Sylvie Bellemare pronounced Joyce’s name and the penalty fell: dismissal. Capital punishment in labor law. The CISSS de Lanaudière had nothing to do with the nurse’s intentions or her impeccable career – in short, the circumstances in which the name of Joyce, recent martyr of the Atikamekw Nation, had been pronounced. Racism was zero tolerance.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
The CISSS accused its employee of racism. In March 2021, Sylvie Bellemare invited a patient, Jocelyne Ottawa, to sing in Atikamekw. She had asked him if he was called Joyce in his community. It looked bad. Still.
Zero tolerance, then. The efforts of M.me Bellemare to integrate Mme Ottawa to the care, to show her interest, his attempts to make her laugh, the training she had taken 12 days earlier which mentioned common nicknames among natives…none of that mattered.
It was necessary to calm things down. To appease the media and the politicians. The internal investigation was hasty, not to say sloppy. The sanction had been decided even before Mr.me Bellemare and her colleague, Julie Duchemin, are met. The order was clear: if the words were spoken, the nurses were to be fired immediately. The context doesn’t matter.
It was, however, only a clumsiness. A big blunder on the part of Sylvie Bellemare. That, even the CISSS de Lanaudière admits today.
But that doesn’t change anything, argued CISSS lawyer François-Nicolas Fleury on May 26 before an arbitration tribunal. Even without intent to harm, the fault was heavy. The lack of judgment, abyssal. And the dismissal, justified. “It’s just too big to excuse. It is unforgivable. »
In absolute terms, we could perhaps have excused the nurse for her clumsiness. But according to the CISSS, it would be necessary to take into account… the circumstances. “The context completely changes the game,” insisted Me Fleury before arbitrator Dominique-Anne Roy, who must decide whether the dismissal of Mme Bellemare was abusive.
The context in question is of course the crisis caused by the death of Joyce Echaquan at the Joliette hospital, six months earlier. The CISSS was barely recovering from this tragedy, which had made it look very bad. He had made great efforts to re-establish bridges with the Atikamekw community of Manawan.
And then another scandal broke out. The establishment plunged back into crisis. His reputation in tatters, once again.
For the CISSS, it was therefore totally justified to dismiss Sylvie Bellemare because of the broader context in which her words were spoken.
Paradox: the same CISSS, at the time of the dismissal, completely ignored the circumstances in which the nurse said what she said…
It does not exist, zero tolerance, in labor law. It doesn’t exist in the nurses’ code of ethics either. This is not found anywhere in the “Mission and values” of the CISSS de Lanaudière. This virtuous intolerance that does not suffer nuance is a formula, a political response to a problem that has been left to rot.
“I am always amazed at the level of height and straightness demanded of a nurse. It borders on hypocrisy in this case, ”argued the lawyer for the Federation of Nurses of Quebec, Alexandre Grenier.
Need we remind you that the former CEO of the CISSS, Daniel Castonguay, was fired after claiming to be completely unaware of the problems of racism at the Joliette hospital?
How can the establishment now demand absolute perfection from its employees after having shamefully neglected its duties towards the natives for decades?
How not to conclude that the CISSS sacrificed two nurses in the hope of protecting its reputation and having its past faults forgotten?
Of course a union defends its members. It’s his job. But in the Joyce Echaquan case, the union did not step up. He didn’t have to defend the indefensible.
This time it’s different. The dismissal of Sylvie Bellemare and Julie Duchemin caused shock waves. In Joliette, doctors and nurses took up their pens to highlight the professionalism and dedication of their colleagues. And to worry about the gap that is widening between the nursing staff and the natives.
Paradox, again: the CISSS hastily fired two nurses to prevent the bridges rebuilt after the death of Joyce Echaquan from collapsing again. However, these dismissals have weakened the structure. Because of these extreme penalties, many nurses fear treating Atikamekw. They are afraid of losing their jobs for a wrongly pronounced word.
One last thing, and not the least: did we really listen to Jocelyne Ottawa in this affair? In front of the referee, she confided her regrets for having written four or five lines on Facebook. Bitter, she said her story had been picked up by others. The situation completely escaped him.
Jocelyne Ottawa wishes the two nurses to return to their jobs. The CISSS pleads that it is not up to it to decide on the sanction imposed on its employees. She has nothing to say, nothing to do with it. Technically, the CISSS is right. But, how can I say…
That, too, seems wrong, in the context.