This bill creates a new provincial licensing regime for temporary nursing agencies in Ontario, defined to include traditional temp help agencies and digital platforms or marketplaces that offer temporary nursing assignments. Agencies must apply to a Registrar, demonstrate credentialling and monitoring systems and submit a compliance plan; licences last two years, are non‑transferable and carry detailed terms and conditions covering pricing, recruitment, assignment rules and disclosure.
The measure matters because it regulates an expanding segment of the health labour market that operates across employers and digital platforms. The bill aims to curb price spikes, protect nurses from restrictive clauses and poaching, and require public transparency about agency finances and contracts — but it also imposes operational and disclosure burdens on agencies and raises enforcement and market‑supply trade‑offs for health providers and regulators.
At a Glance
What It Does
The Act requires all operators of temporary nursing agencies — including platform or marketplace operators — to hold a licence issued by a Registrar who meets specified qualifications. Applications must include a nurse credentialling and monitoring plan and a compliance plan; licences are conditioned on predictable fees, a prohibition on unconscionable pricing, limits on assignments and certain disclosure obligations.
Who It Affects
Applies to traditional temporary help agencies that supply nurses and to digital platforms or apps that match nurses to short‑term assignments. Also affects hospitals, long‑term care homes and other clients who use agency nurses, College of Nurses members, and the provincial regulator that will appoint a Registrar and inspectors.
Why It Matters
This is a sector‑specific regulatory regime that brings platform intermediaries into health workforce licensing, sets new public‑disclosure norms for private agencies, and places explicit limits on pricing and recruitment practices — potentially reshaping how temporary nursing supply is provided and priced across the province.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill builds a standalone licensing system for temporary nursing agencies. It defines agencies broadly to capture both agencies as defined under the Employment Standards Act and any organisation operating a platform, app or marketplace that offers temporary nursing assignments.
The Minister must appoint a Registrar and the statute sets minimum qualifications for that role focused on health profession regulation, clinical performance evaluation and quality improvement.
A business must hold a licence to operate as a temporary nursing agency; licences are non‑transferable and expire after two years. To obtain or renew a licence an applicant must file an application that includes two operational documents: a nurse credentialling and monitoring plan and a compliance plan.
The credentialling plan must show how the agency will ensure nurses are in good standing with their College, adequately educated for assigned work, maintain required liability protection, have infection prevention training, and have no relevant convictions or findings of professional misconduct. The compliance plan must explain how the agency will meet the detailed licence terms, with special attention to recruiting practices.Every licence carries a set of prescribed terms and conditions.
These include establishing consistent, predictable fees and a ban on dynamic pricing tied to short‑term staffing demand (with a narrow exception for pre‑announced holiday increases), a prohibition on charging clients unconscionable prices, limits on assigning agency employees back to a client if they are or were employed by that client within six months, a prohibition on recruiting nurses away from existing positions, and a ban on restrictive employment practices such as non‑competes. Licensees must disclose employee and contractor nurse lists on request, publish client contracts publicly, and disclose annual expenses, revenues and profits within 90 days after fiscal year end.For compliance and enforcement, the Registrar may appoint inspectors (powers and procedures to be set in regulation), conduct inspections, and receive complaints.
The Registrar may suspend or revoke licences for non‑compliance. The Act creates criminal penalties on conviction: fines up to $50,000 for individuals, $100,000 for corporations, and a specific fine up to $5,000 for contravening the provision that bars nurses from knowingly taking work from an unlicensed agency.
The Minister may make regulations to fill in appointment, inspection and complaint procedures and to prescribe other required matters. The Act would come into force six months after Royal Assent.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The Registrar must have experience in health profession regulation, evaluating clinical performance against standards, and health care quality improvement.
The licence application must include a credentialling and monitoring plan that confirms nurses are in good standing with the College of Nurses, adequately educated for the work, hold required professional liability protection, have infection‑prevention training, and have no prescribed convictions or professional‑misconduct findings.
Licences last two years, are non‑transferable, and require agencies to set consistent, predictable fees — the bill bans dynamic pricing tied to short‑term demand except for holiday increases pre‑announced at least one month in advance.
Licensees must make client contracts public and publish annual expenses, revenues and profits within 90 days after the end of each fiscal year.
The Act creates fines on conviction up to $50,000 for individuals and $100,000 for corporations, and a specific penalty up to $5,000 for the offence tied to subsection 3(3) (nurses knowingly receiving work from an unlicensed agency).
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Definitions that sweep in platforms and set nurse standards
Section 1 sets the scope. It defines a temporary nursing agency broadly to include both employment agencies under the Employment Standards Act and platform or marketplace operators that offer assignments to nurses. It also anchors who counts as a 'nurse' to membership in the College of Nurses of Ontario and introduces the concept of prescribed offences or professional‑misconduct findings that can disqualify nurses under the credentialling plan. Practically, this means app operators and digital intermediaries are subject to the same licensing rules as brick‑and‑mortar agencies.
