The Manitoba NDP government and the opposition Progressive Conservatives are pointing the finger at each other over the recruitment of nurses from overseas.
In 2023, the previous PC government promised to recruit 300 health-care workers from the Philippines to help bolster staffing in the province’s struggling health-care system.
During question period Wednesday, Progressive Conservative health critic Kathleen Cook said the NDP government is blocking nurses from coming to the province.
“They were willing to do whatever it took to come to Manitoba and work here. Still, they were denied because the NDP is putting politics ahead of the need of patients,” Cook said during question period.
“Why would the NDP slam the door on these healthcare workers? Is it because they consider them to be the wrong kind of immigrant?”
In July, the previous PC government announced 300 health-care workers in the Philippines had accepted job offers in Manitoba. Now, Cook says, many have had those job offers abruptly withdrawn and accused the NDP of halting funding on the program.
“The cut to the Philippine nurse program was identified back in December when the government identified, what they called, $5.8 million in savings from this program,” Cook told reporters after question period Wednesday.
But Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara says that isn’t true and the PCs failed to meet their own target of recruiting 300 healthcare workers.
“This is a program that was initiated by the previous PC government that, by their own standards, has wildly underperformed, fallen way short of their own targets,” Asagwara said.
The minister said the previous PC government spent millions of dollars on the recruitment initiative and to date, only 51 health-care workers have been recruited — 11 of whom are nurses, they said.
“That’s a pretty significant cost for the number of nurses we got,” Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson told Global News.
“So it makes you wonder if those dollars hadn’t been better spent investing in retention of nurses here in Manitoba.”
Jackson says they believe a number of job offers were withdrawn after the nurses failed to pass their assessments. She says that’s something that should have been done before job offers were handed out.
“My question is, were those nurses given the assessment, did they have their English proficiency done while they were there, and was that part of them coming to Canada?,” Jackson said.
“Because if they’re not prepared to come and we haven’t put anything out to support them prior to them getting here, then we’re setting them up to fail.”
In an emailed statement to Global News, a spokesperson for Shared Health confirmed that 51 people from the Philippines had been hired, with 11 working as nurses and 40 working as healthcare aides. The statement also noted that candidates are require to complete a clinical competency assessment that identifies gaps in nursing knowledge and skills that need to be addressed through education, and some candidates did not meet the requirements.
“Education gaps that cannot be addressed through a bridging program mean(s) 17 candidates have been notified that they are not currently able to complete the requirements of their conditional offer of employment,” the statement read.