Quebec offers bonuses to bolster nursing retention, recruitment, gives 'unfavourable hours' to nurses from private agencies

In a bid to reverse Quebec's chronic nursing shortage, Premier Francois Legault announced his government will offer between $12,000 and $18,000 in bonuses to full-time nurses in the public system or who shift to full-time work, in what he called "a small revolution." Currently, Quebec faces a shortage of around 4,300 full-time nurses.

The financial incentive is a band-aid solution for the structural issues that have left the province's healthcare system "almost dysfunctional." Forty percent of nurses work part-time, and many are going or have already left the public system to work for private placement agencies offering better hours.

Quebec's government is actively negotiating with provincial unions to strike a collective agreement to "rectify ... many of the problems causing the nursing shortage, including enforced overtime and unpredictable scheduling."

Bonus pay is a stop-gap to retain and recruit nurses and reduce stress on the healthcare system, anticipating a possible increase in cases. The bonuses are expected to cost roughly $1 billion to cover the approximately 75,000 nursing staff eligible and registered to work in the province.

"We are going to reorganize nurses' work, something they have been asking for for a long time, by offering them predictable schedules that will allow work-family balance," said Legault. "To give them a reasonable family life and personal life, and above all to stop asking them to do mandatory overtime."

However, nursing unions said Thursday's announcement came as a disappointment because the government failed to eliminate mandatory overtime immediately.

"Mandatory overtime is the No. 1 reason nurses are leaving the system," said Roberto Bomba, executive officer for the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ), the province's largest union representing nurses and other frontline healthcare staff. "But the government is failing to quickly put in all these mechanisms that we have negotiated that would solve the issues."

The government also plans to hire 3,000 new administrative assistants to tackle the paperwork nurses say can take upwards of 30 percent of their shifts to complete. The added workload and uptick exacerbated the issues in COVID-19 sick leaves among hospital staff.

"We understand that the essential thing for nurses was not the money — it's the quality of life," said Legault. "Our objective is to make the public network the best place for nurses to work. Not the private placement agencies."

Employees from private agencies will mainly be offered unfavourable time slots, such as evenings, nights and weekends, to entice nurses to join public healthcare.