Canadian officials investigating hospital job posting for ‘white woman only’

Canadian health officials are investigating a Quebec hospital after it posted a job listing last fall for a female orderly with “white skin” to help a patient who allegedly refused help from people of color.

French-language newspaper La Presse obtained 10 emails from Saint-Eustache Hospital in Montreal sent out in November to various employment agencies for a candidate to work with a “difficult patient” in the hospital’s non-COVID-19 zone, the Montreal Gazette reported. 

The hospital specified in the messages that candidates must be “white women only,” be a “white coloured (orderly),” “must be a white woman” and “must have white skin.”

Four different employees in the hospital’s human resources division were involved in the emails, according to La Presse. 

In the French language newspaper’s report, which has been translated from French to English, Quebec Health Authority Rosemonde Landry said she was “stunned” by the job postings, adding that the incident was unacceptable.

“This situation is totally unacceptable in our eyes. That is evident. We have immediately opened an internal investigation,” Landry told La Presse.

Landry told the newspaper that it was not uncommon for patients to make specific requests regarding the type of person who provides care, such as female patient requesting to not take a bath in the presence of a male employee, but maintained that hiring discrimination was unacceptable.