A former insider alleges a staffing agency charges clients three to four times what its nurses and PSWs take home

Ontario's NDP is raising alarms about the high profits being made by a health-care staffing agency it says has recruited hundreds of Ontario nurses and personal support workers and sent them to work in Eastern Canada.

A former insider at a health-care staffing agency went to Ontario's New Democrats, who brought their concerns to question period this week.

"Fly-by-night staffing agencies are hurting our hospitals. They are hurting the patients in our hospitals. They exist for one reason: to make money for the investor. They take health-care workers from our public system and sell them back at huge profits," said NDP health critic France Gélinas on Thursday. "How big, Speaker? A whistle-blower showed us: $154-million profit off the backs of 500 Ontario health-care workers. Let that sink in; this is sickening."

Joel Harden, the NDP MPP for Ottawa Centre, said the company was recruiting "burned out nurses and PSWs" from Ontario's health-care system and offering them "double the salaries they normally earn" to work for the company, Canadian Health Labs, which he said plans to recruit as many as 5,000 health-care workers.

That whistleblower, who used to work for Canadian Health Labs, also spoke with The Trillium.

They described a business model where the company recruits nurses and PSWs — about 70 per cent of them from Ontario — on a contract basis and sends them to...

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