November 25, 2025
Hospital in Northern Ontario has to layoff health care workers
QUEEN’S PARK — Ontario NDP Shadow Minister for Health, France Gélinas (Nickel Belt) rose in the legislature to speak to the upcoming layoffs at the North Bay Regional Health Centre.
“Speaker, so many parts of our health care system are in crisis; 2.5 million people without a family physician, a broken home care system, a mental health and addiction system overwhelmed. When parts of our health care system fail, people rely on our hospital for their health care needs.
Did you know speaker that hospitals are not allowed to have a deficit budget, but 72% of hospitals in Northern Ontario are facing a deficit. The Ontario Hospital Association says that to just maintain what we have, hospitals need a 4% budget increase, but the Ford government gave them 0.7%. Hospitals have no choice but to cut cost, which means cutting services and laying off staff.
North Bay Regional Health Centre has issue layoff notices to 40 front line health care workers: 13 Registered Nurses, 3 Registered Practical Nurses, 1 Occupational Therapist and the list goes on. The brand new billion-dollar hospital in North Bay is laying off staff!
Jamie West, the MPP for Sudbury, and I drove to North Bay on November 12th to hear from the hospital workers. MPP West even wore a yellow tie to fit in, in case we ever saw the member from North Bay, but he did not show.
What we heard was devastating; knowledgeable, caring, front line hospital workers that have received layoff notices are worried about what will happen to their patients, who need them and depend on them. I am worried too; we know how to fix our broken health care system and privatisation is not the solution.”
In October, the Ottawa Sun reported Ontario hospitals projecting deficits this year have been directed by the province to come up with three-year plans to balance their budgets by finding efficiencies. The same article stated that Ontario spends the lowest per capita in Canada.
