Mr. Speaker, when I stood in response to the finance Minister's budget last week, my criticism focused on the government's failure to take decisive action on the priorities of our Assembly. One of the most urgent of those priorities, especially for my constituents in Range Lake, is the dire state of our frontline health care services, especially at Stanton Territorial Hospital.
The deterioration of our frontline health care services is rapidly becoming a full-blown crisis. Our nurses are increasingly burdened with astronomical workloads as they try to provide adequate care in the face of staff cuts and unfilled positions. They often find themselves working short, and it is alleged that they are asked to take unsafe patient assignments that do not meet internal policies and the Canadian standards of practice. The ability for the hospital to manage at surge capacity is coming into question. The government's solution so far has only been to increasingly rely on private outofterritory agency nurses, but this is only doing more harm than good.
Relying on agency nurses is incredibly expensive. These private agencies undermine the public nature of our health care system, and the agency nurses themselves come with little cultural sensitivity or training. Worst of all, they make our local nurses feel replaceable and undervalued at a time when their morale is already suffering.
Mr. Speaker, nobody knows health care better than the frontline professionals. They are speaking loud and clear. If the government wants to maintain quality patient care, they need to treat nurses and physicians with respect, they need to implement management structures that are flexible and responsive to their needs and, mostly urgently, they need to restore the competitive hiring edge the North once enjoyed so providing nurses with wages and benefits necessary to live in a region with such a high cost of living.
Nobody wants to imagine a North where these circumstances continue to spiral out of control, but we are quickly running out of time needed to turn this situation around. I have been meeting with nurses, physicians, and union officials for many weeks now, and many of my colleagues on this side of the House are on the same page united on what needs to get done. The question now is when will this government get on the same page as us, nurses, doctors, and other health care professionals? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Range Lake. Members' statements. Member from Tu NedheWiilideh.
