Veteran mediator Vince Ready to step in to try to end B.C. nurses’ dispute

PRINCE GEORGE – Two mediators have been appointed to help settle the British Columbia nurses’ dispute but that won’t stop the nurses from escalating their job action. 

Adriane Gear, president of the BC Nurses’ Union, said Friday that she welcomes the appointment of Vince Ready and Amanda Rogers as special mediators to work with the parties.

“But we are going to continue with our job action, at least in this moment,” Gear said. “That is the decision we have made. I think we can always change our mind, but there isn’t enough here for us not to be applying the pressure that we are applying.” 

The mediators will have 10 days to help try to reach a settlement and if that doesn’t happen, they can issue recommendations to the government on ending the dispute. 

Ready has a long history in the province of troubleshooting some of the most fractious disputes, and Gear said she will recommend to the union’s board to proceed with mediation.

But it’s unclear when mediation will start, and how successful it might end up being, Gear said. 

The union will lean into mediation and do its very best to reach some kind of resolution, she said. 

“But I’m not sure how it is going to go without any ability for us to look at solutions outside of mandate.”

Issues facing nurses such as working conditions, understaffing and safety require measures that go beyond money, she noted. 

“So, when you talk about a mandate that is simply around money, and this is your general wage increase, it doesn’t go far enough to address some of those systemic issues that nurses face each and every day,” she said.

Gear said the issues facing nurses have been years in the making and won’t disappear overnight with a simple waving of a wand. 

The union implemented targeted action last week with a ban on non-nursing duties and non-essential overtime. 

While many of the 60,000 unionized nurses are covered under essential-service agreements, those not on the job have been picketing in front of care centres in Surrey and Vancouver. 

The union announced on Thursday that it would step up job action with an expansion of pickets to additional care centres across the province.

Gear, who was speaking from the picket line at Surrey Memorial Hospital on Friday, said the union will put up a picket line at Victoria General Hospital on Sunday.

“Then on Monday, we will initiate a picket line at Nanaimo Regional Hospital, and then on Tuesday, we are initiating lines at Royal Jubilee Hospital (in Victoria), and also the South Island Surgical Centre,” she said. 

British Columbia has anywhere between 4,500 to 6,000 permanent vacancies at any given time, a shortage that is impacting the safety of nurses, she said. 

“We are chronically understaffed, and in many situations, it is unsafe.” 

Government, she added, won’t be able to fill those jobs unless it makes the profession itself more attractive. 

“It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg sort of situation here,” she said. “Unless, you are going to address the workplace violence, unless you are going to take concrete steps to recognize and retain the nurses you already have in the system, unless you are going to come up with a plan to educate many, many more young people in this province to go into this profession, what is the path forward?”

Premier David Eby first announced a mediator would be stepping into the dispute at an unrelated news conference in Prince George.

“I don’t want to prejudge any conversations that will take place at the table,” Eby said. “I know we have a shared goal of ensuring nurses are respected and appreciated in our system, and are able to return to work fully to support patients in British Columbia, and that will be our goal at the table.”

The labour dispute has drawn attention to nursing issues, such as working conditions and safety, among others, he said. 

The premier said that while government has taken steps to try to mitigate some of those pressures, such as nurse-to-patient ratios and security, there are still issues that need to be addressed. 

“Nurses are the glue that hold an incredibly strained system together, and they deserve to be recognized for that,” he said.

Gear said Eby’s comments show that he is tracking these issues at least on a high level, but government must show accountability in dealing with the systemic issues. 

“So, my members feel burnt,” she said. “They feel like they have settled other agreements, where there have been commitments, and yet our workload continues to get worse,” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 10, 2026.