Wait times, community nursing, systemic racism raised by NWT MLAs

Concerns about healthcare in the NWT – from long wait times for appointments to Indigenous safety within the system – were central to Monday’s exchanges in the territorial legislature.

Yellowknife North MLA Shauna Morgan expressed frustration that access to primary care has worsened over the past five years.

“If you called for a primary care appointment in Yellowknife, you had a chance of someone answering the phone. You had a chance of getting an appointment, rather than being told the schedule is full and to call back in two weeks when the next round of locum schedules open up,” she said in the meeting.

“You didn’t have to line up outside at 7am in the cold with your crutches, or your sick children – competing with all the other sick people, as if you were in some kind of reality TV survival show.”

Morgan said Yellowknife’s Stanton Territorial Hospital Emergency Department used to provide lab results during patients’ visits but samples are now sent to Alberta, requiring follow-up appointments. With long wait times and no online platform to check results, she said this creates significant delays and added stress for patients.

Morgan said community health nurses in smaller communities face significant challenges due to limited support. She noted that five years ago, pilot projects in Behchokǫ̀ and Fort Good Hope provided nurses with a designated physician on call, seven days a week, allowing them to get advice before cases became emergencies.

“These pilot projects received little support and lost traction. Despite available technologies, most community health nurses still don’t have video conference ability when they’re receiving real-time support from emergency physicians,” she said.

“They’re apparently expected to be holding a phone under their arm or something while treating someone in an emergency.”

Asked about plans to restore the previous model of continuous physician support for community health nurses in small communities, health minister Lesa Semmler said that model had been under evaluation in Fort Good Hope.

Semmler said the community hopes to complete the review of its pilot project by April 2026, and the findings will help the department develop a model of care for other small communities.

Morgan asked what options are being considered to reduce the after-hours burden on community health nurses, such as routing calls through 811, 911 or another service to screen emergencies and protect nurses from non-urgent or harassing calls.

Semmler responded that, under the current model, community health nurses remain the primary providers responsible for after-hours calls. She noted work was ongoing to explore how other healthcare providers, such as paramedics and licensed practical nurses, could share responsibilities.

“Community health nurses essentially cannot be replaced, so we have to find better ways to support them,” she said, adding that in small communities, people are accustomed to calling the health centre directly, where a nurse is always on call.

Even when calls go through the likes of 811 or 911, Semmler said, the nurse is still contacted, so community health nurses remain responsible for emergencies.

Morgan also inquired about the difficulty of introducing an online booking system in clinics. Semmler replied such a system would be “significantly more complex” to implement than what is already in place.

NWT’s response to 13-point report

Indigenous healthcare was another key focus of Monday’s discussion at the legislature.

Great Slave MLA Kate Reid asked Semmler about her main takeaways from the Honouring the Voices of Indigenous Peoples report, released by the NWT’s health authority in May.

That report mapped out 13 action items to improve healthcare for Indigenous residents of the territory, drawing on lived experiences of issues like interpersonal and systemic racism in clinical health services.

“I think it’s a good report,” Semmler replied, adding that it would form a baseline to work toward improvements.

Reid asked what the minister is doing to implement the actions mentioned in the report.

Semmler said she spent time with Indigenous patient advocates before the release of the report. She added the health authority has drafted an implementation plan that is now under review by its executive. Once that review is complete, she said she will provide an update to MLAs.

Among its actions for change, the report recommended developing a “framework for responding to and meaningfully addressing reports of interpersonal and systemic racism.”

Other recommendations include enhancing language support so patients can make more informed decisions, noting some have experienced being transported after hours when access to interpreters is not available. Without access to language support and denied a family escort outside their community, the patients shared the challenges they experienced in trying to navigate the medical system.

The report also recommends more work to incorporate traditional foods, not only because they’re integral to the cultural identity of Indigenous patients, but also because studies have shown they’re nutrient-dense and minimally processed.

The document “lays bare the system supports for Indigenous patients are under-resourced at best and, at worst, that the system is blatantly racist,” Reid told the legislature on Monday, urging people to read it.

“It is also brave and unflinching in how it describes racism and white supremacy baked into the health system and insists that government must expedite work on the actions for change, citing the responsibility of leadership to address long standing systemic harms.”

Frame Lake MLA Julian Morse separately rose on Monday to note the territory’s last comprehensive literacy strategy covered the period from 2008 to 2018 and hasn’t been updated since. He said other jurisdictions, including Alberta, British Columbia, and Yukon, now mandate early literacy screening in schools.

Education minister Caitlin Cleveland said teachers have tools for early literacy assessments through the new NWT-adapted BC curriculum, but emphasized that these are not diagnostic tools. She committed to reviewing screening practices in other jurisdictions to see how they could work in the NWT.

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Correction: October 21, 2025 – 5:58 MT. An earlier version of this report referred to the Stanton Hospital when it should have identified the Stanton Hospital Emergency Department. We have updated the story accordingly.