Thank you and good afternoon. My name is Doris Grinspun and I'm the executive director of the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario, RNAO.
RNAO is the professional organization for registered nurses who practise in all roles and sectors across Ontario. Nurses want this budget to help build a healthier society, and I'm proud to bring our message to you today. Our presentation addresses three issues: maintaining fiscal capacity, ensuring access to nursing care, and creating a national anti-poverty strategy.
The federal government plays a key role in addressing social and environmental determinants of health, particularly through transfer payments to provinces and territories for health care, post-secondary education, social assistance, social services, early childhood development, and child care. The huge shortfall in investment in physical, social, and environmental capacity may be linked in part to the long-term decline in federal program expenditures as a share of the GDP. This, in turn, is related to tax cuts. We have no objection to reducing the deficit over the business cycle. But when deficit fighting is teamed with tax cuts, the inevitable consequence is a reduction in already strained government programs, especially those related to social and environmental determinants of health.
In the interest of health, we urge that the government recover the fiscal capacity to deliver all essential services--social and environmental services--by adopting a more progressive tax system and using revenue sources that encourage environmental and social responsibility, such as green taxes.
We also believe more emphasis must be placed on ensuring access to nursing care. We know that adequate registered nurse staffing is associated with better health outcomes, such as lower mortality. Access to RNs varies across the country. But overall, according to the Canadian Nurses Association, there is a shortfall of almost 11,000 RN full-time equivalents as we speak. The situation is urgent because patient activity is increasing across all sectors. The RN workforce is aging and the RN-to-population ratio is lower than it was in the past. To put it simply, we are producing far too few nursing graduates. If no measures are taken, the CNA, the Canadian Nurses Association, warns that the shortage of RN full-time equivalents will be 60,000 by 2022. That's why we urge the government to earmark conditional transfers to provinces and territories in two areas: $135 million to support nursing education and $250 million to support 10,000 additional full-time RN positions.
The third area on which we want to comment is poverty reduction. Taking action on poverty is literally a matter of life and death. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that those who live in poverty and are socially excluded experience a greater burden of disease and die earlier than those who have better access to economic, social, and political resources. Aboriginal people, recent immigrants, and people living with disabilities are all disproportionately bearing the burden of unacceptable poverty. We just heard about that from our colleagues.
A recession causes more poverty, particularly among the newly unemployed. This recession has been particularly brutal, with full-time employment falling by nearly 400,000 jobs. We are asking for the following. A comprehensive integrated federal plan for poverty elimination that is linked to and supportive of provincial and territorial poverty action plans is urgently needed. It must have targets, indicators, and timelines for transparency and public accountability.
Reform Canada's employment insurance system, EI, by immediately expanding eligibility and improving benefit levels, especially for the most economically vulnerable workers with low wages and dependants. We support you fully on that.
We appreciate the opportunity to speak to the committee, and we look forward to your attention and action in regard to these important health and nursing issues.