Silas: It is an honour to continue to ensure the voices of frontline nurses are heard loud and clear.
June 9, 2023 (Charlottetown, P.E.I.) – Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU) for the past 20 years, was acclaimed to her 11th two-year term at the national organization’s biennial convention in Prince Edward Island today.
“It is an honour to continue serving as president of the CFNU and help amplify the voices of nurses across the country,” Silas said.
A passionate and engaging spokesperson in both of Canada’s official languages for nurses’ issues and labour rights, Silas was president of the New Brunswick Nurses Union from 1990 to 2000, the youngest nurses’ union president in Canadian history.
Silas was born in Dalhousie, N.B., where her father was a leader of the mill workers’ union at the Abitibi newsprint plant. She is well-known throughout Canada as a strong feminist and a champion of public health care, workplace rights and social justice.
“Health care remains in crisis, but nurses know it doesn’t have to be this way,” Silas said. “Our voices are the key to protecting and enhancing Canada’s public health care system: governments must listen, and they must act. This is the respect I will keep fighting for.”
Also acclaimed today as Secretary-Treasurer of the CFNU was Angela Preocanin, first vice-president of the Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) since 2021.
Preocanin, a registered nurse, has served in executive positions at ONA over the past two decades and has worked in thoracic surgery, head and neck, urgent care and home hemodialysis. She will continue in her current role on ONA’s executive.
“Canada’s public health care system is still recovering from the catastrophe of the pandemic, and the levels of nursing staffing are awful everywhere in Canada,” Preocanin said. “It’s a great honour to be entrusted by the CFNU’s membership to contribute to the important advocacy needed to get Canada’s health care system back on track.”
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The CFNU is Canada’s largest nurses’ organization, representing Canada’s frontline nurses in every sector of health care – from home care, to LTC, community and acute care, including nursing students – and advocating on key health priorities and federal engagement in the future of public health care.
For more information or to arrange an interview with Linda Silas or Angela Preocanin, please contact: Adella Khan, media@nursesunions.ca, 613-807-2942.