Travel-nurse company turned my life upside down, health worker says | CBC News

The company at the heart of the travel-nurse controversy is now the subject of a complaint over unpaid wages under New Brunswick’s Employment Standards Act.

A nurse who moved to the province from France to work for Canadian Health Labs as a personal support worker says the company turned his life upside down when its contract with the Vitalité health authority expired in May.

Youenn Siviniant was still on the job in mid-June when Vitalité told him to stop coming to work.

His actual employer, CHL, never notified him the contract had ended, he said.

He is still officially an employee of the company but has not been paid since June 19.

The company also terminated the lease for the house in Edmundston where he’s been living with his family and reneged on a promise to pay to ship his belongings back to France, Siviniant said.

“I can’t understand how a company can act that way in the health sector,” he said. “It’s a question of values, of morals, for me.

“When you work in the health sector, you have to have ethics, you have to have values, because you’re helping people, people who are sick.”

Canadian Health Labs CEO Bill Hennessey did not respond to a request from CBC News for an interview about Siviniant’s case. An automatic email reply said he “likely will be unresponsive” because he was travelling. 

“It further demonstrates the depth of the problem that we’re facing with CHL, not just gouging the taxpayers with these exorbitant contracts but also with respect to the way it treats its own employees,” said Liberal MLA and health critic Rob McKee.

“That’s the problem with privatization.” 

WATCH | The CBC’s Jacques Poitras on CHL worker’s story:

Travel nurse company turn employee’s life upside down

Youeen Siviniant moved his family from France to New Brunswick for a job with Canadian Health Labs that didn’t end well.

McKee said Liberal MLAs have heard of a handful of other similar cases.

The use of private travel-nurse companies by the province’s health care system turned into a major political controversy in the spring after a scathing report by Auditor General Paul Martin said due diligence wasn’t done on the expensive contracts. 

Vitalité’s three agreements with Canadian Health Labs had cost taxpayers $98 million as of earlier this year — the bulk of the $173 million spent as of that time on travel nurse contracts.

Dr. France Desrosiers, the health authority’s CEO, told the legislature’s public accounts committee in June that she got “the green light” for the spending from top officials — after offering them other staffing options that would have been less expensive.

The second of the three CHL contracts took effect in November 2022 and was for personal support workers such as Siviniant.

He provided CBC News with a copy of his labour complaint, documents showing he worked for CHL and an image of a company email that said CHL would pay to ship his family’s belongings back to France. His allegations have not been proven in any legal proceeding.

Siviniant, a nurse, said he was recruited in France to come to Canada to work for CHL and was promised $80 an hour once his credentials were validated here — a process that he was assured would be quick but that still hasn’t happened.

Instead he started work as a personal support worker at the Edmundston Regional Hospital at $35 an hour, eventually getting a raise to $55 an hour.

At first, he assumed Canadian Health Labs was a recruitment firm and that he’d be employed directly by the public health system.

He didn’t know much about CHL’s contracts until the Globe and Mail published a major investigation in February 2024, but he wasn’t perturbed, since his job was going well.

“It was pretty relaxing compared to what I experienced in France,” he said, where he often dealt with twice as many patients on a normal shift. 

During busy periods in Edmundston, “the nurses would panic and said, ‘it’s tough today,’ and I would say, ‘this is a normal day in an emergency department in France.'”

Siviniant had moved his entire family — his wife, three children and a dog and a cat — to Edmundston, along with all their belongings.

The plan was to eventually apply for permanent residency and stay long term. He said CHL told him his job was permanent, and Vitalité never told him otherwise.

WATCH | Vitalité executive explained in June why network resorted to use of travel nurses: 

Vitalité offered Higgs government 9 options to reduce use of travel nurses

Vitalité’s assistant CEO, Patrick Parent, says the province rejected a less expensive retention plan for nurses.

But in mid-June a health authority supervisor told him CHL’s contract for personal support workers had ended, and he was no longer to work at the hospital.

“I was in shock,” he said. “What was I to do? I came from France, I didn’t come alone, I have a wife and three children. What’s going to happen? The answer they gave me was, ‘CHL is your employer. Sort it out with them.'”

A clause in CHL’s contract prevented him from going to work directly for Vitalité, which is always looking to hire nurses and personal support workers.

The non-compete clause prevents the health authority from hiring former CHL staff for a year until CHL consents in writing.

“This is another problem that CHL has created for the health care system in New Brunswick,” McKee said.

Vitalité vice-president Frédéric Finn said in a statement that asking CHL to waive that clause, which the contract allows, “is a possibility we are exploring” and something it has done with other companies.

The health authority did not respond to questions about how many CHL employees are no longer working at its facilities because of the end of the contract or about what it thought of CHL’s behaviour.

Facing a likely return to France, Siviniant persuaded CHL to pay the cost to ship the family’s belongings back home, only to be told six days before their scheduled departure that the CEO had vetoed the expense.

The family didn’t have the money to pay the estimated $40,000 shipping cost themselves.

Making matters worse, Siviniant’s wife had already quit her job at a local nursing home.

And, they learned, CHL had terminated the lease on the house the company rented for them in Edmundston, effective Aug. 31.

“Employers in France can’t behave this way,” Siviniant said. “But based on what I’ve learned, they’re not supposed to in Canada, either.”

Last month, the legislature’s all-party public accounts committee asked the auditor general to convene an inquiry into the travel-nurse contracts to uncover more information.

McKee said cases like Siviniant’s should be part of that probe.

Martin’s office said he’s still considering the committee’s request.

McKee also called on the province to help Vitalité find a way around the non-compete clauses in its contracts so that workers cut loose by CHL can stay in New Brunswick and work in the health care system.

In the last few days, things have been looking up for Siviniant.

The nursing home where his wife worked is taking her back. Siviniant is interviewing for nursing home jobs. And the owner of the house that CHL rented for them will sign a new lease directly with him.

“We are going to stay here, and not reluctantly,” he said.

“We really love the area, we really love Edmundston. We have a network here now, neighbours, friends, and we don’t want to leave that.”

He hopes his labour complaint, which can lead to a hearing by the Labour and Employment Board, will force CHL’s CEO to pay him his unpaid salary. Siviniant also hopes it will deter the CEO from treating other employees the same way.

“Part of it is defending my family,” Siviniant said, “and part of it is making sure he doesn’t do it again.”