Debates of October 26, 2006 (day 16)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I apprenticed with DPW quite a few years ago and one of the things I noticed when I was apprenticing there was the amount of employees we had there from the South that would just come up, work, and then leave. It was easy for them because there was so much incentive for them to come north and work here. As more and more northerners became trained and the incentives became less and less, because working and living at home should have been your incentive, a lot of them left.

A good case, Mr. Speaker, would be we’re going through the same thing right now, but it’s with our nurses. We have nurses that are working side by side with nurses that come up from the South and they’re getting paid less money. The ones that come from the South, and we thank them for coming north and working up here but, at the same time, we have to look after the girls, the nurses from the North that are trained and plan to live here, make the North their home.

Last year, Mr. Speaker, there were 26 graduates and I believe this year we may have 11 more. By doing this we’re sending them the wrong message. Are we telling them that they would be better off financially living down south but coming up north to work for two weeks, side by side, get more money, get a housing allowance, get their way paid up, and then they can go down, spend their money south where the cost of living is a lot cheaper than it is up here. We’re sending these graduates the wrong message and I think it’s time that we started taking care of the nurses that plan to make the Northwest Territories their home; the ones that were born and raised here, they want to work here.

The amount of money that they get paid, they work 12-hour shifts and they get paid at a level that’s lower than a lot of people and, Mr. Speaker, I don’t think that’s very fair. They provide a service that’s essential to the North and is this how we tell them how much we value they work that they do, by making them work long, hard hours for less money? I think it’s time this government, Mr. Speaker, stepped up to the plate and showed these nurses how much we value their commitment to the North and the work that they put into the North. Thank you.