Another round of job cuts is coming to the North Bay Regional Health Centre, according to two unions that represent workers at the hospital. Registered nurses, personal support workers and clerical staff are being let go, CTV News has learned, as the hospital faces a multi-million-dollar budget deficit. The cuts and the climbing deficit are hurting employee morale, said Mike Turgeon, CUPE Local 139 president. “They’re just good and mad. They’re outraged. They’re furious,” Turgeon said. “The voicemails that they’re leaving me -- they’re not yelling at me. They’re just angry. They’re in disbelief.” In an email to CTV News, hospital president and CEO Paul Heinrich said that staffing changes would impact 36 positions, including “some in patient care areas.” “Eleven of these are vacant positions and 14 new positions will be added,” Heinrich wrote. “These changes come from two places: adjustments to the mix of health-care providers on our units and looking at how we can run our services as efficiently as possible.’ Turgeon said CUPE received notice of 26 job eliminations and that at the same time, the hospital is adding 12 new jobs, a net loss of 14 positions. Most of the staff affected are PSWs and clerical staff --13 full-time and 13 part-time positions. “Our PSWs shoulder the rest of the burden of caring for those patients,” Turgeon said. “That’s the feeding, the changing, toileting, even just assisting to get them out of bed.” He said the job cuts are in addition to the more than 40 cuts last year, the 20 cuts the year before that and the hundreds that have been made in years prior. In a separate notice, the Ontario Nurses’ Association said 10 registered nurses at the hospital are out of a job. Seven are full-time and three are part-time. “Look where these eliminations are occurring -- pediatrics, the birthing unit, post-anesthesia care unit,” said Erin Ariss, the ONA’s provincial president. “It is absolutely absurd. These patients are incredibly complex, incredibly ill and incredibly vulnerable.” Last month, the hospital said it was predicting a $14 million deficit for 2026-2027 and was looking for ways to address the shortfall. “We are focused on minimizing the impact on staff through attrition, retirements and redeployment options,” Heinrich added. The hospital expects to save roughly $1 million through job eliminations, which is 0.3% of its $350 million budget. CUPE said the health-care facility needs a six per cent budget increase and not the two per cent the province has provided. “What’s more important is that we’re able to care for the patients that are in the facility by having the appropriate staffing,” Turgeon added. In his statement, Heinrich said that patient needs are growing more complex as the population ages and the burden of chronic illness increases. “Older adults are more likely to live with multiple coexisting conditions. Realigning our skill mix allows us to better respond to changing needs earlier, reduce preventable escalations and deliver more consistent care,” he said. The Ontario government maintains it has made “record” investments to the provincial health care system, “including a four per cent increase to the hospital sector for the third year in a row, bringing our total investment increase to North Bay Regional Health Centre by 40 per cent.” Lily Barnes, a spokesperson for Health Minister Sylvia Jones, said in an email to CTV News that the province has also “increased funding for the North Bay Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic, our $1.2 million to attach over 1,800 more people in North Bay to primary care, over $5.2 million in Hospital Infrastructure Renewal Funding for North Bay, and the 20,000 new physicians and 100,000 new nurses added across the province since 2018.” “To be clear, the changes North Bay Regional Health Centre is making will not impact patient access to care or services.” But Ariss said Ontario is the only province in Canada eliminating registered nursing positions. “We see ourselves at over 1,900 positions having been eliminated across the province since January of 2025,” she said. “Shame on them for putting Ontarians at risk. Shame on them for leaving people in the hallways. Shame on them for underfunding the system.” Barnes said the ministry will continue to work with the hospital and its partners to ensure people have access to the high-quality care they need, where they need it. Both unions fear further health care privatization is inevitable with this latest round of layoffs.
