Manitoba Nurses Union says staff feeling unsafe, considering grey listing hospital

A man has been charged after a hospital employee was sexually assaulted in the St. Boniface Hospital parkade.

WINNIPEG — The Manitoba Nurses Union says safety issues are piling up after a recent sexual assault at a Winnipeg hospital parkade.

“Nurses are very upset,” union president Darlene Jackson said in an interview Friday.

“They are not able to provide the care they know they should be providing.”

Earlier this week, police charged a man with a sexual assault at St. Boniface Hospital. They said a female employee was confronted while she was trapped between two vehicles.

Police say the attacker fled after the woman screamed for help, and she did not require medical attention.

Jackson said it’s the latest safety concern.

Earlier this summer, nurses voted to grey list Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre due to a string of sexual assaults outside the hospital and one assault in the building’s tunnels.

Grey listing is a move nurses can take to discourage others from taking jobs at a hospital they deem unsafe.

“When that sexual assault actually happened in the building, that was really a wake-up call for nurses to say, ‘You know, we’re not going to take this any longer,”’ Jackson said.

“We need this employer to step up and deal with this more effectively.”

Nurses at Thomson General Hospital are also voting to possibly grey list the northern Manitoba facility due to staff vacancies and violence, she added.

In October, police charged a woman after a female patient was stabbed at the hospital. Police have said the patient was treated for non-life-threatening injuries. The two women also knew each other.

“This is not a safe facility,” Jackson said. “It sends a clear message that nurses are not happy with what’s happening and they want it dealt with.”

The provincial government did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the concerns.

It has said it’s planning to hire safety officers for the Thomson hospital and is working to address other problems in the health-care system.

The NDP government has touted hiring 1,100 new nurses in the last two years since coming to power.

But Jackson said nurses aren’t seeing the results of those new hires.

“I really question - have you really hired that many nurses?”

In the legislature Friday, the Opposition Progressive Conservatives accused the government of not showing results on health care.

“It’s becoming clear to Manitobans this NDP government has no idea what it’s doing when it comes to health human resources,” Tory health critic Kathleen Cook told the assembly.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara told the chamber the province has hired 3,500 new health workers over the last two years.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 21, 2025.