The Globe and Mail

Throughout the Covid pandemic, many Canadian hospitals found themselves facing a critical shortage of nurses. Enter private for-profit agencies offering temporary staffing by trained nurses, many of whom had been recruited from the public system in other provinces. When the Globe and Mail’s Tu Thanh Ha, Kelly Grant and Stephanie Chambers investigated contracts given to one Ontario-based nursing agency by New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador, they discovered that this staffing relief came at a heavy cost to taxpayers. The provinces were paying the company as much as $300 an hour for each nurse – six times the rate that nurses in the public system earned. The agency also billed the provinces for other questionable expenses, including meal allowances that were not passed on to the nurses. In response to the Globe’s reporting, the auditors general of both provinces launched investigations into the contracts; Newfoundland overhauled its dealings with private nurse-staffing agencies, tightening the rules for hourly rates and expense claims, and abolishing meal allowances; and New Brunswick introduced legislation to cancel its contract with the company, which it called “unfair to taxpayers,” and pledged to work toward reducing its reliance on temporary health-care workers.