Labour Solutions

The Royal Ottawa Hospital is an institution dedicated to caring for people with mental illness. Its work and its success rate brings hope to the afflicted. Mental health concerns are writ larger than ever in society. People are being encouraged to be more open about their mental health problems, to relax their vigil that once concerned those with mental health diagnoses that their dreadful condition must be kept a secret.

Secret, to avoid social ostracizing, neglect, blame, ridicule. And to enable them to live just like anyone else, without becoming an object of curiosity and crude remarks. And being able to retain employment. Living with their bleak frailness, their black depressions, their fears. What the employees of the Royal Ottawa provide for patients in terms of hope for the future is invaluable.

For that reason alone, one might hope that in the process of hiring personnel, personal character is scrutinized, and every effort made to ensure that new hires, however otherwise fitting the job description through professionalism and experience, are appropriate for the work at hand. There is a male nurse, Joseph Charles, who worked in the long-term care unit for the mentally ill, at the Royal Ottawa.

The hospital fired him in 2010, however. The Canadian Union of Public Employees backed Mr. Charles in a hearing with the labour-relations board, and in their wisdom the board found for Mr. Charles. He was awarded back pay for lost income and the Royal Ottawa has been ordered to return him to work at the hospital.

He looked after patients suffering from chronic and persistent mental illness. Some of these patients suffered as well with physical disabilities. His direct work with the patients he looked after is not the reason he was fired. Although the hospital had disciplined him for a number of infractions such as the disclosure of confidential patient information, submitting a false report, failing to maintain client records.

His record of job-related problems also included a failure to properly assess a patient, and he was disciplined for an unauthorized lapse in leaving his workplace for several hours, having "removed the narcotics key from the facility when he left". He had also lied to his employer. The labour board, though, felt he should be returned to work.

The Royal Ottawa's lawyer urged upon the board the consideration that he was felt by them to be a sexual and financial predator. He had also concealed an Ottawa police records check revealing he had been investigated for online child luring. At the hospital, Mr. Charles began an affair with a married woman whom he supervised, in 2009. That relationship lasted a year before the woman ended it.

She had loaned out to her then-lover over $36,000 through her credit cards. When she informed her boss of the situation, she also informed her husband. Who supported her throughout her ordeal, agreeing to re-mortgage their house to pay off the debt incurred through those loans which hadn't been repaid by Mr. Charles to the woman.

Despite all of this the labour relations board found in Mr. Charles's favour. He would be returned to his job, the co-worker whom he had supervised would no longer be under his supervision. A condition in his award was that the woman would receive a portion of the back pay owing to the reinstated nurse to help cover his debt to her.

As a solution to a labour and human relations problem, this one appears wanting in the extreme. And perhaps the Royal Ottawa's patients deserve a more conscientious, ethical and capably compassionate individual to look to their care.