Annual Report

OHC’s Annual Report highlighting our work for the past year is now live! Please take a look to see what we’ve been up to and where we’re headed. As always, we welcome community feedback. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!

This past year the MFL Occupational Health Centre marked its 40th year anniversary with a Community Picnic Celebration at Vimy Ridge Park, located in our new neighbourhood of West Broadway. We were joined by both new and old friends and supporters to mark this important occasion.

For four decades now, OHC has served as one of Canada’s few occupational health centres.

Being worker-centered, for OHC, means that workers’ health is always our main priority. OHC places workers and their perspectives at the centre of our work and believes that healthy workplaces create healthy workers and both contribute to
healthy communities.

Work shouldn’t hurt. And every worker has the right to come home safe and whole, every day.

Safe and whole.

2023 was the last full calendar year for two valuable projects OHC is proud to have been a part of: the five-year Consent at Work Project (with SERC and Klinic, funded by Justice Canada) had a specific focus on preventing sexual harassment in the workplace; and the Alliance for Gender Justice in Migration (with organizations across Canada, funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada) was a two-year national policy-focused project centering the experiences of women with precarious immigration status. These projects have opened pathways to build better and healthier workplaces and a more just society.

OHC staff have taken our new Strategic Plan and created an operational plan for all our programs to ensure we make progress on our four strategic directions:
Strengthen the Organization; Widen OHC’s Sphere of Influence; Enhance Programs and Services; and Engage in Meaningful Equity Work. In these difficult times, OHC’s continued involvement in the community health movement is crucial to advancing health equity for the multiple communities and clients we serve. We are proud of our membership in MACH (Manitoba Association of Community Health Clinics) and nationally through MACH with CACHC (Canadian Association of Community Health Clinics). These partnerships help to ground our work in the principle of reaching out to vulnerable populations and centering their experience in the care and services we provide.

We would like to acknowledge all of the changes we have experienced this past year at our little clinic. Executive Director Carly Nicholson is away on parental leave which began unexpectedly early in January of this year – Thomas Linner has stepped in as Interim Executive Director. Two staff members, Richard McCrae and Judith Oviosun, have left us with their contract terms expiring. And Mona Phillips, a central figure at our clinic, with over 40 years of service, has retired. We will miss you.

Finally, we are also proud to mention that OHC’s two physicians, Dr. Rob Chase and Dr. Allen Kraut were the 2024 recipients of the Dick Martin Award. This award honours the memory and work of Dick Martin, a tireless workplace health and safety advocate in Manitoba who helped lead the movement to establish the Occupational Health Centre. Thank you to Dr. Chase and Dr. Kraut for their long service to OHC and to the workers of Manitoba.

In Solidarity,