Amid an Omicron-driven surge in hospital admissions, the federal NDP has prioritized the issue of healthcare worker burnout. It was among the priorities that NDP MPs discussed at the conclusion of their three-day caucus retreat on January 20th. In a press conference on January 31st, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh juxtaposed his denunciation of all violent and ethnonationalist factions in the trucker protest, with his unequivocal support for frontline health care workers. He applauded “health care workers who have put their lives on the line” and underlined that while they “have worked, so hard, to keep us safe, they are burnt out. They are in pain; they are struggling.”
Canada’s New Democrats have pursued a multi-level approach on this issue. Many provincial NDP leaders have also advocated in favour of improving the labour conditions in their public healthcare systems. In Ontario, for example, the New Democrats called on the Ford government to repeal Bill 124, a bill that limits the annual salary increases of all public sector workers to a less than 1% rate growth. In addition to higher wages, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath recently called for recruitment- and retention-focused labour reforms, including investments in mental health supports. Meanwhile, in September, Alberta’s NDP suggested several incentive programs to address the province’s acute nursing shortage. Their proposals included providing a $12,000 bonus to nurses willing to come out of retirement; offering one-time incentive payments to any nurses who may have otherwise left the workforce; reversing all planned lay-offs; and, supplying all full-time public health nurses with a $15,000 perk. Alberta’s NDP estimated that the cost of these incentive measures would total over $330 million.
On the federal level, the NDP’s policy pathway is far less clear. Canada’s healthcare system is siloed into thirteen provincial and territorial health insurance plans. Section 92(7) of the Constitution Act, 1867, handed the provinces jurisdiction over the establishment and management of hospitals and other health care facilities. As a result, Jagmeet Singh has made general calls to increase the Canada Health Transfer (CHT). Introducing targeted, worker-centric supports would require placing new conditions on the CHT – a policy proposal that the NDP has, and will continue to, avoid assiduously. This reticence is due to the considerable political cost that this would have for the party’s fortunes at the provincial level.
Canada’s distribution of legislative powers has, accordingly, constrained the party into proposing limited concrete initiatives such as fast-tracking credential recognition and loosening immigration procedures for foreign health care workers. These are just stopgap measures, as neither policy would impact domestic labour conditions. In short, the NDP has decided to rally around a social issue that is not under federal jurisdiction.
There are many explanatory factors that might be propelling the NDP’s ineffectual focus on worker burnout — the most devastating of which, of course, is the acute, ongoing crisis in the nation’s overburdened hospitals. On a leadership plane, Mr. Singh’s passion for frontline labour conditions may be a vestige from his personal history in provincial politics (Mr. Singh was the first New Democrat to represent the Peel region in the Parliament of Ontario). Within the broader party, the NDP might have been seduced by burnout’s appearance as an on-brand issue that will galvanize its ranks. It seamlessly intersects the NDP’s signature planks: funding public health care, defending labour rights, and supporting mental health. Advocating strongly on behalf of health care workers experiencing burnout, would, therefore, initially resemble a strategic course of action – one that is in perfect alignment with the party’s brand.
As hospitals continue to contend with increased admission rates, it is inevitable that Canada’s major parties will re-focus on the CHT. However, when it comes to worker burnout among health care providers, the NDP is spotlighting an issue without being able to propose a targeted, federal solution.
