December 16, 2025
Health and care systems across Canada are under significant strain. Staffing shortages, burnout, and fragmented training pathways make it difficult to sustain quality or build long-term capacity. Many organizations have attempted to respond on their own, but individual action cannot shift system-wide workforce challenges.
Workforce recovery depends on alignment. When unions, employers, and government partners share a clear view of barriers and priorities, they can design responses that reinforce each other instead of working at cross-purposes.
Map the whole system. SEIU Healthcare began by understanding conditions across hospitals, home care, long-term care, and community settings.
Surface lived experience. Frontline workers revealed bottlenecks that leaders could not see from a planning vantage point.
Prioritize leverage points. Coordinated planning and consistent training pathways helped stabilize the system.
SEIU Healthcare partnered with Opus Group to build a coordinated workforce recovery strategy that aligned unions, employers, and government partners around shared insights and priorities. The strategy strengthened coherence across the system and helped partners focus on pressure points that offered the greatest impact.
This aligns with international lessons from the United Kingdom's Integrated Care Systems, where coordinated workforce planning has supported greater stability and smoother patient flow across care settings.
Alignment is a practical delivery tool. When system actors move together, they can rebuild capacity more quickly and sustainably.
“No one fixes a system alone.”
- Elinor Ostrom
