NDP Plan for Better Health Care: More Nurses, Safer Workplaces, No Cuts or Private Agencies

TORONTO— Today, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh unveiled a national strategy to tackle the nursing shortage by hiring more nurses, improving working conditions, and ending the wasteful use of costly private agencies—because public health care only works when we protect the people who deliver it.

“Health care is at the heart of what makes Canada, Canada. But right now, people are waiting too long, nurses are burning out, and care is slipping away. While Pierre Poilievre wants to gut it and Mark Carney is planning $43 billion in cuts, New Democrats are standing with nurses, patients, and families—to protect the care we count on, hold the powerful to account, and defend what holds this country together.”

Right now, more than 32,000 nursing jobs are sitting vacant—nearly half of them unfilled for months. Emergency rooms are closing. Seniors are going without care. Communities are being forced to do more with less and nurses and pushed to the breaking point.

Singh announced the NDP’s Health Care Workforce Strategy—a plan to retain and hire nurses, improve working conditions, and restore dignity to the frontlines of public health care.

The NDP plan will:

• Make patients safer by requiring provinces to meet nurse-to-patient ratios, guarantee fair wages, and improve working conditions,
• Tie new federal health transfers to real hiring and retention strategies that deliver results for patients and workers.
• End the $1.5 billion drain to private nursing agencies and reinvest in strong public health care teams—especially in rural, remote, and Indigenous communities.
• Incentivize provinces to fast-track accreditation for internationally educated nurses so they can get to work faster.
• Actively recruit qualified nurses from the U.S. and fast-track their credentials so they can help fill urgent gaps in Canada’s public health care system—especially in underserved communities.
• Pay student nurses during clinical training so students are not doing unpaid work
• Recognize more than 780,000 nurses and Personal Support Workers with a $5,000 Canadian Health Care Workers Tax Credit.

After years of underfunding and short-staffing, health care workers are being pushed past their limits. Singh made it clear: that’s exactly what the NDP is fighting to stop.

“Every time there’s a crisis, it’s working people who get told to tighten their belts—while those at the top walk away untouched,” said Singh. “We’ve shown that when New Democrats have power, we deliver: dental care, pharmacare, real help for families. Your vote is how we hold the powerful to account—and make sure the people who build this country aren’t the ones left paying the price.”