NDP promise new $350M CancerCare headquarters if elected

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This article was published 17/09/2023 (762 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NDP Leader Wab Kinew promised on Sunday to resurrect a plan to build a new facility and headquarters for CancerCare Manitoba that was cancelled by the Progressive Conservative government in 2017.

Kinew, while speaking at a park across from the Health Sciences Centre, said the new expansion on an empty lot on nearby Sherbrook Street would cost $350 million in capital project funding, if his New Democratic Party wins the Oct. 3 election and forms government.

The NDP leader said the promised facility would be state-of-the-art.

“The… headquarters will deliver cutting-edge care, the best quality, the newest techniques, and it will do so in a space with more room, more light, more comfort, for people who are going through such a difficult time in their lives,” Kinew said.

“We know, because cancer is a marathon, that providing people with comfort and support for their mental health… is a significant part of their journey.”

He said the new space would also improve CancerCare’s ability to conduct research and clinical trials.

Kinew would not provide details Sunday on how many people the promised building would be able to treat or the number of beds that would be available.

The CancerCare promise is another in a line of NDP campaign announcements focused on health care.

Just last week, the New Democrats promised to hire more health-care workers educated internationally, build a mature woman’s health centre at the Victoria Hospital and create a cardiac care centre at St. Boniface Hospital.

An NDP party spokeswoman said the new CancerCare facility would largely be based on the facility promised in 2016 by the prior NDP government, under former Premier Greg Selinger, though she said the plan would also draw on new input from CancerCare Manitoba and its current needs.

In 2016, the CancerCare Manitoba Foundation, the organization’s charitable arm, acquired the land on the east side of Sherbrook Street, as well as 796 Sherbrook St., to be the site of the new CancerCare facility.

The 2016 promise, which would’ve seen CancerCare’s footprint expand by 300,000-square-feet, included plans to bring more cancer-related services, including screening, diagnostic testing and prevention programs, into one facility.

Dr. Dhali Dhaliwal, who was the CEO of CancerCare from 2003 to 2013, endorsed the NDP plan and the party’s election campaign overall.

Dhaliwal could not immediately be reached for comment, but provided a statement to media via the NDP.

He said the current CancerCare facilities cannot cope with demand or keep up with the latest developments in cancer treatment.

“Implementing the proposed plan is not only necessary but urgently required,” Dhaliwal said in the statement.

CancerCare Manitoba’s public affairs officials could not be reached for comment on Sunday.

In February 2017, under the PC government, the province spiked plans for a $300-million CancerCare building project, asking instead that the agency scale back the project’s scope.

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At the time, then-Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen said the prior Selinger government had made promises it could not pay for.

On Sunday, PC party spokesman Shannon Martin — a Tory MLA who is not running for reelection — threw a barb at the NDP over their CancerCare promise.

“The NDP seem to forget that it was their government that failed to deliver on this project,” Martin said in a statement. “We have made significant investments into CancerCare, including expanding access to life-saving drugs, all of which Wab Kinew’s NDP voted against.”

The PCs made no campaign announcements on Sunday.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Erik Pindera
Reporter

Erik Pindera is a reporter for the Free Press, mostly focusing on crime and justice. The born-and-bred Winnipegger attended Red River College Polytechnic, wrote for the community newspaper in Kenora, Ont. and reported on television and radio in Winnipeg before joining the Free Press in 2020.  Read more about Erik.

Every piece of reporting Erik produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.