Perley Health set to eliminate more than 50 positions, including health workers

Ottawa’s Perley Health, one of the largest long-term care homes in Ontario, is cutting 38 unionized and 13 non-union job positions, including registered practical nurses and personal support workers.

The cuts are being decried by health-care staff, who say the home is not staffed well enough for them to provide good quality health care to residents. On Wednesday, dozens of unionized health workers represented by CUPE held a rally outside Perley Health to call for more health-care funding. Some protesters carried signs saying cuts would hurt residents.

“How can this government talk about ‘fixing’ long-term care while the Perley eliminates 38 vital positions?” local union president and personal support worker Patty Lowe said. “Do they have any idea how much suffering the residents will have to bear due to these cuts?”

The union said jobs being cut included 18 registered practical nurses and 14 personal support workers.

Spokesperson Jay Innes said Perley was not facing funding cuts, although special COVID funding had ended. He said the jobs were being eliminated “to ensure we continue delivering high-quality care to the seniors and veterans who call our community home.”

Innes also said the core nursing and personal care model at Perley Health “remains unchanged, and we continue to meet all provincial requirements for staffing and quality of care.” Perley, which cares for more than 600 seniors and veterans in long-term care and independent living, has long been known for its innovative programs.

But 69 per cent of workers surveyed at the home said recently that they didn’t believe their units were staffed well enough to provide good-quality resident care. Seventeen per cent of workers also said they faced physical violence on the job daily and 16 per cent said they faced physical violence at least once a week. Violence, the union says, is often related to staffing levels.

Workers said the cuts would affect resident care by increasing workloads, reducing time for direct care and contributing to staff burnout.

“Our residents deserve more than minimum standards. They deserve human connection, which you cannot provide when positions are being slashed,” Lowe said.

Innes said Perley and the union were working to minimize layoffs.  “Our shared goal is to minimize job loss as much as possible.” Despite the elimination of positions, union officials said they hoped to limit the number of layoffs through retirements and attrition.

Perley Health employs around 1,000 people, and about 700 of them are unionized.

The elimination of health-care worker jobs at Perley comes at a time when many hospitals across Ontario are in debt and being told by the provincial government to balance their budgets within the next three years. Meanwhile, annual provincial funding increases will not keep up with costs and inflation in coming years.

The Ontario Hospital Association has said hospitals need $1 billion to keep pace with inflation and population growth. Meanwhile, hospitals in some parts of the province have begun laying off health-care staff.

A report released by Ontario’s Financial Accountability last fall predicted that slowing growth of health funding would mean fewer hospital beds and health workers, including a decrease of 7,263 nurses by 2027-28 and 1,700 fewer personal support workers. Based on the 2025 budget, the report said there would be more long-term care beds, but not enough to keep up with the aging population, representing a decline from 60 long-term care beds per 1,000 Ontario residents aged 75 and over in 2024-25 to 56 long-term care beds per 1,000 Ontarians aged 75 and over in 2027-28.

At Wednesday’s rally, union representatives from hospitals in the National Capital Region said they feared they would soon be seeing cuts as hospitals tried to adjust to budget constraints.

Kevin Cook of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions said the cuts at Perley were not in line with the province’s claim that it was fixing long-term care.

“Cutting 38 front-line jobs is not fixing the system, it is breaking it,” Cook said. “These are not extras, these are the people that provide daily hands-on care. These are the people that answer call bells, give out meds and are there to comfort these residents who are scared or in pain.”

Ontario has one of the lowest rates of public health funding per capita in Canada.

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