Friday, April 17, 2026, Markham, ON – More than 900 nurses at Markham Stouffville Hospital (MSH) voted to join the Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) this week, marking one of the largest unionization drives in health care in Ontario in years.
“We are thrilled to welcome the nurses at Markham Stouffville Hospital. This is a huge win for all nurses and health-care professionals,” explains Erin Ariss, registered nurse and ONA Provincial President. “This win strengthens our united movement across the province to fight back against a government and employers who are hellbent on privatizing our health care and cutting front-line care.”
Nurses at MSH work hard to provide high-quality, timely care to more than 480,000 patients a year, ranging from emergency care and diagnostics to clinical programs. This year, MSH announced layoffs to front-line staff in order to balance their budget. This is part of a larger trend across public hospitals in Ontario to prioritize budgets over high-quality, timely patient care. With more cuts on the way, ONA members across the province are telling Ontarians the truth about how devastating this will be to patient care.
Ariss says, “With an overwhelming majority of the nurses voting in favour, it is clear that they urgently want a strong union that will fight for safe staffing levels, reasonable workloads, fair wages and more. Together with these new ONA members, we will continue to fight for better working conditions and high-quality, timely public health care for all.”
ONA is the union representing 68,000 health-care professionals, along with 18,000 nursing student affiliates, who provide care in hospitals, long-term care facilities, public health, community settings, clinics, and industry.
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