May 12, 2025
MPP Gélinas: When will the Conservatives finally listen to Nurses?
QUEEN’S PARK – This morning during Question Period, NDP Shadow Minister of Health France Gélinas (Nickel Belt) pressed the Conservative Health Minister Sylvia Jones.
“Nurses want a workload that a human being can handle. They want a safe workplace, but violence in health care is directly link to unmanageable workload.
Will the Minister finally listen to nurses and adopt a nursing to patient ratio?”
Unhappy with the current state of healthcare, nurses have been advocating for reform for an extensive period. The harsh working conditions from understaffing have caused many nurses to leave the healthcare system. To fix this, MPP Gélinas is re-introducing her bill entitled Patient-to-Nurse Ratios for Hospitals Act, 2025, aimed at mandating a minimum nurse-to-patient ratio our hospitals.
“Speaker, so many nurses are burned out and leaving their profession because they cannot provide quality care with their assigned workload. Does the minister think that a patient in the ICU on a ventilator does not need one on one? Or is it the palliative care patients at the end of their lives who do not need 1 on 4? Other jurisdictions have proven that nursing ratios help recruit and retain nurses as well as encourage experience nurses to come back to nursing.
Will the Minister support my bill to legislate the nurse-to-patient ratios?” The Minister did not answer the question.
