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Thank you, Howard, for those kind words. Thank you to Pamela, President of the International Council of Nurses, for having me here today.

I want to acknowledge and thank Her Royal Highness Princess Muna al-Hussein of Jordan for her presence as our guest of honour and for her support and advocacy of nursing around the world.

I also want to acknowledge that we are on the traditional territory of the Kanyen’kehà:ka Nation, and I recognize the Indigenous nurses who are here today, who are working across the country on this path of reconciliation that we are walking together – a path that brings enormous challenges for all Canadians in the future we are building together. Thank you for being here, thank you for your strength, and thank you for shaping Canada every day in an extraordinary manner. Thank you for everything you bring every day as we walk the path of reconciliation together. Thank you for your leadership in communities right across the country.

It’s a great pleasure to be here with you for the International Council of Nurses Congress.

The International Council of Nurses represents 28 million nurses worldwide and we’re very happy that you’ve chosen my hometown of Montréal to hold your 2023 Congress.

I’m sure you’ve all enjoyed yourselves, but you’re all here this week to share your knowledge and ideas with each other. You bring with you your unique experiences from all over the world in this consequential time while we are still climbing our way out of a devastating pandemic with ongoing armed conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere, as Howard pointed out earlier.

But also, I know you heard from an extraordinary Ukrainian nurse leader. And I can tell you in my visit to Ukraine over the past year, the strength, the resilience, but also the commitment of Ukrainians who are serving their country and all of us by defending democracy is exceptional. And I thank you for including Ukraine in all your deliberations and your reflections today.

But with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, with climate change, putting people’s health at risk, the work of the International Council of Nurses is more important than ever. So, thank you.

Today, I want to talk about the Canadian context, some of the challenges we’re facing and what we’re doing to address them and how nurses play an essential role within our public universal health care system.

But first, I want to begin by thanking you for your hard work, your courage, and your focus on service. You’ve been through some extremely difficult years during the pandemic, and the system is still putting a great deal of pressure on you. It takes a lot of dedication to work shifts that are often longer than 12 hours, including evenings and nights. When emergency rooms are overwhelmed, which is nearly all the time these days, it’s sometimes hard to take a break to eat your lunch. You work a demanding job, and we’re lucky to have you. You are indispensable to the health care system.

Here in Canada and around the world, nurses are the backbone of our health care systems. You form a collaborative team with other health professionals. You are tireless advocates for patients. You have great communication skills and you know how to adapt to different situations. You help people, but also their families cope with illness, and you use your holistic knowledge and skills to promote the health and well-being, not just of individuals, but of entire communities.

During the pandemic, we spend a lot of time telling you that you were heroes because you are true heroes. But let’s be honest. Nice compliments don’t pay the rent. They don’t give you any more autonomy or prevent you from burning out.

Our government understands that better conditions of work lead to better conditions of care.

Now, some of you abroad might already know this, but here in Canada, the administration of health care is a provincial jurisdiction. We fully respect that. But there are still things that the federal government can and should do to support workers and patients. For example, we need to make sure that the voices of nurses are heard in Ottawa, by the federal government.

This is why we put in place the Coalition for Action for Health Workers that gives advice to help address your challenges. Of course, that’s why we named Leigh Chapman as our new Chief Nursing Officer for Canada.

As a registered nurse herself, and with her front-line experience, Dr. Chapman provides strategic advice, including on workforce planning, long-term care, home care, palliative care, mental health, substance use, and scope of practice. This is a very important role and we’re grateful to have her on board. Thank you, Leigh, for all that you do.

Last winter, I had the opportunity to chat with nursing students at Algonquin College in Ottawa. I met Adi, who was concerned about the mass exodus of experienced nurses. She was concerned for their patients, but also because it’s difficult to set up mentorship for graduates without experienced nurses on the floor.

This year, to support and improve our universal health care system here in Canada, we announced historic investments of around $200 billion. But as we can all agree, the challenge is not just to keep spending money on our system, it’s to make sure we deliver tangible results. And that’s precisely why we’re working in partnership with the provinces and territories and Indigenous communities to deliver those results. We’re focusing on four pillars: primary care, health care workers, mental health, and information and data.

