By Allison Jones in Toronto
Ontario is looking at how to get more internationally trained nurses working in the province in order to ease staffing shortages that have led to temporary emergency room closures, the health minister said Tuesday, but she didn't indicate that she's planning to address nurses' compensation.
Sylvia Jones told The Canadian Press in an interview that the ministry, the health system bureaucracy and hospitals do "everything possible" to try to get shifts covered so emergency departments can operate, but closures still happen at times.
Plans to avoid those situations in the first place include hiring more health-care workers, she said.
"The plan is what we have, frankly, been doing for the last four years, (putting) historic investments into making sure that we have sufficient health-care workers to cover those shifts," Jones said.
Jones touted more than 10,000 health-care workers added since the start of the pandemic. That includes 7,000 nurses and 2,400 personal support workers, a spokesman said.
The government will introduce "additional measures" to boost capacity, she said, specifically mentioning a backlog of internationally trained health workers waiting for certifications.
"We do know that there is a backlog of individuals waiting for those certifications," she said. "How can we assist, as a province, to make sure that whatever upgrades are needed or whatever assessments happen can happen in an expedited manner.?"
Ontario's opposition parties have criticized Jones for not holding a news conference to publicly address the staffing crisis since she was sworn in as health minister in June, but she says her role has been to meet with organizations and individuals in the sector who have solutions and listen to their feedback.
A main solution that nurses have been advocating for is the repeal of wage restraint legislation known as Bill 124.
But Jones would not discuss it in the interview.
"That is a conversation for another day," she said.
Nursing groups, hospital executives and other health-care professionals and advocates have said that burnout after being on the COVID-19 front lines for more than two years and not being properly compensated have caused people to leave the profession in droves, leading to some hospitals being unable to properly staff emergency departments.
The government has offered nurses a $5,000 "retention bonus," but it is not enough to actually retain nurses, said Cathryn Hoy, president of the Ontario Nurses' Association.
"It is not a wage increase, and that's what they want," she said. "They don't want one-time bonuses."
Banner image: Sylvia Jones, Deputy Premier and Minister of Health takes her oath at the swearing-in ceremony at Queen’s Park in Toronto on June 24, 2022. Ontario's health minister says the province is looking at how to get internationally trained nurses working here as quickly as possible, as a way to address staffing shortages that have led to emergency room closures for hours or even days at a time.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
