Province targets long-term care with promise to add 90 beds in Transcona Construction on $72-M expansion for Park Manor Care Home set to begin this year By: Chris Kitching and Erik Pindera Posted: 3:52 PM CST Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025 Last Modified: 6:54 PM CST Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025 Updates

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The NDP government has promised to spend $72 million to nearly double the number of beds at Transcona’s only personal care home by 2028 in an effort to alleviate some of the pressure on the beleaguered long-term care system.

Health, Seniors and Long-Term Care Minister Uzoma Asagwara announced plans Thursday for a 90-bed expansion at the Park Manor Care Home.

Construction is scheduled to begin this year and be completed by spring 2028, Asagwara told reporters, and will come with new hires once operations begin.

The care home, at Redonda Street and Kildare Avenue East, is owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

The facility currently has 44 private rooms, 20 semi-private rooms and four four-bed rooms, its website states. Asagwara said the 90 new beds will be private.

The chief executive of the Manitoba Association of Residential and Community Care Homes, which represents 23 non-profit care homes in the province, including Park Manor, said the beds will help lessen the strain on the system’s long wait times and bed shortages, and allow more aging Transcona residents to live in their community.

“Who wouldn’t want new beds?” said CEO Gladys Hrabi.

While she applauded the announcement, she said it should come as part of a wider strategy to address systemic issues in long-term care in Manitoba.

“When you have new beds, that’s good, but we are still trying to advocate about staff shortages, advocate for funding adjustments that could address rising operational costs, and there’s also the funding we want to modernize aging infrastructure,” Hrabi said.

“It will alleviate the pressures, but… what we hope to see from this, is the government look at this with innovation in mind, that there’s an opportunity here to move away from institutionalized living.”

“Who wouldn’t want new beds?”–CEO Gladys Hrabi

Hrabi said the personal care system should move toward a more home-like environment.

There are 9,597 beds across 124 licensed personal care homes in Manitoba, with sometimes lengthy wait times.

As of 2019, the provincial government stopped publishing median wait times for care home admissions. Shared Health officials recently told the Free Press the median wait time for residents 75 and older is 6.6 weeks. But those waits vary by regional health authority, the Free Press recently found.

As of late November, the supplied figures for wait times were an average of 167.5 days (roughly 24 weeks) for the Northern Health Region, an average of 86 days (roughly 12 weeks) for acute and transitional care for Interlake-Eastern, and a median of 83 days (roughly 12 weeks) for Prairie Mountain Health. Southern Health and the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority would not provide average or median wait times.

Asagwara said the addition of 90 beds at Park Manor would help chip away at shortages across the province.

“You’re adding capacity,” said the minister. “We’re also adding beds throughout the system.”

Park Manor’s operator advocated for expansion, alongside families and Transcona residents, for years to help meet some of the demand for spaces in the east Winnipeg neighbourhood.

The health minister took a swipe at former Progressive Conservative premier Brian Pallister for a 2016 election promise to build a new care home at Park Manor.

In 2016, Pallister stood outside Park Manor and pledged to add 1,200 new personal care home beds over eight years, but construction never began and there was a net loss of care home beds while the PCs were in government.

In the 2019 election campaign, now-Premier Wab Kinew and Nello Altomare, the Transcona MLA who died last month, visited Park Manor to pledge an 80-bed expansion with $21 million in funding. The Pallister-led Tories won that election.

Asagwara said the government was glad to deliver the NDP’s prior promise, albeit delayed.

Park Manor CEO Abednigo Mandalupa said care home officials are glad the provincial government is “finally” coming to the table to see the project through.

Wally Skomoroh, a lifelong Transconian whose mother lives at Park Manor, described the expansion as a “long time coming.”

“People from Transcona — if you’re from Transcona, you know this … you don’t like to leave Transcona. So, when you get older and you need a personal care home, there’s only one choice, and that’s Park Manor,” Skomoroh said.

“This will allow people in the community to be able to stay in their senior years in the community. This will also probably have less roommate arrangements, as well. It’s important you have your own space because that gives you your own dignity and comfort level.”

Asagwara said the NDP have committed to building a new personal care home every year.

Construction began on a 95-bed care home in Lac du Bonnet in December. It is expected to open in 2027. Plans for the facility were announced by a former NDP government in 2012 and then cancelled by the Pallister government in 2017.

Then-Tory premier Heather Stefanson proposed the project before the 2023 election that was won by the NDP, which announced last year it was moving ahead with the $66-million project about 100 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca