Thank you, Member for Hay River South. I didn't hear a question. Did you want a response? Thank you. Are there any further questions on addictions and aftercare? Seeing none, we will now move onto the second last mandate item which is "Increase the number of resident healthcare professionals by at least 20 percent." Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. One of the hardest things, I think, working in healthcare is when you are working with clients and you are working with patients. You are coming in, and you are leaving. You are from another province, or you are in another territory or another hospital. It is so hard as any nurses that are permanent already here, signed on. I don't even think it is nurses. It is lab techs. It is all of them, having rotating co-workers that you are having to basically do your job, orientate almost every shift. It feels like you are constantly orientating. You are doing the job of two all the time. By meeting the needs of the numbers, sometimes we are doing that, but we are also burning out our own staff that are here and dedicated and living here. That is one thing I just wanted to bring up. It is not just that we have a shortage. It is that we are burning out the ones that are here, and maybe that is why they are also leaving, or you are seeing the majority of the ones that are here go half-time or quarter-time because they just don't want to be there all the time.

What I want to ask is, would the Premier or the Minister, commit to making sure that in this, or if it is HR, to do exit interviews with all healthcare staff that are leaving, to make sure that they are being done. I know that that might be a way to capture it. April 1^st is coming up, and if we could do a scan of all of the health professionals who are leaving, maybe, who were permanent, and maybe do a scan of job shares that we have, to see why they won't sign on or stay. I could probably give you some answers, but it would be good to have that stuff documented, so that, over the next year, if we were able to do that, then we would have some concrete reasons why we can't keep them or why they are leaving. That is one thing that I would like to ask for a commitment from this mandate. Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Madam Premier.

Thank you, Madam Chair. With having a large hospital in the capital city, actually, I think most of the Yellowknife MLAs, correct me if I am wrong, but myself, for sure, during the campaign, the amount of nurses, doctors, and healthcare professionals in my riding was phenomenal. Literally, people were crying at the door, and I heard it very clearly. "It is not the money. We don't need the money. We are making good money. We need the break; we need the time. You are killing us." I heard that, and I carry that forward with me because we need to take care of not only the people needing services, but the people providing services.

You will see in here that we talk about working about employees and partners to identify factors contributing to retention challenges. You can ask them, but the best way, sometimes, to get the retention strategies and what the difficulties are is exit interviews. I am not going to commit to every single employee getting an exit interview, because I have done exit interviews in my past. You have the great intention, but sometimes people walk off the job. We will add exit interviews within our programming, and you will also notice that the whole priority is to get more people here, but we have talked about retention. This is about recruitment and retention; keep the ones that we have. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Premier. Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The other thing would be, too, just so that it is out there, and I know that some of the conversations that we are having today is kind of helping to help the departments with ideas. I know that, when we are bringing up casuals or terms, because that is what usually ends up happening, especially in my region. I was a hiring manager, so this was the reality to have people to take care of patients. The permanent staff, again, were very frustrated, because they couldn't get their holiday. You work, and if you have been there for 20 years, I think it is after seven years, you can get up to six weeks of vacation time, but you are very limited on when you can use it. A lot of these people are permanent, so it is like, "I can give you two weeks or three weeks in the summer. You can't use any more than that." Sometimes, it means, "We don't have any staff. You are not getting holidays," but you are permanent. Then we have casuals, terms, who can pick and choose when they want to come, and we have no control over that. Then, when they are here for a period of time, like, if they are a one-year term, they will get the training allowance. They will get this, and they will get that.

People who are signed on permanently don't get any more perks; they actually get less. These people are being flown in and out. It is almost like you get a free VTA if you stay as a term or a locum. You are getting a VTA all the time. We don't do VTAs, but this is the way that we need to have staff to take care of our residents. Permanents don't get to travel in and out. They get their northern living allowance on their paycheque, like everyone else. So do the terms; they get their northern living allowance. There is not a lot of strength in saying, "You are essential, and you are important. We need to make sure to keep you permanent." When I became a manager, when they were leaving, they were actually living in my community, but they were doing terms because they were like, "At least I can get holidays, and I can pick and choose. I don't have to work Christmas. I don't have to work the summer. I don't have to work spring break when my kids are off." We don't need this kind of a system, and I don't know how we are going to fix that, because I know there is going to be union involved, but I really think that that needs to be looked at. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Madam Premier.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Those are some of the ideas that we are hoping to draw out as we work with employees and partners to identify the factors contributing to retention. I am a social worker, it is kind of close, but I don't deal with blood. The reality is that I am thinking that the fact that we don't have enough healthcare professionals might be one of the biggest issues that we have with that. People do need to have holidays. We do need to keep them. I do believe that GNWT has strict policies on those things. If we are saying you can't, it is because we don't have enough staff. We need to get staff in. We need to figure out how we are getting them here. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Premier. Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I see it in a lot of the fields. We have ultrasound; we get this big influx of people who need to have an ultrasound when we get an ultrasound tech. Since we have had our permanent radiologist x-ray tech leave, we haven't been able to secure one in our region permanently, and they are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and then working during the day. It is just a really unhealthy situation to be a staff in that. I look forward to this mandate growing legs and getting moving. Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Did you want a response to that? That was a great image. Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Member for Nunakput.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just in regard to the nursing problems that we are having in our communities, with locums and stuff, the more locums we could get, the better, because I have about two and a half inches of paper, yellow sheets, that get faxed to me every day, reduction of core services in our community, and that is always with healthcare, them being overworked. Is there any plan in regard to getting more nurses, going out on hiring forums or something like that, to get more nurses for the communities? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. That is part of the recruitment strategy, absolutely. We need to have a strategy, but we need to start getting down into places like universities and colleges that we can actually attain things. When I did my degree in social work, one of the best things I had seen every year was having people come and say, "We have jobs for you. Come and get a job." Both of my sons are in post-secondary now, and the same thing, they are saying this is one of the best things about us.

