By Bring Back Nurses ONT

Ontario hospitals are experiencing critical shortages of Registered Nurses (RNs), Registered Practical Nurses (RPNs), Personal Support Workers (PSWs). We also face compromised healthcare practices, like surgery backlog and delayed treatments, temporary closures of Emergency Room (ER) departments, a lack of doctors, and empty operating rooms. Budget constraints added to the already high vacancy rate, burnout, and low morale.

We are a large group of Ontario nurses who are very concerned about the deepening healthcare crisis. We were terminated from our jobs for not following the mandatory vaccine policies adopted by most hospitals during the pandemic. However, Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto (the largest teaching hospital in Canada and the only level 1 trauma centre outside of the US), while implementing the policy for new hires and visitors, never terminated existing staff for their choices.

We are the same nurses who kept you safe and worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic. You called us heroes and essential workers. Hospital administrators and the public depended on us. All nurses were already following effective protective measures (masks, gowns, gloves, testing) endorsed by Dr. Kieran Moore, Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) in Ontario. But when we chose to continue with non-pharmaceutical ways rather than vaccinate to keep patients safe, we were then considered liabilities and modern day lepers.

We were shocked when hospital administrators threatened us with job loss. Their threat was positioned as a “choice.” However, threatening job loss is not a choice, it is coercion. It is discriminatory, has grave consequences, and falls below standards of informed consent and universally accepted human rights.

After reading several articles regarding the nursing shortage in Ontario, we want to share some relevant information. Mandates were enforced without performing a risk/benefit analysis. They were enforced without consideration of operational impact, understaffing consequences (affecting everyone), and evaluation of the policy’s effectiveness in hospitals. In contrast to Sunnybrook management, who never terminated unvaccinated staff, our employers refused to consider any other viable options—natural immunity, rapid antigen testing, and religious exemptions. Nurses (and other staff) who decided not to be vaccinated lost their jobs.

For many decades, employers have had the upper hand when dealing with employees, which has unfortunately resulted in huge inequalities—erosion of workers’ rights and an imbalance of power.

In August 2021, Dr. Moore implemented Directive 6 for healthcare workers in high risk settings. He approved antigen testing as an accommodation for unvaccinated healthcare workers. He ordered a mandatory vaccine policy, not a mandatory vaccine. In March 2022, he revoked Directive 6, but hospitals chose to disregard this updated change from Ontario’s CMOH and decided to keep the vaccine mandates in place.

The general public is not aware of the thousands of nurses who were either terminated or who took early retirement due to hospitals not rescinding the Covid-19 vaccination policy, even after Dr. Moore lifted Directive 6. For whatever reason, this important information is being covered up. Instead of doing everything in their power to rehire these experienced, qualified nurses, the Ontario Ministry of Health is strongly promoting recruitment of nurses from other countries. These nurses are unfamiliar with Ontario’s healthcare system, and are filling these vacancies at extremely high costs to taxpayers, while qualified Canadian nurses remain unemployed (not unemployable).

The recent arbitration ruling regarding Quinte Health (that includes four Ontario hospitals), stated that the mandatory vaccine policy was reasonable at the time, but that terminating nurses for not complying with the policy was not reasonable, and ordered that the nurses should be reinstated.

In early March 2024, our group contacted Ontario Premier, Doug Ford, Deputy Premier, Health Minister, and MPP, Sylvia Jones, and other MPPs to request their help and to address the issues associated with the mandated Covid-19 vaccinations and the resulting loss of highly qualified and experienced nursing staff. Unfortunately, we only received a confirmation of the receipt of our email and have heard nothing further from them.

We want our jobs back.

As public advocates, we believe that mandating a vaccine for experienced, essential public sector healthcare workers during a health crisis was misguided, unnecessary, and harmful to us all. Instead of following the advice of Dr. Moore, hospital administrators and officials continued to follow the controversial Ontario’s Science Advisory Table (OSAT) advice based on “computer models.” It is a matter of serious concern that hospitals were allowed to put risky mandates in place, and that these untenable and nonsensical measures remain in place.

We have unjustly suffered life-changing losses—employment, stability, income, and the opportunity to work in our profession in Ontario. This situation has also negatively impacted our patients and our families. It is essential to stop this badly-planned, damaging vaccine mandate, which has devastated our healthcare system.

To support us, please contact the Ontario Hospital Association (info@oha.com) and Premier Ford (416-325-1941, premier@ontario.ca), and make your voice heard.

Ontarians need to demand government accountability and transparency on this matter, once and for all.

Follow us on X @BBNursesONT or email bringbacknursesont@gmail.com