Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, if -- I want to answer that as best as I can but I might -- you might cut me off. So I'll highlight some of the areas. And I want to be clear that, you know, it's important to note that the use of agency nurses is always the last resort. It's aimed at preventing unit or health care -- health centre closures and to increase -- to keep adequate staffing levels, you know, and we've seen that we've had to close areas in our health care before. And right now -- and I -- you know, I'll continue to repeat it because it is across Canada that we're having a health care shortage of all types of health care workers. So as specific to the retention strategies that we are doing, there are -- it is very multifaceted depending on nurses, doctors, you know, and so we're guided by the Northwest Territories health and social services system human resource plan, and with particularly goal number 4 which emphasizes increased employee engagement throughout organizational change and leadership development.
We've introduced several initiatives to address recruitment and retention, and some of those just to be on time are new measures like using paramedic use in different areas that we would normally not use to make up for that. The friends and family travel program, and that was used over Christmas of last year. Referral programs, so people that -- nurses or other health care professionals can refer somebody they know and if they get an indeterminate position out of it, they'll get a financial bonus for that. And we've had a couple so far with that.
Reimbursing of licensing fees for locum physicians; we've always done that for nurses. The creation of onboarding specialists positions. The covering of international travel costs for NWT, for Canadian health care professionals living abroad who wish to relocate to the NWT and work, recruitment and retention bonuses. So these are some of the things that, you know, we've done, and, you know, I hear the Member -- and employee engagement is important and so, you know, if there's areas that we're not engaging or we're not hearing from the Members, I would like to work with the Members on that side of the House to be able to come up with some -- like, better ways to engage with staff. Thank you.