Nurses in Canada make up Canada's largest group of health professionals with more than 400,000 working from coast to coast to coast. Nurses are critical to Canada's health care system and the Government of Canada is committed to ensuring Canadians have access to nursing services when and where they need them. This requires the removal of barriers, such as gaps in data, to make workforce planning easier.
Nurses are regulated by bodies that, through provincial and territorial legislation, are responsible for our health and safety by ensuring nurses meet certain standards. There are currently 25 nurse regulators across Canada. The inability to uniquely identify nurses and their licensing histories makes workforce planning across the country a challenge.
As part of the Government of Canada's plan to address this challenge and improve health workforce planning, today the Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Health, announced over $2.5 million over three years to the Canadian Council for Practical Nurse Regulators (CCPNR) for the project Nursys in Canada, a national nurse database to allow the exchange of information about a nurse's licensing history. Data is fundamental to a high-performing health care system and this database will improve registration processes and enable more consistent collection of data, as each nurse across the country will have a unique identifier.
This project is being initiated following the successful pilot adaptation of the Nursys in Canada database in collaboration with regulators in British Columbia (BC) and Ontario. Data from both BC and Ontario nurses has been successfully uploaded into the database, and since this is a national project, nursing regulators in all other provinces and territories will be encouraged to follow.
This announcement was made as Minister Duclos joined Canada's Chief Nursing Officer, Dr. Leigh Chapman, and nurses from around the world, at the International Council of Nurses (ICN) Congress in Montreal. Minister Duclos addressed ICN Congress participants, reiterating the critical role nurses play in supporting health care systems as well as providing the health services Canadians need, when and where they need them.
This is why Budget 2023 outlined the Working Together Plan to invest close to $200 billion to improve health care for Canadians, which includes a focus on efforts to further support our health workforce through retention, recruitment, planning, and recognition of credentials of those trained in other jurisdictions and abroad.
The Government of Canada will continue to work with provinces, territories, and other key stakeholders, to identify solutions to longstanding health workforce challenges so that nurses and other health workers across Canada can continue their critical work of keeping Canadians healthy and safe.