So, going back to Adi’s question, how will these investments help nurses? First, the funding will enable more people to access primary care, meaning family doctors or nurse practitioners. Family health teams know their patients best. They are the point of entry into the system. With more effective primary care, we will prevent overwhelming emergency rooms and put less pressure on nurses.

Secondly, we must be making sure that nurses are not stretched so thin that your only choice is to leave this profession that you chose and love.

I have heard too many heartbreaking stories over the past years of nurses who still love what they do but have to leave because they feel they are not doing their patients justice. They are stretched too thin and just too overburdened with too many things, and they can’t serve them. That’s got to stop.

So, we need to send you reinforcements by improving recruitment and retention strategies, and we need more training opportunities and support for students. To support this, and as a different measure from our $200 billion investment, our government increased and expanded loan forgiveness for nurses working in rural and remote communities. As a result, nurses may qualify for up to $30,000 on loan forgiveness.

Our third pillar is mental health. As a society, we’ve worked hard to reduce stigma when it comes to talking about mental health. This means that more people now have the courage to ask for help. That’s a good start, but it takes a system that is capable of providing that help and referring people to the right health care providers before they have to go to the emergency room.

And we need to address the overdose crisis by providing, yes, safer supply, but also health and social services, including substance use treatment. Now, we all know there are those who have been attacking safe and supervised consumption services where many nurses work. But our government knows that health and social needs have grown far more complex, especially owing to the opioid crisis and its relationship with homelessness.

And so, providing needed health care supports is also more complex. Nurses are often on the front lines of saving lives every day. And you know better than anyone that there are no simplistic solutions, just serious work grounded in science and compassion.

And the fourth pillar of federal investments in health care is better information and data. As a nurse, if you have someone coming in, you should be able to know what tests they’ve had recently, what medications they’re on, what specialists they’ve seen, and so on.

Right now, in Canada we don’t have a medical system that’s able to provide this information properly across the country. So, these things are going to change and it’s going to lead to better outcomes for everyone. Information is fundamental to a high-performing health care system. It’s true for patients, but it’s also true for the workforce itself.

On Monday, the Minister of Health, Jean-Yves Duclos, announced new funding to expand and develop nurses in Canada. This national nurse database allows the exchange of information about nurses licensing history. This is a tangible example of how data can improve our health care system. And I know many of you have been waiting for that announcement for a long time.

Nurses form the largest group of health professionals across the country, with more than 400,000 members. But we know that with an aging population and nurses retiring, we’re going to need all the talent we can get. So we’re putting measures in place to alleviate labour shortages through immigration.

Last year, we introduced changes to allow the selection of immigrants based on key attributes that support Canada’s priorities. With the "Express Entry" program, invitations can now be issued so that applicants with specific skills can apply for permanent residence. Last week, we invited 500 health care workers to apply, and today, in the second round, we’re inviting another 1,500.

And when foreign-trained health care workers arrive in Canada, we have to make sure they can get to work faster. This is why we’re working with the provinces and territories to speed up foreign credential recognition.

Just last week we sent a letter to regulators across the country to remind them that we cannot allow foreign trained health workers and their professional education skills and experience to go untapped. And we’re already seeing the results. Provinces and regulators are following our lead to speed up credential recognition for internationally trained professionals. So, stay strong and know that reinforcements are coming.

Now, Canadians are rightly proud of their universal public health care system. In Canada, you don’t have to choose between a needed surgery or paying your mortgage or losing your home. But we have to continue making sure this system delivers for people, including those who serve at the heart of the system. And this requires constant efforts.

Like I said earlier, many of you in this room today come from all over the world. So more than ever, we must learn from one another. We must be able to say, “Look, this works well over there. How can we learn from that experience and integrate it into our systems?” And I see no better advocates than nurses to help us improve our systems, because you are at the heart of it all. No one has the finger on the pulse of health care systems as much as you do.

Together, with events like this one, you continue to demonstrate that nurses are a force for the health of our country and throughout the world. Thank you for the invitation, and above all, thank you for your work!

The work you do day in and day out, keeping patients, keeping people at the centre of everything we need to focus on, the service, the commitment, the dedication, the love for others that you exemplify every single day here in Canada and around the world leaves us all humbled, leaves us all deeply, deeply in your debt, leaves us committed to standing with you and making sure you can continue to do the extraordinary work you do here at home and right around the world.

Thank you very much, dear friends!