Thank you, MP Ashton.
I would say that this is a crisis that's affecting Canada. In fact, nursing shortages are profound in pretty much every community across this country and even more profound in remote communities. That's why Indigenous Services Canada has been so focused on what we can do to recruit, retain and train nurses to choose to work in the north, to stay in the north, and to build that internal capacity of communities by ensuring that more indigenous people choose health care as a pathway for their own personal careers.
We have used things like retention strategies and we have increased investments to ensure competitive pay and signing bonuses. We have thrown pretty much everything at the wall to get nurses in place, and I will tell you that there's nothing more stressful for a community, as you pointed out, but certainly for my officials, because I see those messages that come through at two o'clock, three o'clock, five o'clock in the morning from communities where officials are working with communities like the ones you mentioned, just as in many northern and remote communities, to address these nursing shortages.
We're going to keep at it, obviously, and whatever it requires, we will be there to try to ensure that communities have the complement of nurses they need. Furthermore, we are investing in those kinds of innovations that communities are talking about to have greater capacity, with the $2-billion health equity fund, with the health transfers and with willing provinces and territories that are interested in partnering with first nations—