Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would also like to thank the committee members. I am pleased to appear here before you to discuss issues related to the recruitment and retention of health care professionals at CSC. As my colleague said, we will brief you today on CSC's Recruitment and Retention Strategy, including key challenges and our work to address them.
The recruitment of health professionals is key to meeting our legislated mandate of providing offenders with essential health services according to professional standards. Members may wish to note that our model of service delivery is principally nurse-based, with physician services principally provided on contract.
We are the largest federal employer of psychologists and nurses. We have a complement of about 750 nurses, or approximately 39% of nurses in the federal government, and about 340 or 71% of psychologists in the federal government. Of course, in addition to nurses and psychologists, we have a wide range of other health professionals: pharmacists, social workers, psychiatrists, occupational therapists, and of course contracted physicians.
It is an ongoing priority and challenge to recruit health professionals to the service. In addition to the challenges my colleague Mr. Macaulay has mentioned, the first is the reality of a very competitive national and international market for health professionals. Provincial and territorial health systems, as well as other federal partners, have the same requirements for health professionals, and in some cases they have more attractive compensation packages.
The second issue is the one of social and demographic trends affecting the pool for all health professionals across Canada. Of course, they apply to the service, so we also face the challenges of an aging workforce and staff who are becoming eligible for retirement.
The third issue was mentioned quickly by my colleague: the challenge of providing health services in a correctional setting. Some of the factors include particular challenges responding to the complex physical and mental health needs of offenders or the occasionally stressful working conditions of a penitentiary environment.
Of course, we're working very actively to recruit and retain these critical health staff. Since 2008 we've had a dedicated recruitment and retention strategy for health professionals. It lays the groundwork for a long-term approach. We are beginning to see some impact. According to our latest vacancy figures, we are beginning to make improvements in vacancy rates for health professionals. For example, last year we would have hired 172 new health professionals, including 125 nurses.
We're also striving to become an employer of choice—everything from having many of our health services staff reporting up through a health organizational structure, new training and development, and working toward the accreditation of all our health care units. We are working, of course, to promote the unique challenges of a career in corrections, with brochures that speak to the challenges and opportunities for psychologists, social workers, and nurses. We've recently had articles promoting our special workplace in the Canadian Psychological Association newsletter and one in the Canadian Nurses Association magazine.
We've also been working with our colleagues in the federal health care partnership, both to find students and to retain them through practicums and internships, which of course produce job opportunities for our staff and provide a collaborative opportunity to recruit to the federal government as an employer of choice.
Retention of health care professionals is a key component of the Strategy. To support our efforts in this regard over eight million dollars has been provided annually to support the training and development of nurses both to improve their skills for working in a correctional environment and to keep them current with respect to modern nursing practices.
In addition, psychologists have been provided with dedicated annual funding for their professional development for the last three years.
In summary, we recognize the unique recruitment and retention challenges we have. We're working diligently to reduce our vacancies and of course to retain the excellent health professionals we have. We're committed to focusing our efforts to attract--and retain--qualified employees to careers in the challenging yet rewarding environment of the correctional service.
Thank you.