After all the financial efforts made by François Legault and his Health Minister Christian Dubé over the past three years, the health and social welfare sector now has fewer employees than in January 2020, just before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In fact, Statistics Canada counted a total of 603,200 employees in the key health and social services sector last January, compared to 609,200 in January 2020, or 6,000 fewer employees than three years ago.
This shows how hard the labor shortage is hitting the industry.
According to the latest quarterly data, Statistics Quebec had 48,897 job vacancies listed in the third quarter of last year for Nursing Professionals, Health Care Professionals (doctors, etc.), Technical Health Workers (e.g.: Nursing Assistants), Health Service Support Personnel (e.g. Nursing Assistants), etc.
Nevertheless…
They have not skimped on the costs of defending François Legault and Christian Dubé over the past three years.
The Legault administration will have spent a total of $57.5 billion on health and social care in the current fiscal year 2022-2023 (ending March 31).
That’s around $13 billion more than in fiscal year 2019/20.
Even if we spend 28% more than we did three years ago, we now find ourselves with a weakened healthcare system due to a serious shortage of workers.
Seriously to the point where, I would like to reiterate, there are currently 6,000 fewer workers in the industry while the need has increased to a large number of citizens due to population growth, aging and the long-term effects of COVID-19.
The solution ?
The Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ), which brings together 80,000 members of nurses, nursing assistants, respiratory therapists and clinical perfusionists, is urging the Legault government to inject more money into the healthcare network.
In the brief submitted by the union organization as part of finance minister Eric Girard’s budget consultations, the FIC joins the recommendation of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which calls on its member countries to contribute the equivalent of 0.7% invest % of their gross domestic product (GDP) in improving the working conditions of healthcare workers.
Based on a 2023 GDP of $574 billion (according to Quebec Treasury Department projections), the FIQ recommends that the Legault government allocate an additional $4 billion to improve two key elements:
- “The Cost of Having Sufficient Number of Health and Nursing Workers”
- “The Cost of Improving the Competitiveness of Salaries of Key Categories of Health Professionals”
Given the seriousness of the situation, it is obvious that François Legault and Christian Dubé need to spend more money recruiting and retaining professionals in our public health and social services network.
