Sylvie Bellemare was fired from the regional health authority, CISSS de Lanaudière, in March 2021 after her patient, Jocelyne Ottawa, then 62, said the nurse and one of her colleagues he treated her with contempt and humiliated her when she visited the clinic to have a bandage changed. Ottawa said Bellemare asked her to sing a song in Atikamekw and asked her if she was known as Joyce in her community – just months after another Atikamekw woman named Joyce Echaquan has died at a nearby hospital shortly after she recorded herself being mocked by medical staff. Jocelyne Ottawa, an Atikamekw woman in her 60s, said she felt humiliated and intimidated during her encounter with Sylvie Bellemare. He wrote about it on Facebook but later removed the post. (Radio-Canada) The court concluded that Bellemare, who had received cultural sensitivity training two weeks prior to Ottawa’s treatment, had not acted in bad faith and was not willfully disrespectful. Wednesday’s decision, first reported by La Pressesaid a 10-day suspension was enough to deter the nurse from reoffending and ordered her reinstatement. Bellemare, who has worked for the health authority for 21 years, said she regretted her actions. She told the court she was trying to apply her training in cultural sensitivity after being taught that Atikamekw people often use nicknames, and said she thought she would calm Ottawa down by asking her to sing in her language. In her ruling, arbitrator Dominique-Anne Roy said the nurse should “take her share of responsibility” for what happened, but should not “shoulder the burden of a colonial legacy and burn at the stake alone her”. “Mistakes can be made along the way, given the extent of our lack of knowledge about Indigenous communities,” Roy wrote in her decision. “This takes time, transparency and the employer cannot realistically think that it can be done internally [a three-hour training session].”
Triggering an inadequate response, the court decides
In her ruling, Roy said firing Bellemare was not a way for the CISSS de Lanaudière to get rid of the criticism it has faced over its treatment of Atikamekw patients. It also found that the health authority should not have fired Bellemare without first conducting a more thorough investigation. The health authority declined CBC’s request for comment but said it would ensure Bellemare’s reinstatement takes place “under the best conditions”. The union representing Bellemare, the Syndicat interprofessionnel de la santé de Lanaudière, also declined CBC’s interview request, saying it could not disclose any information about the decision because it signed a confidentiality agreement with the health authority. CBC/Radio-Canada also reached out to Jocelyne Ottawa, the Atikamekw Nation and Assembly of First Nations for Quebec and Labrador chief Ghislain Picard, but none of them had responded by the time of publication. The case of a second nurse fired for her involvement in the same incident, Julie Duchemin, is also being considered by an arbitration tribunal.
