Local nursing pipeline cut

Vancouver Community College has paused its first-year Bachelor of Science in Nursing intake for fall 2026, leaving no new students to start the program until 2027. (vcc.ca) VCC said it is “adjusting program sizes” because of the financial hit from lower international-student enrolment and the cost of running programs. The college told CityNews the nursing degree will continue for second- and third-year students, and that its advanced-entry spring 2026 intake for licensed practical nurses is still going ahead. (vancouver.citynews.ca) The college’s nursing page now lists the next start date for the Bachelor of Science in Nursing as September 2027. VCC says the full-time degree runs eight terms over three years and includes clinical placements in areas such as maternity, pediatrics, mental health and acute medical-surgical care. (vcc.ca) The pause lands as British Columbia is trying to add nurses to hospitals, not fewer. Adriane Gear, president of the British Columbia Nurses’ Union, told CityNews there are 4,500 permanent nursing vacancies in the province and said B.C. will need 33,000 new nurses by 2035. (vancouver.citynews.ca) The province has also tied patient care standards to staffing levels. In March 2024, British Columbia announced minimum nurse-to-patient ratios for six acute-care settings and paired that policy with a $237 million package for retention, recruitment and return-to-practice efforts. (news.gov.bc.ca) Federal Job Bank still rates the outlook for registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses in British Columbia as “good” for 2024 to 2026. Its latest profile says about 48,300 people work in those occupations in the province and says shortages remain acute, especially outside major urban centres. (jobbank.gc.ca) The province’s 2025 Labour Market Outlook covers the years 2025 through 2035 and is meant to guide education and hiring decisions. That makes a cancelled intake more than a campus scheduling change: it removes one cohort from a training system governments and employers are using to plan the next decade of health-care staffing. (workbc.ca) British Columbia is still offering cash incentives to fill hard-to-staff nursing jobs while it tries to build the workforce. The British Columbia Nurses’ Union said in March 2026 that provincial recruitment and retention incentives had been extended again, this time to Sept. 30, 2026. (bcnu.org) For now, VCC says the nursing program is paused rather than closed. But with the next listed intake pushed to September 2027, the local pipeline of new registered-nurse students will be smaller for at least one year. (vcc.ca)