Tories turn page to health care for first time in campaign

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This article was published 18/09/2023 (762 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With the provincial election just two weeks away, Manitoba Tories changed the channel Monday, focusing for the first time on health care after two weeks of promises to make life more affordable.

Using Grace Hospital as a morning backdrop, Progressive Conservative candidates Kevin Klein (Kirkfield Park) and Rochelle Squires (Riel) promised $30 million a year for health-care recruitment if the party is re-elected Oct. 3.

Squires said the funding commitment would help bring more health-care professionals to Manitoba, where facilities are struggling with overburdened staff owing to personnel shortages.

Later in the day, in a tent outside the privately owned, First Nations-operated downtown Quest Health, PC Leader Heather Stefanson pledged $10 million toward the construction of a 12-week, 180-bed addictions treatment and recovery centre run by and for First Nations.

The premier was flanked by supporters, among them PC Keewatinook candidate Michael Birch and Chemawawin Cree Nation Chief Clarence Easter, who helped re-establish the Quest Inn as Quest Health to provide lodging for northern First Nations residents in Winnipeg for medical treatment.

The Ellice Avenue facility has since expanded to include a nearby pharmacy and clinic. Easter, a residential school survivor, said he wants to see Quest add a culturally sensitive addictions treatment and recovery centre for on- and off-reserve First Nations residents, along with second-stage treatment beds in their own community.

Although Monday marked the Tories’ first health-care promises in the two-week-old campaign, Health Minister Audrey Gordon didn’t attend either event.

Stefanson was asked about Gordon’s absence and said the Southdale candidate first elected in 2019 was too busy knocking on doors.

“Audrey Gordon is working door to door — like all of our candidates, working very hard to make sure she brings that seat back to the Manitoba legislature to ensure we form government again,” Stefanson said.

Stefanson, who is running for re-election in Tuxedo, said her government last month achieved its goal of hiring 2,000 health-care professionals as set out in a Nov. 10 $200-million health human resources action plan, although no one from the Manitoba government or the PC party could provide any details of how and from where the 2,000 were recruited.

“That’s good, but we recognize there’s more work that needs to be done that’s why we announced today $30 million annually,” she said, adding $10 million of the promised funds will target rural health-care recruitment and retention.

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The NDP, that’s been laser-focused on health care throughout the campaign, wasn’t about to cede any ground on the subject to the PCs — literally. On Monday, NDP candidate lawn signs surrounded the PC podium with its “fighting to heal health care” slogan at the Tories’ morning press conference near Grant’s Old Mill.

“This is the same government that has cut nearly $40 million from health-care recruitment and retention over the past several years,” NDP health critic Uzoma Asagwara said moments after the Tory event at one just metres away.

“They cut the rural physician retention fund, cut and underspent the general physician retention fund and they’ve denied nurse practitioners the ability to even access the recruitment and retention fund. This is another announcement to distract Manitobans from their failed record on health care,” Asagwara (Union Station) said.

St. James PC candidate Tim Diack called the NDP’s immediate-response tactic “bullying.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol 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.