Canada’s nurses push for federal government to champion health care in pre-budget submission

Silas: Our economy needs the backing of a strong public health care system

August 1, 2025 (Ottawa, ON) – Canada’s nurses unions are urging the federal government to enhance funding for public health care in the government’s 2025 fall budget. The Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions’ (CFNU) pre-budget submission focuses on funding asks that would strengthen access to care and address staffing shortages across the country.

“As our federal government looks to bolster Canada’s nation-building projects, public health care cannot fall off the priority list. Now is not the time for the feds to back down from funding health care programs like pharmacare and the Nursing Retention Toolkit initiatives,” said CFNU President Linda Silas. “Enhancing the federal health transfer payments to provinces and territories would empower governments to implement these life-saving solutions and serve the health needs of everyone living in Canada.”

In its pre-budget submission, the CFNU outlined key recommendations that would help fix the ongoing staffing crisis while maximizing the economic potential of health care:

• Supporting nurse retention by creating a Patient and Worker Safety Charter, investing into the Nursing Retention Toolkit initiatives, eliminating private nursing agencies and expanding the proposed Health Care Workers Hero Tax Credit to include nurses
• Strengthening recruitment efforts by standardizing internationally educated nurses’ registration process across the country, developing national paid preceptorships for nursing students and increasing support for Indigenous nurses and registered psychiatric nurses
• Elevating the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) role to the Assistant Deputy Minister level within Health Canada and creating a Nurse-Patient Ratios National Council that would be led by the CNO
• Ensuring adequate funding to implement the first phase of universal pharmacare with the goal of expanding it to include all essential prescription drugs
• Enhancing federal funding through the Canada Health Transfers to meet health care demands across the country

“Canada’s public health care system is our single biggest industry, employing close to 3 million people, and it’s foundational to our economy. Yet closing ERs and long wait times for care are still making headlines across the country,” Silas said. “Our federal government needs to step up. We have concrete evidence-backed solutions to bring health care out of crisis, but these solutions will only work if there is adequate funding to implement them.”

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The CFNU is Canada’s largest nurses’ organization, representing 250,000 frontline unionized nurses and nursing students in every sector of health care – from home care and LTC to community and acute care – and advocating on key priorities to strengthen public health care across the country.

For more information, please contact Adella Khan, media@nursesunions.ca, 613-807-2942.