Ongoing Canadian Hearing Services strike in Ontario leaves deaf community without support

Gilbert Guerin of Sudbury is deaf and has relied on Canadian Hearing Services for much of his adult life to help him navigate things like doctors' appointments.

A sign language interpreter makes those interactions much easier than having to go back and forth with written notes.

But the 206 employees with Canadian Hearing Services in Ontario have been on strike since April 28.

"There are appointments with doctors that they can't go to or they've been waiting to for quite a long time, and no one informed them that CHS [Canadian Hearing Services] was on strike," Guerin said about members of Sudbury's deaf community, though interpreter Jocelyn Dotta who facilitated his interview with CBC News.

"No one told them that the interpreter was cancelled. Your doctor's appointment is cancelled. The strike is happening, so there's no one there to work the services with you."

Guerin said Canadian Hearing Services provide invaluable support, but the service is now a shadow of what it used to be.

"It was the Canadian Hearing Society," said the 69-year-old. 

"I don't know why they changed it to services, because society used to mean that it was a social organization. Services is kind of like here's the service."

Prior to 2015, he said the Canadian Hearing Society hosted social events and served as a community hub.

"We used to have bake sales, we used to sell raffle tickets and collect money and it was open to the community and it was a very friendly, enjoyable environment to go to," he said.

"And then in 2015, all of that stopped."

Mara Waern, the local president for CUPE 2073, which represents the striking employees with Canadian Hearing Services, said the organization employed 450 people across the province 10 years ago.

"Under the current CEO, we've lost more than half of our workforce," she said.

Waern said her members— including counsellors, audiologists and interpreters— have hit the picket line because they've had frequent one-year contracts and are asking for longer term collective agreements.

"It's hard for the staff to plan ahead, make financial commitments, purchase or lease a car, make a housing decision," she said.

Maern said employee pay has also fallen below the rate of inflation while CEO Julia Dumanian's annual salary has gone from around $200,000 a year to $340,000 in 2024.

Maern said the union is asking for a two per cent wage increase in the first year of the new contract, and three per cent increase the next year.

Interpreter Jocelyn Dotta said she hopes she can get back to work with her clients soon.

"It's impacting me personally in a financial sense, but it's impacting me more personally in terms of my clients because I know that they're losing services," she said.

Dotta said without interpreters like her, clients are more likely to face miscommunication at important appointments.

"Maybe they could write back and forth, but if they don't have strong English skills, then some deaf people aren't going to understand," she said.

"If a doctor writes a diagnosis and they read the English, but they don't know what that word means, then they don't know what happened."

Canadian Hearing Services said in a statement to CBC News that it's "committed to reaching a fair and responsible collective agreement."

A meeting between the union and the employer, through a mediator, is scheduled for May 21.