Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This year marks the 50th anniversary of community health representatives, a very integral part in our health and social services system.
CHRs are front-line workers in all of our communities and they do a lot of our groundwork that we ask them to do in terms of prevention and promotion. However, although we do ask them to do a lot of work in our communities, we don’t always provide the necessary resources financially for them to make sure that they do their job as efficiently as we would like them to do or as what they have brought forth to this government asking for help.
Community health reps do a lot of prevention and promotion to keep our residents healthy and they do it through education awareness programs. A lot of them go out of their way. They are counsellors, community counsellors. They are also nursing assistants, data entry clerks, as well as administrative duties that they have to do for the health centres as well as some of our public health units.
I believe that we need to support our community health reps a lot more. This is the 50th anniversary that they have been an integral part of our communities, making our communities a lot healthier and our people a lot healthier. As one of our Caucus priorities and prevention and promotion, I feel that we need to utilize our CHRs in the best way we can by providing support so they can do the best jobs that they can.
Being that this is the 50th anniversary of the CHRs, I would like to take this moment to say thank you to all the CHRs throughout the Northwest Territories for all their hard work, dedication and compassion in helping our residents live a healthy lifestyle and making our communities a better place to live.
When I finished college, my first job was a community health rep. I wanted to become a teacher in the school system, but seeing all the hard work that these individuals do in the job and how much impact it has on the communities, I stuck with that job for four and a half years and there were a lot of really good changes that we made in the communities. When I started my job as CHR, in about two years, 2000, there were a lot of people working in that area and field and they are still working in that area. They are dedicated individuals that have a compassion for the people.
I just want to say thank you to all the CHRs across the Northwest Territories and across Canada. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
