B.C. health minister says the province is 'crushing' Alberta on nursing recruiting, retention

British Columbia’s health minister took time during a recent city council meeting to emphasize the province’s success in retaining and recruiting nurses compared to Alberta.

Speaking at a City of Williams Lake council meeting earlier this week, Health Minister Adrian Dix said the province isn’t just “beating Alberta” when it comes to recruiting nurses.

“We are crushing Alberta in terms of the recruitment of nurses,” Dix said via video call during the meeting.

"Last year we added 6,000 nurses to our province.”

B.C. lifted its vaccine mandate for all health-care workers earlier this month. Dix wanted to dispel any "myths" that the mandate forced workers away from working in his province.

"B.C. is really demonstrating respect for nurses," said Danielle Larivee, first vice president for United Nurses of Alberta.

"They're listening to what they need in order to feel happier with their work."

Larivee said that includes higher wages and nurse-patient ratio.

She added that Alberta previously would top the wage scale for nurses, but now sits third in the country.

"Movement of staff out of Alberta Health Services (AHS) to the new entity of Recovery Alberta was stressful to many, mental health nurses who actually chose to, surprise, go to B.C."

Alberta's Medical Association said Dix's comments send a strong message.

"That's got to be a massive warning sign for our province in our government," said president Dr. Paul Parks.

"We can't do our job without nurses. Physicians absolutely rely on nurses and all of our allied health care workers."

Parks added that there is a severe staffing shortage.

"In any of the main emergency departments in the province, we're regularly functioning with only 80 per cent of our nursing staffing that we need," he said.

The Government of Alberta says recruiting health-care staff is an important priority for the province.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Health Minister Adriana LaGrange's office says it’s working on it closely with AHS, including targeted headhunting.

"We have almost 32,000 (registered nurses) working at AHS (July 2024), which is almost 4,000 more than we had in 2019 (December 2019), as we have increased programs and services, such as performing more surgeries, dialysis care, and cardiac care," the statement reads.

"AHS also has almost 9,400 (licensed practical nurses) working at AHS (April 2023), which is 1,500 more than we had in 2019 (December 2019)."

But Parks said that is not enough to keep up with a health-care system already showing major cracks.

"We had over 200,000 new Albertans last year, and we predicted another 200,000," said Parks.

"If you estimate in the roughly half-a-million new Albertans in two years, I'll tell you, a thousand new nurses a year is not going to cut it."