NWT nurses need higher pay, says MLA
A nursing shortage continues in the Northwest Territories and one MLA says the solution is offering higher wages.
Over the past two years, staffing shortages have forced the closure of key health services in the NWT, including several closures of the obstetrics unit in Inuvik.
Noting the country is experiencing a nursing shortage across the board, a spokesperson for Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority [NTHSSA] told NNSL Media that the NWT government filled 340.3 full-time equivalencies out of 360 front-line nursing positions budgeted for in 2024-25.
'Our continuing goal is to have as many of these filled as possible,' said NTHSSA communications director Krystal Pidborochynski. 'The NTHSSA may sometimes use agency nurses to fill gaps to prevent closure of essential services. The number changes depending on need. Currently the NTHSSA is using obstetrics nurses at Stanton Territorial Hospital and Inuvik Regional Hospital to fill gaps, as required.'
Range Lake MLA Kieron Testart said the GNWT needs to start listening to what the College of Nurses (College and Association of Nurses of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut) keeps telling them. The use of agency nurses, he noted, was particularly demoralizing for full-time staff and was pushing nurses away.
'Agency nurses are very well compensated,' he said. 'I think we should join in with other provinces and phase them out by 2026 and work on expanding our pool of locums.
'More importantly, training Indigenous and Northern nurses to stay in the NWT — we should be spending out money on the nurses who live here. We shouldn't be flying in private nurses who criss-cross across the country and get paid sometimes double what our staff are making. That's completely unacceptable.'
Testart added that he's spoken to nurses who have been denied leave simply because there wasn't enough staff on hand to allow them to have time off.
He said since the November 2023 territorial election, he's spoken to numerous nurses contending with low wages, extremely long hours and difficult conditions who simply had to stop working because they were burned out.
'I've seen nurses leave,' he said. 'Not just one, or two or three — but close to a dozen. That's a significant loss to the community.
'They're not being heard. They're not being properly compensated. We're not incentivizing front-line work.'
A regularly updated action plan, similar to what Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston has done since being elected, would help restore confidence in the territorial health authority, he added. Another area he suggested should be changed is how work schedules are handled — in most of the country a special agency oversees schedules, but in the NWT the task falls on nurses to organize themselves.
Testart likened the situation to a supply and demand situation, noting the shortage of nurses simply means individual practitioners are simply worth more.
'When you have a supply shortage, the price goes up,' he said. 'If there's a shortage of nurses, you pay them more — and you find ways to do that.'
May 12–18 is National Nursing Week.
FACT FILE
How NWT nurse wages compare to the rest of Canada
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