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Premiers meet as protesters gather outside

By: Bruce Owen

Posted: 08/5/2010 10:23 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

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Premier Greg Selinger (left) talks to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty today prior to a meeting in Winnipeg of Canada's premiers and territorial leaders.

WINNIPEG-- Canada’s premiers started their annual summer meeting in Winnipeg this morning at a downtown hotel as protesters outside demanded everything from wider treatment options for multiple sclerosis to a more concentrated effort to wipe out child poverty.

Environmentalists and labour unions take the stage later today outside the Hotel Fort Garry to urge the premiers to take a bolder role on climate change and to push Ottawa for reforms to the Canada Pension Plan.

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Moments before the premiers met on a seventh-floor ballroom, people with multiple sclerosis and their families held a small protest outside to get Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger to approve a new treatment—but untested in Canada—that they say relieves the symptoms of the debilitating disease.

It’s known as "liberation therapy" and is based on work by Italian neurologist Dr. Paolo Zamboni, who argues that a narrowing or blockage of veins in the neck which drain blood from the brain may cause MS symptoms in some cases.

Zamboni contends a procedure similar (known as CCSVI treatment) to balloon angioplasty that unblocks coronary and other arteries widens these narrowed or blocked veins, improving blood flow and, with it, balance and walking, while reducing dizziness, fatigue, muscle spasms and incontinence.

Manitoba and other provinces do not recognize the treatment so patients travel to Europe or the United States at their own expense.

Steve Dyck said his wife Edith had the 45-minute treatment in Poland a month ago at a cost of $15,000. "The walker has been parked ever since," Dyck said.

Dave Riches said his wife will travel to Albany, N.Y. in January at a cost of $5,000. "We should be doing this here," Riches said. "Even if we have to pay for it."

Recently Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall said his government will fund clinical trials of a controversial treatment for people with multiple sclerosis, despite two new studies from Europe raise doubts about the procedure.

A spokesman for the Manitoba government said the province would fund a study into the treatment if local experts recommend it.
"We want to do whatever we can as a province to move the diagnostic and treatment research along as quickly as possible and certainly we offer support to any local doctors as well as the nationally-coordinated research strategy to achieve this," the spokesman said.

"We would all like to know today if CCSVI treatment is the silver bullet many hope it is, but we need to listen to medical experts who decide how to design and stage research studies and advise on when a procedure is safe and effective to put into regular practice."

Meanwhile, Winnipeg’s Social Planning Council released its plan to eradicate child poverty in Canada.

They want the premiers to create a working group to look at how such a plan could be rolled out across the country and present it at next year’s premiers’ meeting.

The Social Planning Council also wants to present its ideas to Selinger, who before he got into politics in the early 1990s worked for the Social Planning Council.

At noon the premiers will visit the Manitoba Legislative Building where they will take a quick tour and look at an original 800-year copy of the Magna Carta, considered the foundation of modern democracy.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca

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