, but, sadly, she's not alone in her encounters with cultural bias in the NWT health care system. Indigenous residents from across the NWT have raised similar concerns and shared similar horror stories. Only this morning, I heard tell of a common treatment prescribed to Indigenous patients complaining of illness in the smallest of our communities, "Take an aspirin, and the problem will go away," leading some to call it the magic pill, used as a catch-all for any medical issue raised in the community.

We, as a government, have an obligation to ensure the health care system and all government services are free from prejudice, racism, or bias. It's disheartening to hear about the instances of misdiagnosis and neglect. All too often, Indigenous peoples are labelled as intoxicated, which is, yes, symptomatic of alcohol consumption; however, the symptom is shared with the following medical conditions: diabetes, hypoglycemia, epilepsy, brain injury, Alzheimer's, Wilson's disease, multiple sclerosis, stroke, hypothermia, and hypoxia, just to name a few, Mr. Speaker.

Misdiagnosing these patients due to their cultural background is an example of what researchers call implicit or unconscious racism, rather than intentional racism. We must avoid the factors that ensure these problems continue from generation to generation.

Breaking the cycle of racial and cultural bias is the best path forward, and we can do it together. We must ensure that frontline government workers have appropriate training, not triage nor to diagnose, but to be aware of the complexity of symptoms and the full range of possible causes, as opposed to jumping on our own deeply held preconception and bias.

In June of this year, the Honourable Minister of Health and Social Services agreed with these concerns and promised changes are coming to the public health care system in the NWT, including cultural training for healthcare workers that was slated to begin this fall.

Mr. Speaker, I want to believe this government is taking the actions to fix this problem, and I will be asking the Minister of Health and Social Services to help me believe. Thank you.