I think we're actually at a strange point of opportunity, Mr. Chair, just because of COVID-19.
We've talked about this, as I said, for 20 years or more. We predicted the shortages of 60,000 this year, and here we are.
But COVID has accelerated what would have been a more protracted period of retirements of older nurses. I can tell you, for example, that in my time serving as a patient care manager at Sunnybrook in Toronto in the areas of neuro-ICU and neuro-surgery and so on, you could often find ways to make conditions a little easier for older nurses by reducing their hours and giving them different jobs and so on to keep them longer. We've had this compressed, and they're now saying they're not going to do that any more.
What I would say to the member is that I feel, for the first time in a long time, that people are hearing us. I think the crisis at points of care.... For example, at a Toronto, 905-area hospital that I won't mention, staffing was all set up for next week. This was a couple of months ago. I came in Monday morning and 25% of the nurses were off—25%. So when you become at material risk of not being able to actually run an organization, it gets people's attention.
I'm not giving a very good answer to the member, but I hope that the emergency nature of it now will propel us forward into some actual action, because the solutions aren't new.
Thank you.