Province tops health-care hiring goal

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This article was published 08/02/2025 (301 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba government has added 1,255 net-new health-care workers to facilities across the province, meeting and exceeding a campaign promise to hire 1,000 new people, said Premier Wab Kinew and Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara.

Kinew and Asagwara made the announcement during a health system update in Winnipeg on Friday morning.

From April to December 2024, the government hired 138 physicians, 481 nurses, 386 health-care aides and 176 allied health workers across the province.

“We made an ambitious promise to Manitobans,” said Kinew, adding, “this is good for patients, this is good for nurses, allied health, physicians, support workers, health-care aides. This is good for Manitoba.”

There were 30 new hires in the Prairie Mountain Health (PMH) region, the second-lowest number only ahead of CancerCare Manitoba, which received 28. Northern Health region had 46 new health-care workers. The largest number of net-new hires was within the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority with 491, followed by Shared Health with 239, Southern Health with 239 and 101 for Interlake-Eastern RHA, according to data provided to the Sun by Manitoba Health.

It is not known how the 30 new hires for PMH breaks down in terms of the type of health-care worker.

Not all the new hires are new professionals as Asgwara told the Sun that provincewide, there has been an increase in nurses coming back to work.

“We’ve had over 60 recently retired nurses return to practise,” said Asagwara. “And we’re actively working to make the process even easier. We want to get as many recently retired nurses as possible back on the front lines.

“And with the provincial nurse float pool, I can tell you that about 219 nurses have left the private for-profit sector and have returned to the public system.”

In addition to nurses coming back, Kinew told the Sun there has also been an increase in international medical graduates and, in a nod to Asagwara, he noted that they came up with an innovative way to recruit.

“Every single person who graduates from a health-care program in Manitoba gets an offer letter on the day of their graduation,” Kinew said. “And I think that just making sure that everyone knows, please, please, please, we want you to work at the bedside here in Manitoba, I think that that’s one other way that we show our appreciation. And we help to fix the culture in the workplace for people who work in health care,” he said.

Manitoba Government Employees Union (MGEU) president Kyle Ross said that the new hires are a step in the right direction, but cautioned that there is still a lot of work to do to fix the damage done by the previous government.

“I don’t think we’re taking a victory lap anytime soon,” said Ross. “I think there’s a lot of game left to be played, there’s a lot of time left.”

There are currently 200 vacancies in PMH, Southern Health and Interlake-Eastern, Ross said, including health-care aides and allied health workers such as occupational and respiratory therapists.

“The vacancy rate is so high that it’s barely making a dent in what these workers are facing every day,” Ross said. “I struggle to believe that they’ll even notice these hires, because there’s just so many people missing in these areas.”

After the news conference, Manitoba Association of Health Care Workers president Jason Linklater said that while he’s not disputing that the hires have increased, he questioned the validity of some of the numbers.

“I don’t know that they’re at the level that they’re being provided,” Linklater said. “It’s just not reflective of what we see happening on ambulances, in labs, in diagnostic units and emergency rooms.

“I’m happy to hear that things have gotten better in terms of numbers, but certainly, not something that I would say is reflected in service delivery at this point.”

Linklater added that he appreciated hearing the thanks to health-care workers from Kinew and Asagwara, but from an allied health professional’s point of view, he said, “it’s hard to hear that things are getting better when your situation hasn’t changed at all.”

“And that is a hard thing because it doesn’t build trust in relationships when the public is being told things are getting so much better, and the people doing the work haven’t seen the evidence of that yet.

“I’m not saying it’s not coming at some point, but it seems like announcements like this don’t often serve in the best interests of the people doing the work,” he said.

At the end of 2023, Asagwara and Kinew started a listening tour, visiting seven health-care centres and additional facilities to speak to health-care workers.

During Friday’s news conference, Asagwara pointed out that the government has funded 126 institutional safety officers (ISO), after hearing safety and security concerns from staff.

There are already 96 ISOs deployed at various facilities across the province, including 16 at the Brandon Regional Health Centre (BRHC).

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