Registrar appointment and minimum qualifications
The Minister appoints a Registrar and the Act prescribes three qualification areas: health‑care profession regulation, clinical performance evaluation, and quality improvement. By statutorily tying the Registrar to these competencies the bill steers the role toward someone with sector‑specific regulatory and clinical oversight experience rather than a general administrator, which will shape inspection criteria, credential evaluation and enforcement priorities.
Mandatory licensing and application mechanics
Sections 3–5 make operating without a licence an offence and require agencies to publish copies of their licence publicly; nurses and clients are barred from knowingly taking work from or engaging unlicensed agencies. The application process requires detailed operational documents: an explicit credentialling and monitoring plan and a compliance plan focused on recruiting and licence terms. The Registrar must confirm application completeness and be satisfied both plans meet statutory requirements before issuing or renewing a licence, placing operational discretion with the Registrar on acceptability of processes and safeguards.
Revocation, inspectors, inspections and licence term
The Registrar may suspend or revoke licences for non‑compliance; the Registrar may also appoint inspectors (subject to regulation) who will perform inspections and handle complaints. Licences expire two years after issuance or renewal and are explicitly not transferable. From a compliance perspective, agencies should anticipate periodic inspections, renewal scrutiny and an administrative apparatus that can remove market access for non‑compliance.
Terms and conditions — pricing, recruitment, disclosure and employment rules
Section 10 is the operational heart: it requires predictable fee schedules, prohibits dynamic pricing tied to short‑term staffing demand (with a limited holiday exception), bans unconscionable pricing, restricts assigning nurses back to recent employers, forbids recruiting nurses away from current positions, disallows restrictive clauses like non‑competes, requires disclosure of nurse lists on request, and mandates public availability of client contracts and annual financials within 90 days. These conditions create both compliance checklists and potential commercial constraints — particularly where agencies rely on surge pricing or confidentiality of contracts.
Offences, penalties and regulatory detail
Section 11 sets fines (individuals up to $50,000; corporations up to $100,000) and a specific $5,000 cap for the subsection penalizing nurses or others who knowingly engage with an unlicensed agency. Section 12 delegates detailed operational rules — inspector powers, inspection procedures and complaint handling — to regulations, meaning many of the day‑to‑day enforcement mechanics will depend on regulatory drafting rather than the statute itself.
Commencement and short title
The Act would come into force six months after Royal Assent and is titled the Temporary Nursing Agency Licensing and Regulation Act, 2023. That six‑month window is where the Registrar appointment, rule‑making and industry preparations would need to occur if this regime were implemented.
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Explore this topic in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Nurses who work through agencies: Gain protections against non‑compete clauses, limits on poaching and disclosure rules that make agency status transparent — improving bargaining position and reducing opaque recruitment practices.
- Clients (hospitals, long‑term care homes, community health providers): Receive predictable fee schedules, protection from sudden price spikes and access to public information about agency contracts and finances to inform procurement.
- Patients and the public: Indirect benefit from credentialling and monitoring plans that aim to ensure agency‑supplied nurses meet College standards, infection‑control training and liability coverage, improving care quality and accountability.
Who Bears the Cost
- Temporary nursing agencies and platform operators: Face new administrative burdens to prepare credentialling and compliance plans, ongoing disclosure obligations (contracts and financials), restrictions on pricing strategies and potential fines and licence revocation for non‑compliance.
- Digital platform businesses: May need to redesign matching algorithms and pricing models to avoid 'dynamic pricing' and to implement credential checks and monitoring features, increasing development and operational costs.
- Provincial regulator/Ministry of Health: Must recruit and fund a qualified Registrar, set regulatory details, appoint and train inspectors, and handle complaints and enforcement — creating an administrative and budgetary obligation not funded in the text.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is protecting nurses, clients and public health systems from predatory pricing, exploitation and opaque agency practices while preserving the flexibility and supply dynamics that temporary staffing — including fast, platform‑driven matches — provides; stronger consumer and worker protections reduce market risk but can also raise costs, discourage entry, and tighten supply precisely when systems most need rapid staffing flexibility.
The bill confronts several practical implementation questions that the statute delegates to regulation or leaves ambiguous. 'Dynamic pricing' is banned except for pre‑announced holiday increases, but the statute does not define the boundary between acceptable price variation and prohibited dynamic pricing; enforcement will require guidance and measurement protocols. Likewise, the 'unconscionable price' standard is defined only by example, which imports case‑by‑case judgment and may lead to litigation or regulatory uncertainty about acceptable margins during genuine staffing crises.
The disclosure requirements — public contracts and publishing expenses, revenues and profits within 90 days — promote transparency but create commercial confidentiality and privacy concerns, especially for small agencies or platforms that compete on price. Mandatory publication of lists of nurses on request triggers data‑protection and labour‑market questions: how to balance privacy and safety, and how to treat nurses who work both as agency staff and as employees of clients.
Finally, several provisions restrict recruitment and re‑assignment to recent employers; while intended to prevent client destabilization and poaching, these rules could reduce available supply during surge periods and complicate shift staffing for providers that rely on rapid redeployment.
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