Workers and unions rally against recent job cuts at the Queensway Carleton Hospital on Wednesday, Aug. 19. Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia

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Workers at the Queensway Carleton Hospital are demanding the reversal of another round of cuts to 101 positions at the hospital, saying they are severely impacting patient care in an already-strained sector.

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About 70 hospital employees, their unions and supporters chanted “Stop the Cuts!” on the grass out front of the west Ottawa hospital on Aug. 19 in protest, demanding that the Ontario government increase funding for the sector.

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In July, QCH announced it would cut 87 nurses, seven housekeepers and four emergency department personal care aides, citing insufficient funding amid rising operational costs, according to an Aug. 17 news release from the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

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The other three positions involved were not described in the release.

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Those who remain are scrambling to manage prolonged emergency department wait times, the workers said. As of June 2026, only 17 per cent of emergency patients at QCH were admitted within the eight-hour target time. At that point, the average wait time was 17.4 hours, a one-hour increase from May.

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There have been cuts at numerous Ontario hospitals, where combined deficits rose to $400 million at the end of last year, with more than 1,200 positions eliminated since September 2025.

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Ontario’s March 2026 budget cited a $1.1-billion boost in hospital funding, making total provincial funding $28.9 billion, but Ontario Hospital Association CEO Anthony Dale told media earlier this year that about $2.7 billion would instead be needed to combat deficits.

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Nurses at the Aug. 19 protest lamented the severe physical and mental pressure that they said was mounting.

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One of them was Lynn Ogylvie, a registered nurse who has worked in what she called the QCH “mom and baby unit” for 32 years.

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“Mental health has already gone down the tubes because we’re working all the time, most of us more than our full-time status, so we’re just tired all the time,” Ogylvie said.

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She said her unit would lose seven full-time nurses and four part-timers because of the most recent cuts.

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“There are never enough nurses to start. Every day they’re looking for nurses in every unit. I don’t know what this means for the babies. That’s what scares me,” Ogylvie said.

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The pressure is already felt across departments, said Rachel Muir, an Ontario Nurses’ Association vice-president as well as a registered nurse.

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“Inside the hospital it’s awful, it’s untenable, it’s dangerous; the workloads are dangerous. The feeling is not a matter of ‘if’ there’s a critical incident, it’s ‘when,’” Muir said, adding that more care providers were quitting after becoming “physically and emotionally destroyed,” and that the cuts had set off this chain of strains and losses.