Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I too stand in support of this motion. There's just -- there are a lot of nurses who live in my riding of Range Lake, and since even before we were elected, they were sharing their concerns with me at the doorsteps on the campaign trail. It's clear that what is going on in the health authority is just not working. It's not working for nurses. It's not working for physicians. It's not working for allied healthcare professionals. I think that we've heard a lot of these concerns. We've heard about agency nurses that are continuing to be a costly short-term solution that depletes morale and precious treasure, a hospital that's under gridlock half of the time every month, health and safety issues where staff are still waiting for the proper security procedures to be implemented with no idea when that's coming. We have a dedicated recruitment and retention unit called the health recruitment unit, the Department of Finance. It's great at recruiting nurses. Problem is they don't stick around. The retention is very poor.

So these are all issues that we know about. I know the Ministers are aware of it as well, but we really need to dig down and see how we can better support nurses and really come to the same conclusion that this is a problem and that we need to address it as a government. Because if it continues, it's going to continue to drag down the quality of care that Northerners have come to expect from their nurses, their doctors, their health centres. And this is mostly what I hear about, it's in Yellowknife where we have a nice hospital and a nice -- the Liwego'ati Building as well. We have a lot of resources here compared to the smaller communities. So the issues -- and these are issues in Yellowknife. So the issues that I hear from my colleagues from the smaller communities are nowhere near as -- or sorry, are beyond the pale of what, you know, folks are putting up with here in Yellowknife. And when you see and you hear stories of, you know, people who are otherwise -- preventible deaths happening in smaller communities, when you hear challenges of paramedics who, you know, don't have the regulations and the legislation to properly do their jobs as they join other jurisdictions. You know, there's a whole spectrum of healthcare workers. And although nurses are near and dear to all of our hearts, all the allied workers as well and healthcare workers, really need to be represented in this work that's being referred to the standing committee so no one is left out of their concerns because, you know, we hear from lab techs too. They've been short staffed, running short for years. That just adds to more and more frustrations, more and more backlogs, and less quality of care. So, again, we need to be able to dig down as an Assembly into these problems. We need to be able to talk to the people on the ground. We need to be able to talk to people in management. We need to be able to talk to the people across the aisle so we can -- across the floor so we can come to a set of clear and meaningful recommendations that support nurses and healthcare workers of the Northwest Territories.

I was pleased to help inspire this motion and draft a lot of the language in it. It does show that this is an area of mutual concern from a whole lot of Members, and we need to work together to solve these challenges. Again, Northerners send us here to solve problems, and this is a problem that is in desperate need of solving. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.