Good afternoon and thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for inviting the Canadian Nurses Association, the national and global professional voice of Canadian nursing, to appear today.
My name is Mike Villeneuve and I am speaking to you today from the traditional lands of the Algonquin and Anishinabe people. I'm the chief executive officer of CNA.
Mr. Chair, I have been working in health care for the past 44 years [Technical difficulty—Editor]. I have never seen the gravity of the kinds of [Technical difficulty—Editor]. CNA predicted Canada would be short about 60,000 nurses by 2022. We're a quarter of the way into that now and [Technical difficulty—Editor] shortages are worse than we imagined.
Canada's nearly 450,000 nurses, 91% of whom are women, are the backbone of our health systems. Today, they are completely exhausted and demoralized. We are seeing alarming numbers of them not just leaving their jobs, but even the profession.
Many nurses face working 16-hour shifts, have not been able to take a day off or take a break, or have had their vacations suspended and they face chronic and dangerous understaffing. Rates of severe burnout among health care workers have almost doubled. You heard what Dr. Smart said about the number of people who have planned and attempted suicide. It's 6%. It's alarming.
Vacancies for registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses have increased by over 85%, which is the largest increase of all occupations. Nurses have been sounding the alarm for decades about these problems—long before COVID-19. The issues are not new, but they have been exacerbated by the pandemic.
The factors influencing nurse retention have been studied intensively for 40 years through myriad studies, reports and millions of dollars in research. Nurses have a clear understanding of the problems and we know the solutions needed to stabilize Canada's health workforce crisis.
The challenge is creating and sustaining political will at all levels to implement these tough changes. Canada needs targeted federal funding to help health care systems train, retain, recruit and improve education and working conditions for health care workers. The federal government has an important convenor and coordinator role to play. It needs to work together with provinces and territories on both short- and long-term strategies. Maintaining the status quo cannot be an option.
In the short term, we need retention incentives for nurses and health care workers to stay in their jobs, such as retention bonuses, student debt forgiveness and tax incentives. Additional funding is also needed to help optimize workloads for health care workers. This could include increasing administrative, cleaning and other support staff in nursing settings to unlock more time for care.
In the longer term, CNA echoes the calls for a national health workforce body to collect high-quality data to support a strong, modern pan-Canadian health human resources strategy that includes planning at the provincial, territorial and national levels. CNA also recommends increasing the number of seats in schools of nursing and greater capacity for clinical placements. We recommend expediting the process for recognizing internationally educated nurses and funding for mental health supports for health care workers.
We need emergency and definitive interventions with immediate action and a multi-faceted strategy to address the complex problems in Canada's health workforce. We have to be bold and creative. Strategies that serve to retain a nurse at 25 are not going to be the same as what will retain a nurse at 65. What attracts people to stay in home care may be very different from critical care or palliative care. We need to be nimble, marshal the evidence and develop a tool box of strategies that can be adapted across care settings and across career stages.
Finally, as the proportion of older adults in Canada rises, we will need a strong care economy and workforce to support our aging population into the future.
In conclusion, we applaud the committee's decision to conduct this important and timely study. I'd be happy to try to answer any questions.
Thank you, Chair.