Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, I would like to talk about another one of our priorities, increasing the number of resident healthcare professionals by at least 20 percent. Mr. Speaker, the GNWT funds Aurora College. GNWT funds students through student financial assistance to attend not just Aurora College but other post-secondary institutions. Aurora College has been providing the nursing program, successfully having graduates for over 20 years, and they have run the practical nurse program sporadically over the years, as well as the personal support program.
Mr. Speaker, NWT continues to struggle to hire permanent healthcare staff throughout the territory. We all know this. We fly in short-term contract nurses to staff vacancies, some as short as two weeks, especially during peak holiday season. They are flown in to the NWT from all over the country into our health centres, who already distrust our healthcare system. This is unfair, not only for our residents but the nurses in the community, for such short periods where they are never there long enough to build any relationship with the community.
Mr. Speaker, we have a disconnected system. We pay to provide programs and to train healthcare staff, and yet we do not have a way to bridge them into our healthcare jobs that we are struggling to staff. We have Indigenous residents who have been funded to attend our Aurora College and been screened out of jobs. This should not happen. We should have human resources, department of health, and Aurora College working together, not working in silos. We should be recruiting them right out of school.
Another area we are not doing so well in is actively looking at our new nursing graduates and permanent staff we now have, finding out if there are any of these nurses who want extra training so they are able to meet the criteria needed for health centres. How will they ever get the training and be able to meet this is it is not provided to them through mentorships or internships focused on giving them exactly what they need to be successful in these areas that we are filling right now without a territory staffing?
Mr. Speaker, with more local residents working in our healthcare system, we will be able to provide culturally sensitive care for our residents of the NWT. I will have questions for the Minister of Finance over the human resources. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.