New nurses to get big bonus

DENISE RIDEOUT

IQALUIT — To entice nurses to come work in Nunavut, the territorial government is offering them a sweet treat: a $24,000 bonus.

Health Minister Ed Picco hopes the bonus will give Nunavut an edge over other provinces and territories competing for the same small pool of nurses.

Any nurse who agrees to work in Nunavut for three years will get a $6,000 sign-on bonus, an extra $2,000 every three months for two years, and a $2,000 bonus at the end of their second year. In total, the package amounts to $24,000 in addition to their regular salary.

“We were told by nurses that we had to make it better for them to come up here,” Picco said in an interview after his department announced the details of the incentive package.

By offering the bonus, the government is implementing one of the key recommendations of the Nunavut Iluarsaijiit Action Team’s “Nurse Recruitment and Retention Report.” The report, issued last August, looked at ways of attracting nurses to work in the territory’s hospital and health centres.

“There is a nationally and internationally recognized pandemic shortage of nurses in Canada,” Picco said.

The challenge, then, is convincing nurses who are also being sought after by other provinces — or even other countries — to take jobs in Nunavut.

“You’ve got to be competitive. It is a very aggressive marketplace,” the minister said.

Picco said in the past few months the health department offered jobs to about 40 nurses, but only two accepted. The rest chose to go to places offering free housing, trips and other perks.

“Every other jurisdictions in the country had come in with all their own special recruitment initiatives… They’ve got signing bonuses, free or subsidized rent, paid professional development, and even vacation travel assistance,” Picco said.

“So if I’m competing against all those other jurisdictions I need to be a little bit higher than all of them.”

Nunavut often competes for nurses with Nunavik, Labrador, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories.

Picco said the bonus will put Nunavut ahead of the competition.

“We feel now, based on this market labour supplement and the other information we have on the other jurisdictions, it puts Nunavut back at the top for the amount of benefits and wages we offer,” he said.

GN hires Australian nurses

Thirty nurses from the other side of the globe will be coming to work in Nunavut over the next year.

Picco said 15 nurses from Australia are scheduled to arrive in the fall, followed by another 15 after Christmas.

“We’ve found that the nurses we recruited from Australia, especially from the outback regions where they work in isolated areas and small communities, have the same skills that we need in Nunavut,” he said.

Picco said that though the bonus wasn’t in place when the Australians were recruited, they’ll nevertheless receive the extra $24,000.

Answering demand for nurses

The incentive package for nurses may be the answer to some of Nunavut’s health woes.

MLAs, community mayors and local residents have been calling on Picco for the past few years to hire more nurses.

This April, mayors attending the Nunavut Association of Municipalities meeting in Rankin Inlet urged Picco to hire more nurses to staff community health centres.

They also said Picco should offer incentives that encourage nurses to stay in the North longer.

The health minister said the new sign-on bonus will do just that.

“It demonstrates that we are being proactive as a government and we’re not sitting around twiddling our thumbs,” he said.