2024 Provincial Election

Nurses know British Columbians value our province’s health-care system. But chronic understaffing has put it under immense strain. This election, vote for a candidate who’s committed to prioritizing health care.

That means...

IMPLEMENTING MINIMUM NURSE-TO-PATIENT RATIOS in all care settings to help ensure patients receive the high-quality, life-saving care they deserve, address the nurse staffing shortage and protect nurses from burnout.

INVESTING IN EFFECTIVE NURSE RETENTION AND RECRUITMENT STRATEGIES to improve working conditions to help us retain highly-skilled nurses currently working in the system and recruit even more to the profession. With nearly 6,000 current vacant positions and an anticipated need for 29,000 new nurses over the next 10 years, there is much work to do to make minimum nurse-to-patient ratios a reality.

REINING IN PUBLIC SPENDING ON PRIVATE AGENCY NURSING and funding the public health-care system. The province’s spending on for-profit staffing agencies to fill staffing gaps has skyrocketed from $8.7 million in 2018-19 to more than $160 million in 2022-23, using nurses who have been driven from the system. This is unsustainable.

PROVIDING SAFE AND HEALTHY WORKPLACES for nurses and all other health-care workers by hiring properly trained security 24/7 and ensuring workplaces are free of verbal and physical violence and abuse. The government must hold health employers accountable for addressing the health and safety risks nurses regularly face on the job.

PROPERLY STAFFING LONG-TERM CARE by prioritizing the establishment of minimum nurse-to-patient ratios in all publicly funded long-term care homes to ensure seniors are provided the care they deserve.

EXPANDING COMMUNITY CARE by investing in high- quality seniors’ care to help take pressure off the acute care system.

MAKING LONG-TERM INVESTMENTS IN MENTAL HEALTH AND SUBSTANCE USE CARE and developing a publicly funded and delivered system of mental health and addiction treatment and recovery services that are regulated, evidence-based, economically and geographically accessible and available when people are looking for it.

ADDRESSING THE DEADLY TOXIC DRUG CRISIS by improving harm reduction measures, expanding mental health treatment and recovery services and ending the criminalization of people who use drugs.

TAKING COORDINATED ACTION ON THE SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH by addressing issues affecting peoples’ health outcomes, including lack of access to health services and affordable housing, income inequality, and the harms associated with systemic discrimination based on race – including Indigenous-specific racism – gender, age, ability and other protected grounds.