Help Shannon Hancock raise $15,000 to appeal SLAPPs & NDAs

Hi everyone. My name is Shannon Hancock and I was a registered nurse in good standing from 1993-2019 practicing in a variety of acute and community settings in Manitoba, British Columbia and Nunavut.

I am raising funds for court costs to appeal the August 2024 court decision allowing summary judgment against me, an unrepresented non-lawyer, in the matter of the strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) filed against me by a public regional health authority in Manitoba in 2016.

Beginning in 2012, I made protected disclosures regarding health and safety issues in the Winnipeg Manitoba health region. The Manitoba Nurses Union filed a total of seven grievances, the first formal grievances of my entire working life, including two decades as a regulated health professional.

In 2012, I reported an involuntary transfer to another office and program to the provincial government’s Workplace Safety & Health Division under The Workplace Safety & Health Act as the act of reprisal that it was. My concerns were dismissed.

In February 2013, I made a protected disclosure under the provincial Public Interest Disclosure (Whistleblower) Act. By the time the Ombudsman finally responded to my disclosure in January 2014, advising that they would not investigate my disclosure (while assuring me I was protected against reprisal retroactive to my disclosure the year before), it was already too late: My employment was terminated, and I was reported to the provincial nursing regulator two months after I contacted the Ombudsman in February 2012.

We were in grievance arbitration before a retired appellate court judge at his law firm in 2014 when the union decided to settle with the employer, withdrawing all of the grievances including a policy grievance.

In May 2016, I reported retaliation for reporting health and safety issues in the Winnipeg health region. Once again, disclosures made in good faith and in keeping with my professional, ethical and legal obligations - and that were later validated when the Manitoba Labour Board allowed my appeal under The Workplace Safety & Health Act in December 2018 – were followed by reprisals. My employment was terminated two months after my disclosure and in September 2016, I was served with a civil suit by the regional health authority for alleged breach of the 2014 agreement with the Manitoba Nurses Union.

The employer and their lawyers failed to serve notice of the strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) on the necessary legal party to the agreements, the union, or on any interested or affected party including the union’s 12,000+ members, provincial/federal regulators, Ministers of Health/Labour/Justice, or anyone other than me.

I immediately retained counsel who advised me to file a counterclaim. And I followed their advice. In January 2019, the firm withdrew services when I refused an ultimatum to “give up” my position that agreements between public healthcare employers and bargaining agents in Manitoba under which terms unionized regulated nursing professionals and women are being intimidated, threatened, silenced and civilly sued are unconscionable and unlawful.

I have been defenseless against lawyers for the regional health authority and the provincial government ever since.

Almost seven years after I was served with the 2016 SLAPP, a former provincial court judge granted summary judgment in favour of the employer, disregarding my lack of representation, prejudicial delays not of my doing, requests for reasonable or any accommodation including by way of the appointment of independent counsel (amicus) to argue complex legal, jurisdictional and constitutional issues. The judge overlooked the fact that the firm against which I have been defenseless for over six years drafted the agreement they’ve been litigating ever since without notice to the legal party, the Manitoba Nurses Union.

I immediately appealed, appearing at case management and filing my appeal book, factum and books of authorities only to have the rug pulled out from under me when a provincial public servant employed with Manitoba Justice Courts Division, not a judge or a lawyer, informed me that I must pay outstanding costs ordered by the appellate court in unrelated litigation initiated by the provincial nursing regulator (while I was defending the 2016 SLAPP and under NDA) or be denied the right of appeal.

Neither of us is a lawyer by profession and I believe he is mistaken however I am forced to comply.

The employer, regulator, unions, provincial government and the federally-appointed judge that granted the regulator’s 2021 SLAPP to have me declared “vexatious” are all represented by the same dominant private Manitoba firm serving as Vice Chairs of the Manitoba Labour Board, adjudicators at the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, on the PC Party of Manitoba's Leadership Committee and the Board of Directors for the Federation of Law Societies of Canada.

The experience has been traumatic, overwhelming and has come at enormous personal, professional, financial and emotional cost. As someone dear to me recently said, I didn't come this far just to come this far.

These are not “private” civil matters, and they never were. The litigation was never just about me. The outcome affects all Manitoba workers, regulated and unregulated, unionized and non-unionized, and those coming to live and work here. My appeal confronts issues of public importance and public policy including covenants restricting trade, jurisdiction (arbitrator/Labour Board v civil courts), Charter rights, illegal SLAPPs against unionized regulated nursing professionals and healthcare workers, and unconscionable and unenforceable non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) between public sector healthcare employers and public sector healthcare bargaining agents under which terms Manitoba’s regulated nursing professionals are intimidated, threatened, silenced and civilly sued.

It is essential that I raised $15,000.00 to satisfy costs ordered against me by the appellate court when they dismissed statutory appeals of decisions of the provincial nursing regulator beginning in 2019.

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read our story. It’s been a very long and a very painful haul that will only be meaningful if others are spared from being targeted for “whistleblowing.”

Please share and donate if you are able.

Every little bit helps and is deeply and sincerely appreciated,

Thank you.