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CHEERS AND JEERS: Cheers to Summerside for renovating its ball fields

Jeers to the P.E.I. government for spending more than $40 million on travel nurses last year. Health P.E.I. has been using travel nurses as a way of keeping the health-care system running, and the latest provincial budget forecasts spending $8.4 million on them this year. Given how much the province spent on travel nurses in recent years, that number seems overly optimistic. The rising costs of using travel nurses has also become an issue in the other Maritime provinces. So much so that Health Minister Cory Deagle recently said the neighbouring provinces have been discussing the creation of a Maritime unit of nurses to draw from instead of paying private companies. Neighbouring nursing unions quickly poured cold water on the idea, including New Brunswick Nurses’ Union president Paula Doucet who said she thinks the logistics would be “a complete nightmare.” Whatever the solution is, the province needs to find it because overspending by the amount seen last year is not sustainable.

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