Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It came to my attention here that in an article regarding doctor recruitment to be centralized, something that we’ve talked about and the Minister has alluded to on many occasions, having doctors come out of Yellowknife to do work in the small communities. I know they had a meeting last week with all the education authorities. So I’d like to ask the Minister of Health if he wouldn’t mind giving us an update on the outcome of the meeting, in terms of recruitment of physicians and how we’re going to be putting that towards the small communities that don’t have the physicians in place right now.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Health, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The tone of the meeting, in my opinion, was very positive. I think that all of the members of the Joint Leadership Council and the Aboriginal governments that were invited to attend to hear our plans on all aspects of governance, including some on physician recruitment, it sounded positive. The plan is for the department to do a complete debrief of the meeting next week. In as far as recruitment goes, they recognize, people from the authorities and the Aboriginal governments recognize that we are highly motivated to recruit physicians to the Northwest Territories.
I want to make reference to something that the Minister had stated in his interview, and he says that doctors who recoil at the idea of working in a remote and isolated community and don’t want to work in those communities for a long period of time can have a home base in Yellowknife. That means that he’s saying that doctors who don’t want to go and live in our communities can live in Yellowknife and move back and forth. We also have the Minister of ITI who promotes tourism, and we want to promote living in our small communities and have all that good stuff of living in a small community.
Can the Minister please give us a direct answer, saying is this the route that he’s going to go or is he trying other avenues to get doctors into Fort Smith, into Hay River and into Inuvik?
It’s a very unfortunate choice of a word there in the article. I believe that if a doctor recoils at the fact of working in small communities, they probably wouldn’t be working in Yellowknife, either.
Continually, our plan, from the time we had the recruitment support unit transferred back from Health and Social Services on April 1, 2013, has always been to have a plan A, and the plan A has always been to have doctors in the communities where the allocation is. Failing that, with discussion and continued work with the authorities, we would give the doctor the option to live in Yellowknife, in a sense developing a territorial pool as opposed to relying on southern locums for the most part at this time.
If we have doctors that recoil by not going into isolated and remote communities, I’m not sure if that’s the type of physicians we want taking care of our residents of the Northwest Territories or any positions in government, for that matter. So when we do the recruitment, if that comes as an option, I think that health authorities and the Minister should look at that twice before making a job offer.
The Minister did also mention about salary packages. I want to know what our package is in the NWT, how our salary package compares to other jurisdictions throughout the NWT that prevents us from getting physicians up into the North.
The recruiters from both the Health and Social Services and the health authorities really have not identified salary so much as an issue in recruitment. We have a very good package, probably one of the best in the country in as far as just dollars go. The issue has been more of bringing doctors in and the doctor’s requirement for recreation activities in the centres that they would work in, and education. Those have been the two factors that have weighed most heavily on the recruitment issue with doctors.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Just a simple question, yes or no. Saskatchewan and B.C. do give out bonuses to their physicians as they hire them. A simple question, yes or no, is the NWT looking at offering bonuses for physicians that come out of school to entice them as an incentive to take a job here? Yes or no. Is that an option they’re looking at?
I do believe that there is some form of payment to the doctors, but it’s worked out between the Health and Social Services and the health authorities. I do believe there’s a payment after 12 months and there’s another one after the next 12 months. I don’t actually have the details, but I believe that’s what I kind of recall, but it’s not something that’s very substantial that may be offered in other jurisdictions.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
