Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated in my Member’s statement, Hay River does not currently have any permanent doctors. My question is for the Minister of Health. What is the territorial government doing to assist local health authorities to recruit permanent doctors?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Health is working with the Department of Human Resources to get a health human resource specialist involved in developing some sort of recruitment strategy for physicians that need to come to the Northwest Territories outside of Yellowknife to try to fill the vacancies. We have almost 100 percent vacancy across the territory, with the exception of Stanton and Tlicho.
Does the territorial government currently have any money in the budget to do this, or is this a future process?
Yes, the Department of Health has a process of recruiting. We have budgets that we work with the Department of Human Resources to recruit physicians across the North. As is the standard for recruiting anyone in the NWT, we have that money to recruit doctors.
Is the territorial government working with the federal government to get any additional dollars to alleviate this problem? I know it’s not just a territorial problem, that they’re having the same difficulties in the provinces.
The Member is right that this is an issue across a lot of jurisdictions who are unable to get physicians to go to a lot of their rural areas. However, our whole system in dealing with the federal government is not specific to recruiting doctors. We do have discussions with the federal government on the Health Accord and the federal government provides money through the Health Accord to the government, which portions of it can be used for recruiting. Thank you.
Is the government committed to spending additional dollars in this situation for many communities in the Northwest Territories that don’t have doctors in their communities? Thank you.
We are hoping that it doesn’t require a lot of additional dollars to recruit doctors, but the intention is to try to recruit doctors in all the authorities across the North, but we’re doing what we can. The difficulty has not been the money; the difficulty has actually been getting doctors to those locations. Many doctors that want to come to the Northwest Territories have a desire to work in Yellowknife. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
