Breaking point: B.C. nurses prepare for potential job action

As more than 50,000 nurses voted 98 percent in favor of strike action, the healthcare crisis continues to fester according to a release from the Conservative Party of British Columbia.

Nurse at BC Children's Hospital with Bensyn and Luna during a long stay during 2025.

Six months of negotiations have yet to produce any real or meaningful offer, and the B.C nurses have made it clear they are ready to fight for better working conditions within our province.

“Nurses are being pushed to their breaking point,” said MLA Anna Kindy, Critic for Health. "They are being assaulted on the job, exposed to open drug use in their workplaces, and expected to absorb caseloads no one person should carry. These are the people keeping our hospitals running, and they deserve a government that takes their concerns seriously.”

The shortage in nurses within our province has been a problem for quite some time, with 4,500 vacant nurse positions currently across the province which has greatly increased the strain on a workforce that is already stretched thin according to a release from the Conservative Party of British Columbia.

“This vote is a defining moment,” said BC Nurses’ Union President and Chair of the Nurses’ Bargaining Association (NBA) provincial bargaining committee Adriane Gear in a media release. “Nurses across British Columbia are demanding the respect, safety and fair contract they deserve.”

While nurses have been raising these concerns for years, this vote is the direct culmination of those concerns going unheard. “What nurses are asking for is long overdue,” said Kindy. “They want safe nurse-to-patient ratios, proper compensation, and workplaces free from violence. Addressing those conditions is not just a matter of fairness. It is the only real path to retaining the nurses B.C. already has. Recruitment alone cannot solve a retention crisis.”

This eye-opening vote gives the nurses legal authority to take job action, which will undoubtedly increase the strain on an already failing healthcare system if it comes to that.

“Nurses do not want to be in this position,” says Gear. “Yet they are prepared to fight for the future of nursing and for a health-care system that is safe, sustainable and able to retain the nurses that patients rely on. Nurses need a contract that respects the critical role they play in keeping this health-care system running,” Gear says. “This is about securing the best possible contract that will retain and recruit the nurses the system needs now and in the future. Now is not the time to take away from nurses.”

The vote result gives the NBA provincial bargaining committee added leverage at the bargaining table and means nurses are now in a legal position to take job action if negotiations fail to move forward.

“This government has had every opportunity to address what is driving nurses away from the profession, and it has not,” Kindy said. “Nurses do not feel safe at work, and they are being stretched beyond what any person can reasonably sustain. This government needs to get serious at the bargaining table before British Columbians lose even more access to care they are already struggling to find.”