Poor use of B.C. taxpayer dollars or necessary health-care expense? Critics slam secrecy and soaring costs
CTV
A day after CTV News was first to report British Columbia’s health authorities have more than doubled their payments to for-profit staffing agencies, there’s growing outrage at the taxpayer dollars going to a “parasitic industry.”
A day after CTV News was first to report British Columbia’s health authorities have more than doubled their payments to for-profit staffing agencies, there’s growing outrage at the taxpayer dollars going to a “parasitic industry.”
After months of follow-up emails and requests, the Ministry of Health finally provided updated numbers outlining how much B.C.’s health authorities paid the agencies to provide nurses in hospitals, care homes, and other public facilities: $163 million in the 2022-23 fiscal year, compared to $76.7 million the year before.
“I think it's quite shameful, honestly, that the Ministry of Health and the health authorities have attempted to hide these details from the public,” said Camille Currie, co-founder of the advocacy group BC Healthcare Matters. “What we're witnessing is a public system that is driving workers into privatization.”
The BC Nurses' Union had anticipated growth in the diversion of public dollars, and is concerned to see the latest figures.
“There are a lot of taxpayer dollars being spent on privatized nursing services and that is taxpayer dollars that could be better spent improving working conditions for nurses and care conditions for patients,” said BCNU president, Adriane Gear.
She also pointed out nurses are frustrated to routinely work with far fewer staff than is safe or required to provide quality care, and that forced overtime, rejected requests for time off, and pressure to work even more hours have pushed many nurses out of the over-burdened public sector.
“Nurses can no longer continue to work in an area where there should be 10 nurses and there's only five, and you can do that for a shift or two, but that has become the norm and nurses are burning out,” Gear said.
