Dear members,
I don’t know how about you, but I’ve had enough! 2025 – better watch out!
At the beginning of 2024, the National Executive Board of the CFNU gave us a strong mandate: be election-ready. Keep nurses, nursing staffing and patient safety at the forefront of every policy discussion.
Your insight is invaluable, making it clear to the federal government that nurses’ solutions are grounded in the realities for nurses on the front lines of health care. We get the pulse of nurses across Canada with CFNU’s annual national survey where thousands of nurses have their voice heard on critical issues. This national survey validates the surveys, meetings and focus groups your provincial union does, painting a clearer picture of nursing in Canada. When we say nurses have had enough and want change, the CFNU is ready to back it up.
Surveys are only one part of how we turn insights from the front line into policy change. Through deep analysis and research, and collaborative discussions with nurses, academics, employers and politicians, we ensure nurses’ voices are front and centre.
The CFNU doubled down on our research efforts in 2024, exploring nurses’ needs and concerns. Our groundbreaking report Safe Hours Save Lives delivers a critical examination of the excessive hours nurses have worked to keep the health system going throughout staffing shortages. We took this blueprint for creating safe and sustainable workplaces directly to MPs and Senators.
We broke open the black box of for-profit nursing agencies, unveiling billions of public health care dollars being funnelled into profit-driven corporations with little to no oversight. Imagine the impact that money could have had it been invested into your workplaces?
As governments up their recruitment of internationally educated nurses, the CFNU held consultations with international nurses on the ground to learn how to better support IENs through this life transition and ensure they are working in the profession they uprooted their life for. We’ll take this research directly to Parliament Hill in the new year.
We launched the first national nursing student survey, creating an opportunity for students to feed into our advocacy efforts and help shape the future of nursing.
This fall, the CFNU hosted Canada’s first national summit on nurse-patient ratios, where we brought together international and national nursing leaders for two days of discussions on how to bring this vital safe staffing tool across the country.
As we roll into 2025, we keep our commitment to remain laser-focused on the realities and well-being of all nurses.
The CFNU is doing its homework on how to properly apologize for all the past and current harms done to Indigenous Peoples. Our apology will be matched with our pledge to do better. This work and reflection will be a key part of our 2025 Biennial Convention being hosted by the Ontario Nurses’ Association.
As we head into a new federal budget and the upcoming federal election, we’re pushing to put nurses and patients at the heart of our federal government’s mandate. The CFNU is advocating for a Patient Bill of Rights – a legal tool to address unsafe health care working conditions and enforce the core principles of the Canada Health Act, ensuring everyone has access to the care they need – when they need it – through our public health system. This means increasing the availability of nurse practitioners and their options to practice, putting us on the path for everyone to have access to primary care. It means giving our elders the choice over where they age and care that centres dignity over profits. It means addressing safety in our health care facilities, starting with a concrete retention and recruitment plan that must include safe nurse-patient ratios.
I was shocked to hear one of the experts at CFNU’s recent Nurse-Patient Ratios Summit say that even dogwalkers have legal ratios. I say, if safe hours of work and safe workloads are important for pilots, it should be critical for Canada’s nurses. It’s time we change the lexicon of health care. Nurses don’t just provide care – we provide safe environments for our patients.
The CFNU is your national voice, backing up the hard work provincial nurses’ unions are doing, from negotiations at the bargaining table to province-wide advocacy campaigns, to electing nurse-friendly governments. We focus on you and the work you do, pushing for change at every level.
With the support of RNUNL President Yvette Coffey, PEINU President Barbara Brookins, NSNU President Janet Hazelton, NBNU President Paula Doucet, ONA President Erin Ariss, ONA Region 1 VP Dawn Armstrong, MNU President Darlene Jackson, SUN President Tracy Zambory, UNA President Heather Smith, UNA VP Danielle Larivee, BCNU President Adriane Gear, BCNU VP Tristan Newby, CNSA President Tiffany Campbell, CFNU Secretary-Treasurer Angela Preocanin and the excellent staff team I have in Ottawa, we will continue pushing the envelope. With your strong voice as a part of our movement, we will make sure nursing jobs are the best jobs in our communities, and you are recognized as an expert and leader in this safety-critical industry.
To all of you working through the holiday season: Merci! Thank you! Migwetch! The world would come to a complete stop without you.
In unwavering solidarity,
Linda Silas, CFNU President
