Mr. Speaker, in health care we've heard that the Minister's top priority is cultural safety and anti-racism, along with the small community model of care and medical travel. I've read two reports produced last year that were supposed to lay out a roadmap towards cultural safety in our healthcare system, honouring the voices of Indigenous peoples and the equitable access report. There's a lot of important feedback and ideas in there from Indigenous patients and families and the patient advocates who try to help.
My challenge for the Minister is to ask, do any of those steps towards cultural safety make sense without focusing first and foremost on stabilizing our health care workforce? Are we trying to build a beautiful new house on a foundation of sand? Is there any scenario where we could achieve culturally safe care without continuity of care, without a stable workforce of regular nurses and physicians who have a relationship with their patients, know their health history, and know the communities they're working in?
We've gotten to a point, Mr. Speaker, where there are literally thousands of temporary healthcare workers revolving through our system every year - locum doctors and nurses, agency nurses, contracted paramedics. Some of our frontline managers barely have time to do anything else besides plugging holes, always looking for new people to fill the schedule.
Could all those practitioners ever be properly trained in cultural safety and anti-racism? We don't possibly have the human resources or money or time. Our Indigenous patient advocates are already undersupported but with more temporary workers from down south, we see more patients feeling disrespected and misunderstood. It is just unsustainable to keep dumping more cases on these advocates and expect them to investigate and meaningfully address incidents.
The clear vision is for health practitioners to be working together in well-connected teams, but how is that possible with a revolving door of temporary workers? We need more focus on long-term health prevention and promotion in communities, but contracted paramedics that are brought in to plug holes are not trained in those specialties.
Mr. Speaker, health care workforce stabilization cannot be just another competing priority shoved down the list. It is foundational to the success of everything else. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. Members' statements. Member from Great Slave.