There are places out there. We need to figure out what we are doing, and we need to get out there, and we need to attract those people who are just graduating. Of course, taking people who are in the field already, selling the quality of life in the North, because we can't; they are not competing with the wages across Canada. It is an issue. However, we have special things in the North, promoting what we have, and getting into those universities and colleges where we can actually get the new workers. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Premier. Member for Nunakput.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just in regard to that, Madam Premier, is there a way that you know from the hospitals, like in the Beaufort-Delta and for Inuvik, loaning nursing staff to our communities to make sure that people are being seen? When it is being shut down, you have to make appointments in the small communities. Staff is overworked, but the appointment part, people have to be seen. Is there any way that they could help out, I guess, on the HR side? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Member for Nunakput. Minister of Health and Social Services.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I hear the Member's concern. One of the difficulties we have in our communities is the hiring, like finding the specialized nurses and the doctors or whoever it may be. They find the cost of living is quite high. Finding them housing is another challenge. These are challenges that we get right across the whole Northwest Territories. I hear the Member's concern about having specialized nurses or doctors come more frequently in the community. We need to look at that. That is important. Now, you find in some of the smaller communities, they just go make appointments on their own at bigger centres because they don't want to have these wait times. We see that. We know this is happening, and we need to do a better job as a department to recognize that and be able to look at different ways of making sure our patients are seen more quickly. That is important.

I would like to speak about the Member's previous concern about the recruitment. What we are doing as a department is we are developing three talent pools in order for recruitment. One is for the health and social service professionals, which includes the nurses; we are also doing one for physicians and also one for students. We want to engage students and youth earlier so we can get them engaged and seeking employees for the future. These are some of things that we are doing, we are looking to do, as a result of achieving our mandate. There are a lot of different things that we need to look to our departments to come up with faster ways so that our patients have better quality services. Even our regional staff, I am just told recently that some of our regional staff don't even have staff to lend, as I look across the floor, and it is true. We need to start looking at all of the different centres and the regions and making sure that we have enough resources in the centres to be able to have patient care. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister of health. Member for Nunakput.

Thank you, Madam Chair. No. Thank you, Minister, and thank you, Madam Premier, in regards to that. In the communities that I represent, we have apartments on top of our health centres. There are four apartments per health centre, and we are blessed for that for sure because you don't have to wait too long. You have just got to walk down the stairs. I am really very thankful for the staff that we have there, but they are just overworked. There has got to be a way that we could try to help them, to get more staff to help alleviate the pressure. They don't have to stay for long, a couple of weeks, maybe, or a month or something, just to get the job done, to make sure that they are seeing the constituents. Some of them are fighting cancer. There are so many different aspects and different stages of it, and we are trying. I talked to you before about getting a task force, like something to go into the communities to do pre-checks on constituents, especially further north, because, like I said, the flights to get out of the community into Inuvik to see a doctor on their own, it is just they can't do it. That is more of a comment, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Nunakput. Are there any further questions on this page, "Increase the number of resident healthcare professionals by at least 20 percent"? Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks, Madam Chair. You had better start the clock again. I don't expect a lot of time on this, but I am just wondering what role could or should scholarships play with regard to recruitment. That is probably something longer-term, so scholarships as a tool and also whether the Premier and Cabinet see any links to the polytechnic. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Madam Premier.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Those are ideas that we are searching for, ideas of putting scholarships, so when we do our recruitment plan, those are the kind of things that we are looking for suggestions from. We will be gathering that feedback. Is there a link with the polytech? I would like to say "absolutely" right now. However, we made a commitment with the polytech that we would be going out in the fall to do a survey, find out from people what we should specialize in. In that regard, it would be inappropriate for us to make a commitment until we have done that work. The Minister of Education, Culture and Employment might want to expand on that. Thank you, Madam Chair.