Empty promises?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/09/2011 (5539 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One of the biggest problems facing voters in a provincial election is the fact that a lot of numbers get thrown around by parties as they lay out their platforms and attack those of other parties.

As a result, it’s sometimes difficult to separate fact from fiction — case in point, the competing health-care platforms of the New Democrats and the Progressive Conservatives.

Here’s a bit of a recap, just to keep us all on the same page.

The NDP would spend $74 million to recruit 2,000 new nurses over the next four years and add 100 new nurse training seats in Manitoba universities and colleges. They also plan to hire and pay for 200 more doctors to work in Manitoba, at a further cost of $77.3 million.

As well, NDP Leader Greg Selinger has promised to spend $24 million over the next four years to train more doctors, nurses, paramedics, technologists and other frontline health-care staff, which includes a plan to create 22 more medical residencies including 16 for family medicine and six for specialties.

For their part, the Progressive Conservatives have taken an unfair brow-beating from the NDP as Selinger continues to assert that the Tories axed 1,000 nurses during the Gary Filmon years. This argument is true, but it fails to explain that provinces across the country were cutting health spending at the time due to cuts in federal transfer payments.

Perhaps as a way to overcompensate for the continued NDP attack, the Tories have promised to add 2,165 new health-care workers over six years, including 1,700 nurses, 200 doctors, 40 phyisician assistants, 75 nurse practitioners, 25 mental health and addictions counsellors and 75 other health professionals at a cost of $118 million per year.

Not surprisingly, the NDP says the Conservative numbers don’t add up. As the Winnipeg Free Press reports, the NDP says the cost of hiring 1,700 more nurses alone would cost $125.8 million. But that number is based on the assumption that all the nurses would work full-time and be paid a salary of $74,000 per year.

First of all, that assumption is just plain wrong, as a nurse’s salary range changes depending on type of nursing job. In the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre or the Brandon Regional Health Centre — as of April 1, 2012 — a Nurse II position will make $64,383 per year, based on the most recent collective agreement at 2,015 annual hours worked. But if they are a weekend worker, that Nurse II makes $74,041 based on the same number of hours. A regular Nurse IV will make $69,123 and a weekend Nurse IV takes in $79,491.

Then there’s the fact that a large number of nurses do not work full-time, and instead prefer part-time work. Of the 64 nursing positions currently open on the Brandon Regional Health Authority job posting website, 29 are part-time or casual positions.

The fact that the NDP has wrestled control of this message from its opponents is largely due to the fact that the Tories have not stated where the majority of these nurses would be stationed, or whether they would be full-time or part-time positions.

At the same time, the NDP has played games with some of the province’s nursing statistics. Last year, for example, the party claimed to have increased the number of nurses in this province from 14,092 in 2000 to 16,624 by 2009. But that report was undercut by Registered Nurse Canada (registerednursecanada.com), which said that while there was a net gain in the number of nurses in the system in Manitoba, the nursing shortage in the province continued, and the job vacancy rate had actually increased.

The vacancy rate for 2008 for all positions including health-care aides was listed at 8.4 per cent, whereas in 2009 it was 9.9 per cent. The Manitoba Nurses Union suggested in 2010 that the province’s inability to retain nursing grads is at the root of the nursing shortage, as 25 per cent of the nurses who graduated in the province left to fill other jobs in Canada.

The Tories and the NDP can promise all the new nurses they like. But until they address out-migration of nursing students, the promises they make look a little empty.