Nurses union files complaint over Shared Health lack of transparency on hospital safety

An undisclosed internal security review of Winnipeg hospitals has the Manitoba Nurses Union raising questions about transparency as it pushes for more protections for its members.

Last week, the union filed an unfair labour complaint against Shared Health over the review it says should have been made public.

The 2019 security review was commissioned by Shared Health and, along with Manitoba’s regional health authorities, the agency received the final report the following year, a spokesperson for the provincial health authority said in an emailed statement Monday.

The results of the review have not been publicly released.

The MNU said the review raised safety issues and came to light in August 2025 as part of the disclosure process for a potential Labour Board arbitration involving a union safety-related grievance against Victoria Hospital. That grievance, however, was settled without going to arbitration, so the disclosed documents couldn’t be made public.

MNU president Darlene Jackson said the security review should have been disclosed years ago and may have helped prevent some recent incidents of violence against nurses.

“When that report came out in 2020, if it had been dealt with at the time… and if we’d started to look at those safety issues and resolve them, would we be in the situation we’re in now with all the safety issues we’re seeing: assaults, the sexual assault, that type of thing?” she said.

”So it’s quite worrying that that didn’t come out, wasn’t released at the time in 2020.”

There was a second chance for Shared Health to release the review in 2023, during arbitration for the union’s labour grievance against the Health Sciences Centre, but it wasn’t disclosed then, Jackson said.

“It really is about a lack of transparency,” she said.

Upon learning of the existence of the report in August, the union sought its release via Manitoba’s freedom of information laws, but Jackson said Shared Health’s response to that request stated the document could not be made public without its approval.

That formed the basis of the union’s most recent unfair labour practice complaint.

The Shared Health spokesperson said the security review was meant to be an “internal planning resource.”

“Given that MNU has elected to file an unfair labour practice complaint we will respect that process and are unable to comment further on the report as the complaint proceeds,” the spokesperson stated.

Although declining to comment about why the review wasn’t publicly released, Shared Health stated generally, public bodies don’t have to disclose documents under freedom-of-information laws if the applicant already has those documents.

Jackson said the union has the security review, but is barred from making it public. She said she can’t discuss details of the internal report, but she said it outlined some of the safety issues nurses and other health-care workers are facing, yet it wasn’t acted upon.

“There are definitely some issues that were identified in that commissioned report that are the lived experience of nurses,” she said.

“If that report had been acted on, would we be in the mess we’re in now? Or would we be well ahead of the game when it comes to security and safety in these facilities? That’s the question with me. The lack of transparency, I’m hoping, didn’t cause more issues.”

Shared Health said the safety of all its staff, patients and hospital visitors “remains a top priority,” and pointed to the recent addition of two uniformed city police officers at entrances to the HSC as an example of ongoing safety improvements.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca