There is currently a massive shortage of doctors and nurses in Canada, and the government has played a big part in this, so the government must now fix this problem by providing—at least temporarily—free post-secondary training for healthcare workers.
In a recent market outlook published by the Government of Canada, it was estimated that there will be a shortfall of 36,500 registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses by 2028. The government has failed to provide adequate funding for years, and it’s finally catching up to us.
In Victoria, over 100,000 people are without a permanent doctor; that number is upwards of 1,000,000 across the province. This is tragic, but it can be fixed without introducing crushing amounts of debt in the process.
I would propose a pilot project starting with healthcare services, where students could start apprenticeship programs. This would provide those with lower socio-economic status a chance to obtain certification in nursing and address the projected shortfalls. Not everyone can afford to attend full-time studies and pay the fees. Apprenticeship programs solve this.
Apprenticeship training for nurses is not entirely new. In fact, the BC Care Providers Association suggested an apprenticeship program in 2019 in an attempt to address the shortage of healthcare workers.
There should also be fully subsidized post-secondary education for doctors, who regularly report school debt between $100,000 and $200,000.
Critics question the financial viability of fully subsidized post-secondary education, and rightfully so. But the cost of becoming a doctor is prohibitive. As consumer price indexes and inflation continue to rise, it will become even harder to entice students to take on such massive debt.
The BC government has started initiatives in the healthcare industry that are creating quite a buzz, recently creating 602 new seats within Nursing programs. Even still, this is a drop in the bucket when compared with a projected shortfall of 36,500 workers.
There are ways to get funding, even if they may require a temporary step back. For example, if we were to pause the green initiative and increase fossil-fuel production, invest in local refinement, and ship high-quality earth resources, the government could dump that income into healthcare training, retention, and equipment. Higher educated people drive innovative technologies that could then replace fossil fuels responsibly.
According to industry reports, most individuals are leaving healthcare due to burnout and low pay and benefits. Since we cannot readily attract healthcare workers—and when we do, we don’t fully recognize them—we must train them without making them pay for it. Unfortunately, as it stands, we’re only pooling from those with the economic means of attending post-secondary education, which may never be enough to get us out of the crisis that we’re in.