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The official Opposition wants to see Saskatchewan invest more in nurses within the province, rather than paying to bring in workers from beyond its borders.
On Wednesday morning, the Saskatchewan NDP’s Keith Jorgenson said travel nurses are significantly more expensive than hiring nurses who already live and want to work in the province.
“I was a teacher for 20 years. If you can imagine for a second that we paid substitute teachers 10 times what we paid classroom teachers, it’d probably be pretty hard to hire classroom teachers,” Jorgenson told reporters.
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“This is the situation we see playing out every single day here in Saskatchewan.”
Jorgenson said the province is “overutilizing” travel nurses and “wasting millions and millions of taxpayers’ dollars in the process.”
While acknowledging the important part travel nurses play in the health-care system when it comes to covering short-term positions and staffing needs, Jorgenson said it could take a toll on Saskatchewan’s nurses to be working alongside travel nurses being paid significantly more to do comparable work.
“We have travel nurses working in communities alongside nurses in the same facilities that are forced to work on part-time, short-term contracts, and these nurses are struggling to survive,” Jorgenson said, calling that concept “incompetence.”
The MLA said the issue stems from a lack of planning and the high cost of travel nurses.
“Often, we have people who are willing to fill those jobs, and they’re complaining that they can’t get a full-time contract, and so I think it’s about, you know, some good service delivery and good value for the money.”
Jorgenson said it’s a significant ask for a nurse to uproot their life to move hundreds of kilometres to a new community, away from home, for part-time work that isn’t guaranteed long-term.
He said the province spent almost $100 million last year on travel nurses and estimated the monthly cost of bringing a travel nurse to Saskatchewan for a month to be just shy of $30,000.
“That money could have gone into full-time nurses in those communities, providing reliable care for the people in those communities.”
An ambulance arrives at St. Paul’s Hospital on 20th Street in Saskatoon on Oct. 14, 2026. (Libby Gray/650/CKOM)
Jorgenson said his comments are not to blame nurses or travel nurses, but rather to focus on government spending.
“This government, this premier, this minister are driving healthcare here in Saskatchewan into the ground. They’re wasting your money, money that could be spent to reduce wait times, to improve service delivery,” Jorgenson said.
“It’s unacceptable.”
Responding to a request for comment on the NDP’s concerns, the Saskatchewan Health Authority said it “values its employees who deliver high-quality healthcare services to the people of Saskatchewan every day.”
The health authority said it uses contracted nursing services “only when there are prolonged vacancies at a facility or program that cannot be filled by current staff.”
“This is a last resort short-term measure taken to ensure health care services are not interrupted,” an emailed statement from the health authority, shared Wednesday, read.
The statement said the health authority is committed to “phasing out reliance on contract staff,” and reported that contract nurse spending was reduced by $44.8 million from the 2023-24 fiscal year to 2025-26.
It also reported that vacancies in hard-to-recruit permanent positions have decreased by 49 per cent. Nursing vacancies have also fallen by 68 per cent, including a reduction of 79 per cent in rural and northern communities.
In its work through the Health Human Resources Action Plan and the Patients First Health Care Plan, the SHA said it is committed, in partnership with the provincial government, to adding more full-time positions, increasing training seats, improving recruitment efforts and reducing barriers for internationally educated nurses to strengthen health care in Saskatchewan.
