Legislative Report

NDP Record Abysmal on Nurse Retention Issue

The NDP government earned front page headlines back in October, when it came up with a plan to pay nurses a bonus, if they agreed to work in northern locations or hard-to-fill positions. At the time, the Saskatchewan Party said it didn’t make much sense to shuffle nurses from one place to another – that would only create shortages in different places. As well, the only way to solve this problem was to fill the roughly six hundred nursing vacancies, created by 15 years of mismanagement and neglect on the part of a tired and worn-out NDP government.

Now, it appears the NDP’s much ballyhooed nursing retention program has hit the skids.

Shuffling nurses from one place to another apparently has created more problems than it solved. Perhaps someone should have thought of that before the program was launched.

The NDP is still looking to save money by creating part time positions instead of enticing nursing students with offers of full time work. The NDP is still forcing health districts to use overtime, instead of filling vacancies. Last year the Regina and Saskatoon regional health authorities spent $12 million on overtime! As this latest collapse shows, no amount of tinkering or short-term fixing will actually solve the problem. What’s needed is a complete patient first audit of the health system—something that we in the Saskatchewan Party have called for and will continue to call for.

Past Legislative Reports