After firing thousands who refused the vaccine, the BC government is spending over 12 million dollars to fast-track internationally-trained nurses.
According to a news release, BC is “offering approximately $9 million in bursaries to help with assessment fees, which is expected to benefit approximately 1,500 IENs in the first year.”
Due to the shortage, BC nurses are reportedly exhausted, working double and triple shifts, while thousands of unfilled shifts remain.
“We need more nurses now. We need more nurses in five years,” said Health Minister Adrian Dix.
“Internationally educated nurses play a vital role in addressing the current demand we’re seeing in our health-care system,” he continued.
Ironically, the “current demand” is of the government’s own doing.
As reported by True North, BC has sacked more health care workers for not accepting the government’s coercive ultimatum than any other province. In November, 3,325 health care workers were reportedly put on unpaid leave for refusing the vaccine.
In addition to an expedited assessment process, the foreign-trained nurses will be eligible for bursaries of up to $16,000 each to help them pay their way through the required training upgrades. An additional 2 million dollars will be spent on recruitment.
The province aims to hire an additional 26,000 nurses by 2031.
As for unvaccinated local nurses, the government is leaving them unpaid, despite disturbing trends that suggest the vaccine doesn’t stop infection.
On the province’s official COVID reporting website, the infection rate between vaccinated and unvaccinated persons is conspicuously left out. This could be because, in other provinces such as Ontario, the rate of infection among vaccinated is three times higher than the unvaccinated rate as of April 20, 2022.
