I could let Minister of housing answer, but I don't know if he'll get the answer he wants. Sorry, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, you know, the North -- the NTHSSA uses agency nurses as a last resort. This is not something that we want to do but when it comes to closing beds, closing units, you know, we seen this happen two years ago when the obstetrics -- you know, that -- you know, and we raised it in this House. It was raised in this House that, you know, the costs of the two-month closure and the impact on all of those families that had to travel due to the closure, you know, if we're talking about closing a unit versus hiring some nurses to ensure that people are not sitting down in Edmonton incurring us costs and away from their family for -- you know, sometimes they leave two weeks before and then they are there two weeks after their due date before they deliver. So, you know, there's many other things.

We also will use them in surgery, in the dialysis, in the operating room, post anesthetic, and most recently we ended up in an emergency situation where Inuvik Regional Hospital had to close down their birthing -- you know, members that were due had to fly out for that short period of time.

So these are specialty areas and so in order for us to keep those units going and less impact to the patients, that's where we use them. We don't want to use them but if we had the option to hire a term or something, we would. Thank you.