Glen Abernethy

Off the top of my head, I can't tell you what the vacancy rate is across the entire system, but with respect to community health nurses in the 65 positions that we have established, we are running at about an 18.5-percent vacancy. Many of those are filled by short-term locums to ensure that we have full coverage in communities while we continue to try and recruit on an indeterminate basis. We have fantastic health professionals out there. Some of them do choose, for any number of reasons, to move on to different opportunities, so we have a constant turnover. We do, and we will continue to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I actually don't remember off the top of my head what the total staff complement of Stanton existing is, but I can say that we are adding $2.667 million to operationalize Stanton, which is basically 42.5 new positions. The budget increase, as Mr. Kalgutkar said, is based on the projected cost of delivering existing services in the new space. There will be increased costs due to the increased size and the physical layout of the building, upgraded technology and equipment, changing work processes, and the delivery of facility management services through the PC.

This isn't...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe that there are about 65 funded community health nurse positions across the Northwest Territories, and we run about an 18.5-percent vacancy on those. We are constantly out recruiting and trying to find nurses to come into our community health centres on a permanent basis.

Given that many of our nursing stations are small, with three or four nurses, when one of those individuals is either sick or has to leave on short notice, there are definitely some service impacts on that. When we know that individuals are leaving or coming to an end of a term, we have an...

I will make sure that I ask the department to take this section of the Hansard and share it with the staff in the territorial authority so that they understand and can hear the message from the MLA from his riding. The website is actually an internal website for staff only. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We are trying to evolve and continually be an organization focused on quality improvements. When we do get these positive stories, if there are recommendations in those letters or those e-mails or wherever the individual is sharing their information from, we try to use that data to help address quality improvement issues -- "this works"; "this doesn't work"; "we have got positive feedback on this type of subject" -- so that we could share those information so that could be part of a whole learning experience.

Yes, Mr. Speaker, we do try to learn from them. We do try to get them through our...

We did obtain some dollars from the federal government, focused on helping us get a message out about the use of cannabis and encouraging people to use responsibly and to understand the health ramifications of using it. This money we are also going to be using to do more of a polysubstance approach, trying to get messages out there both online and at a community level, using different sources and technology to get this information out. So, yes, Mr. Speaker, this is something we are aware of. This is something we are trying to do. We are trying to be creative. We are trying to tailor the...

Just to be clear, we have utilized this tool in the Northwest Territories, and we did make it available, and we did provide resources so that people could use it. Unfortunately, there was not a lot of uptake, and I think that's important to remember. Although it has been available, there was not a lot of uptake. With respect to the tools that have been developed around alcohol, in the new wellness plan, the draft wellness plan, which I just want to be clear is still only draft format, we are waiting for feedback from committee on how we can make it stronger, we are creating an...

We are not in this one alone. We work with Aurora College, who runs a really fantastic Nursing Program here in the Northwest Territories. We are also working with Aurora College, who is delivering, on our behalf, what is referred to as, I am going to get the title wrong, but it is basically a rural and remote recruitment program or a training program for nurses, to help those nurses who live here develop the advanced practice skills that they need, things like diagnoses, assessments, suturing, setting bones, and those types of things, so that they can actually do the work of the community...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would certainly like to know who told the Member that. I have always been very consistent. I have never said that we are not adding new positions; I have always said that we are not adding new programs. When I have been asked in other situations, I have said that there will definitely be some growth in positions, but we did not add any new programs.

The facility is quite a bit larger than it used to be. We have made it more effective, more efficient, but there are additional complications as a result of the additional floors and the additional space between. We need to...

I am only going to talk about community health nursing, because I believe that that is the focus that the Member has. When it comes to filling community health nurse positions, we are trying to fill all of the positions all of the time. When we know that there is going to be a short-term vacancy between hiring, or for a holiday leave, or one of those things, we try to find locums to go. We have a pool of locums who have identified that they are willing and are available to us, so we can bring those people in.

We don't prioritize one community or one region over the other. We want all of these...