After close to two years on the front lines of this pandemic, nurses are feeling tapped-out, exasperated and dispirited.
Understaffing has plagued our healthcare system for more than a decade, but COVID-19 has only made it worse. Years of government neglect have created untenable working conditions, with acute levels of stress wreaking havoc on nurses’ mental health.
One nurse described the weight of not being able to provide the care patients deserve as “crushing.” Another nurse told us she was leaving the profession – a profession she used to love – because “no help is coming and no one seems to care.”
It’s no wonder so many nurses are looking for the exit sign.
Job vacancies in healthcare and social assistance soared over the summer, representing one in seven openings in Canada – the largest increase of any sector. Openings for registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses saw the largest increase of all occupations.
Recently, the Ontario Science Table found rates of severe burnout above 60 per cent among Canadian physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals – a drastic jump from the equally alarming 30 to 40 per cent prevalence rate affecting the sector just a year before.
Nurses and their co-workers are beyond the point of exhaustion and exasperated at the inaction of politicians.
If we want to retain nurses and other healthcare workers, they need immediate support – they need some semblance of hope.
Provinces regularly resort to short-sighted tactics to address their nursing shortage. Often, these amount to nothing but an expensive shell game, drawing nurses from one region to another. This approach will not end this crisis. We need to look upstream to address root causes, such as a lack of appropriate data to inform evidence-based health workforce planning. Governments desperately need this data to better forecast healthcare needs and build a truly responsive healthcare system.
Recently, over 60 national health professional organizations collectively urged the federal government to create a national health workforce agency and provide immediate targeted funding to support retention and recruitment efforts.
We simply can’t afford to continue planning in the dark when it comes to healthcare. It’s time to stop pretending that a responsive healthcare system will materialize out of thin air, absent the data, tools and leadership needed to do the job.
While the Prime Minister and Premiers are inarguably busy managing the pandemic, the nursing shortage is a looming crisis that threatens to undermine those very efforts – without a healthcare team, a bed is just a bed. This crisis demands equal and urgent governmental action and collaboration. It requires working across partisan and jurisdictional lines.
Now more than ever, nurses and their colleagues are desperate for optimism. In 2022, let’s choose to put healthcare ahead of politics.
Linda Silas is a nurse and president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
