Ontario failing the health workers it relies on
Premier Doug Ford cracked a few jokes this week about bees (he recently swallowed one during a live news conference) before giving the keynote address at a meeting for the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.
He talked about highways, congestion and skilled working hands. “The only way we will protect the strength of our economy is by working together,” Ford said, “working together to build an economy with better jobs and bigger paycheques.”
Unless, that is, you’re a nurse. Because if you’re a nurse in Ontario, you’re probably more likely to swallow 10 bees on live TV than to gain the respect and compensation owed to you by a provincial government apparently willing to throw anything at the health-care crisis so long as it isn’t a fair wage.
Ford wasn’t the only Ontario leader who made a public appearance this week. On Thursday morning, Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced the next phase of the government’s depressingly titled “Plan to Stay Open,” one that includes investment in private clinic surgeries, legislation to enable the transfer of some hospital patients to long-term care, and a commitment, according to the government’s accompanying report, to hire 6,000 more health-care workers and to “temporarily cover the costs of examination, application and registration fees for internationally trained and retired nurses, saving them up to $1,500.”
What the report does not include, despite provincial leaders’ many odes to the epic work ethic of nurses, is a promise to repeal Bill 124, legislation passed by the Ford government that caps nurses’ wage increases to one per cent per year.
In other words, the path to retain nurses and encourage young people to enter the profession — and remain there — is not a time-limited offer of complementary registration fees. It’s a lifelong decent wage. It’s paying nurses several million dollars instead of private agencies.
“Dozens of emergency departments were closed over the past few weeks due to a shortage of nurses,” Cathryn Hoy, president of the Ontario Nurses Association, said in a
One doesn’t have to be a registered nurse or an expert in the field of health-care policy to determine that people who are underpaid and overworked will eventually walk off the job
statement released after Jones’ remarks Thursday.
“The government missed a huge opportunity here to bolster nurse compensation as a key to retention and recruitment to curb additional closures. Many physicians have voiced their support in increasing nurses’ compensation as a strategy. Again, the government ignored nurses.”
Jones’ announcement, Hoy said, “is nothing more than shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.”
She’s right. But one doesn’t have to be a registered nurse or an expert in the field of health-care policy to determine that people who are underpaid and overworked will eventually walk off the job towards their own happiness — as they should.
According to a recent survey conducted by the Registered Practical Nurses Association of Ontario, “nearly 1 in 2 RPNs (47 per cent) are considering leaving this critical profession. This figure has jumped significantly from 34 per cent in 2020. The #1 catalyst for this is wage dissatisfaction. An overwhelming majority of nurses (91 per cent) believe they are not fairly compensated for their role.”
“The majority of RPNs (88 per cent) have been directly impacted by the nursing shortage,” a shortage that has led them to take on additional hours and ultimately consider leaving the profession. “In fact, 83 per cent of respondents reported missing breaks and meals as a result of growing workloads.”
This finding is in line with the grim tone of a recent letter written to hospital management by physicians at the notoriously busy St. Joseph’s Health Centre’s emergency department in Toronto.
According to the letter, shared with the Star’s Kenyon Wallace, the situation in the emergency department “is a threat to patient safety, patient quality of medical care and patient experience. We witness demoralized, frustrated and burnedout staff.”
It’s tragic, albeit tragically predictable, that a crisis that began with the clanging of pots and pans in honour of essential workers will culminate in their blatant disrespect. Ontario is failing the workers who underpin it. Until this fact is not merely acknowledged with words but remedied via dollar signs, it will fail all of us.
Ford wants a strong-mayor system. He has an unravelling healthcare one.