Ontario health care unions call on Ford to take 'immediate steps, like yesterday' to solve staffing shortages

Ontario nurses are past their breaking point, burnt out and left believing there's no hope for change — that's the message from the Ontario Nurses' Association, which is calling on the Ford government to take "immediate steps" to keep the province's nurses on board and bring in new ones.

"Immediate steps, like yesterday," said Cathryn Hoy, president of the Ontario Nurses' Association.

Those steps start with the immediate repeal of wage restraint legislation Bill 124 and restoring collective bargaining, Hoy said. 

"Many Canadian nurses, believe it or not, made out their wills before going to work as the pandemic began," she said. 

"They did that because they feared they would die but they went in anyway."

The association was one of three health care unions — the ONA, CUPE and the Service Employees International Union, which together represent some 120,000 health care workers across the province — sounding the alarm over staffing shortages in Ontario's hospitals. Their call comes as health care staff are said to be leaving the field in droves, leaving some hospitals unable to properly staff their emergency departments.

According to the Ontario Nurses' Association, about 25 hospitals in Ontario were forced to scale back sections of their facilities on the long weekend due to staff shortages.

As concerns have mounted, Ontario's health minister surfaced this week saying the province is looking at how to get internationally trained nurses working here as quickly as possible.

As for Bill 124, Sylvia Jones told The Canadian Press: "that is a conversation for another day."

Michael Hurley, president of CUPE's Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, told reporters Friday that Ontario has the fewest hospital staff to population ratio of any province in Canada. Successive Ontario governments have underfunded hospitals and closed 25,000 acute care beds over the last 30 years, Hurley said.

Based on the recent provincial budget, Hurley said the Financial Accountability Office projects the Ford government will "significantly underfund our hospitals against their real cost for the next five years."

That, he says, means staff shortages will increase as workloads grow and pressures mount.

The unions say they have made many attempts to be heard by the provincial government, but their concerns have so far gone unaddressed.

As a result, they issued a five-point plan that they say must be implemented immediately to begin to remedy health care pressures. They include: