{"id":893019,"date":"2026-09-12T13:02:50","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T13:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/893019\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T13:02:50","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T13:02:50","slug":"bruyere-workers-rally-in-bid-to-force-ottawa-hospital-to-reverse-job-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/893019\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruy\u00e8re workers rally in bid to force Ottawa hospital to reverse job cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Workers at Ottawa’s Bruy\u00e8re<\/a> Health are fighting back after the facility announced dozens of job cuts<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Staff at the hospital rallied on Sept. 10 as part of a months-long campaign they hope will convince administration to reverse the decision to cut 55 front-line jobs.<\/p>\n

In February, the hospital announced plans to eliminate nine registered practical nurses and 46 personal support worker positions, which the union said represented 30 per cent of the workers who directly assisted patients.<\/p>\n

Douglas Currier, president of CUPE 4540 and a registered practical nurse of 30 years, said the cuts had directly impacted the quality of care they’re able to provide patients. He said the PSW cuts, in particular, shifted the burden of providing personal care to nurses, who are “already stretched thin due to their own workload issues.”<\/p>\n

“Even before these cuts, it was really tough to get the jobs done that had to be done,” Currier said on Sept. 11.<\/p>\n

“I’ve never seen such a drop in the ability of staff to properly do the job and the job they want to do because there’s just not enough numbers. The whole infrastructure appears to be crumbling.”<\/p>\n

Hundreds of employees attended Thursday’s rally, and the union presented Bruy\u00e8re management with a petition bearing 1,400 signatures of health-care workers, patients and the public at large.<\/p>\n

Hospital management is aware of the petition. In a statement, Bruy\u00e8re Health said it understood staffing adjustments could be concerning, but any cuts wouldn’t change the commitment to “safe, high-quality and compassionate care.”<\/p>\n

“The staffing adjustments currently underway at Bruy\u00e8re Health are related to positions that were added during the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the hospital statement said. “These adjustments reflect the transition from pandemic-era staffing levels and are being made to align with Ministry of Health expectations and staffing models used by similar health-care organizations.”<\/p>\n

Bruy\u00e8re Health is considered Eastern Ontario’s leading health organization specializing in aging, rehabilitation and complex care. It includes Saint-Vincent Hospital, Elisabeth Bruy\u00e8re Hospital, Bruy\u00e8re Health Greystone and family medicine clinics.<\/p>\n

The cuts are part of a broader trend of about 2,000 layoffs in the hospital sector across Ontario, the union said, with nearly 600 of the cuts in Ottawa alone.<\/p>\n

The Ottawa Hospital<\/a> announced earlier this year it would be cutting 400 positions, representing three per cent of its workforce. The majority of those jobs are nurses, including about 200 registered nurses, and other front-line health workers.<\/p>\n

In July, Queensway Carleton Hospital<\/a> announced it would be cutting 101 jobs, including 87 nurses.<\/p>\n

The Royal<\/a>, which operates a long-term care home, also known as Royal Ottawa Place, with 64 beds on the grounds of the Ottawa campus, announced plans to eliminate 15 positions almost exclusively affecting nurses and personal support workers at the long-term care home<\/p>\n

“This is a systemic problem across the Ottawa area,” Currier said.<\/p>\n

Michael Hurley, president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, said the provincial government’s habitual underfunding of the health-care sector was badly hurting communities that relied on local hospitals like Bruy\u00e8re.<\/p>\n

He said the cuts were “going to make the problem so much more acute. The hospitals generally pretend these staff cuts will have very little or no impact on patient care, but they will. The waits will lengthen for services, and quality of the care is going to deteriorate further.”<\/p>\n

The province says it has provided record investments in health care since Premier Doug Ford came into power in 2018, and Hurley said that was true, but it wasn’t enough.<\/p>\n

“It’s true from one perspective that no government has ever spent more dollars on hospitals than the Ford government, but no government has ever spent less per person,” he said.<\/p>\n

Hurley said hospital costs were rising by six per cent annually, but the province had allocated only a 3.3 per cent funding increase for 2026-2027.<\/p>\n

Currier said more money was sorely needed, but the problem was systemic. He described what was happening as a generational dismantling of health care.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been doing this for 31 years. I’ve never seen things this bad,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The crisis we’re facing now is obviously not a global pandemic, but it is no less dangerous, and impactful on the patients. If we don’t work together in that sense, I think this is just going to continue.”<\/p>\n

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