The Quebec government has announced it will provide nurses with financial bonuses of up to $18,000 as part of its emergency plan to fix the staffing crisis in the province’s health-care network. 

Bonuses of $15,000 will go to full-time nurses and part-time nurses in the public system who are willing to work full-time, and nurses who have quit will get $12,000 if they come back, Premier François Legault announced Thursday afternoon. 

He said the plan would cost close to $1 billion, but that the government had to offer financial incentives as thousands of exhausted workers fled the system during the pandemic. 

“Nurses have taken