Manitoba’s newly elected premier, Wab Kinew, has stated in interviews that the people of his province voted for health care when they cast their ballots. He identified the shortage of health-care professionals and related problems as the most important issue his province, and in fact, the entire country faces, and he vowed to do what he can to correct it.
People in Ontario wish him luck. Perhaps Kinew and his government will indeed find ways to remove those “closed, due to lack of staff” signs from emergency department doors.
From an Ontario vantage point, it seems more likely that Manitoba will become effective at competing for health-care professionals. Kinew has stated he plans on channeling a much more realistic amount of money (i.e., more) into health care compared to what was spent by the government he and his people are replacing. This means there is another player in the national picture, going after the same people Ontario and other provinces want to recruit.
However, Kinew has also expressed a willingness to work with others. Perhaps if provincial and federal governments – and municipalities small and large – worked together, answers might be found. The present adversarial system has had an abysmal record when it comes to solving the health-care crisis.
While health care is a provincial responsibility, municipalities have been involved in bidding wars with each other for years to lure doctors to their communities. The bait includes everything from golf club memberships to jobs for spouses. New clinics have been built for the purpose of creating more appealing workspaces.
Although nurses work on a different basis from doctors, the topic of offering similar enticements has been raised with increasing frequency.
It will take more than a bit of bait – even very nice bait – to make up for a couple of decades of nurses – both RNs and RPNs not being able to get full-time positions and having to work at two and sometimes three jobs to earn full-time wages; of layoffs every time the government in power decided to play “lean and mean” and freeze hospital budgets while the cost of running hospitals rose; of expecting fewer hospital and long-term care staff to look after more and sicker patients.
Perhaps Kinew will persuade his fellow premiers and their federal and municipal partners that a bit of respect goes a long way. The part-time work, repeated layoffs and increasingly heavy workload persuaded a whole generation of health-care professionals – people with post-secondary degrees and the equivalent – that their work was not valued. Without question, it was essential, but at the same time, not valued. No other occupation, or rather, no occupation where the majority of members are male, has been so treated.
Ontario’s controversial Bill 124, now overturned, added to the discontent. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses and other health-care professionals were literally risking their lives every time they went to work. Unlike other occupations on the front lines fighting the pandemic, nurses were held to a one per cent wage increase, not even keeping up with inflation.
The lack of respect took a new and frightening turn when anti-mask, anti-vax protesters took to attacking anyone in scrubs trying to enter a hospital.
It will take more than gift baskets to counter years of lack of respect, although certain amenities – like time to actually enjoy coffee and lunch breaks, and the opportunity to practice their profession and care for patients properly – would undoubtedly be welcome.
Kinew touched on the reality that solving the health-care crisis will take effort and co-operation among the various levels of government.
There is a role for members of the public, too. We can vote for candidates who make a functioning health-care system a priority. We can demand and show respect for those who work in that same health-care system – everything from insisting on fair wages and working conditions, to putting on a mask without complaint during flu and COVID season when entering a health-care facility. Even small gestures of support count more than we realize.
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Pauline Kerr is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter with Midwestern Newspapers. She can be reached at pkerr@midwesternnewspapers.com.
