Apology from ONA President Regarding CBC Interview Comments
SBGHC has received an apology from Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) President Cathryn Hoy regarding comments she made in a CBC interview about the Chesley hospital last week (October 20th).
In the interview, Cathryn referred to Chesley and SBGHC’s CEO refusing to hire casual nurses, but she meant to refer to another hospital and CEO entirely, and not the Chesley hospital.
It is very unfortunate that this mistake has been circulated so widely, and has enflamed an already challenging situation in the Chesley community.
The facts are that:
- SBGHC worked collaboratively with ONA to create a letter of understanding (LOU) on “Consent to Alter the Collective Agreement”. The LOU was signed by SBGHC and ONA on February 16th, 2022 and it now allows the introduction of casual registered nurses to be hired at SBGHC, and provides the relevant language to support this;
- Although the hiring of casual nurses will help our staffing situation, we need core full and part-time nurses to fill the number of shifts that are currently vacant.