Canada's push to 'poach' nurses from abroad fuels fears of shortages in developing countries

As Canada and other wealthy countries scramble to hire nurses from overseas, there are growing concerns that the exodus of health-care workers from developing countries will push their stretched medical systems closer to a crisis point.

The federal government and provinces are spending millions of dollars trying to entice foreign-trained nurses to Canada — with overseas hiring campaigns, priority immigration pathways and monetary grants to individual nurses. 

But Canada has strong competition from Europe, the U.S. and other countries that are also mounting aggressive recruitment campaigns touting high wages and immigration opportunities: health workers can get cheap U.K. visas, while the Australian state of Victoria offers "relocation packages" for foreign nurses, equivalent to as much as $11,670 Cdn.

"We've seen a significant uptick in international recruitment of nurses from the beginning of this year, overwhelmingly driven by probably six or seven high-income countries," said Howard Catton, chief executive officer of the International Council of Nurses (ICN), naming Canada as one of those countries.

"[They're] in a rush to get a quick fix to their own nursing shortage, because they haven't invested enough in educating their own nurses, and because the nurses that they have, in many cases, are exhausted and burnt out."

Early in the pandemic, a joint report from the ICN and World Health Organization (WHO) warned of rich countries raiding developing countries' nursing workforces to make up for their own failure to train and retain the health-care staff they need.

At the time, the Americas had about 83 nurses per 10,000 people, while in Africa, there were fewer than nine nurses per 10,000 people, according to the report. 

Two and a half years and one global pandemic later, Catton says the situation has only worsened for lower-income countries struggling to hold onto their health-care workers as wealthy countries ramp up recruitment drives.

These countries are very concerned they'll lose experienced nurses with specialist skills — like intensive care nurses or specialist cancer nurses, he told CBC News in an interview from Geneva.

"You might only lose one or two specialist nurses, but that can mean that the service no longer exists."

In Canada, internationally educated health workers make up about nine per cent of nurses and 26 per cent of physicians. Over the past year, provinces have rolled out a hodge-podge of incentives meant to recruit more, including targeted immigration streams.

Newfoundland and Labrador has set up a recruitment desk in India, Saskatchewan will hold a health-care job fair in the Philippines later this month, and British Columbia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Manitoba all offer thousands of dollars to cover licensing for international nurses and other costs, which can include childcare, transportation and living expenses.

Those kinds of incentives are hard for nurses in developing countries to turn down.

"If we are pushing out more of our [nursing] professionals, then very soon … we will not have enough of them to take care of ourselves," says Perpetual Ofori-Ampofo, president of the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association.