Tories’ austerity-fuelled tunnel vision profoundly expensive for Manitobans

Opinion

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This article was published 22/03/2024 (539 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are many reasons why moving ahead with plans to build a 95-bed personal-care home in Lac du Bonnet will help Manitoba’s beleaguered health-care system.

The Kinew government announced plans Thursday to construct the seniors home after the former Progressive Conservative government cancelled the project following the 2016 provincial election.

It wasn’t the only capital project the Tories nixed. The former government underspent its infrastructure budget by hundreds of millions of dollars every year it was in office. That meant road work, schools, health facilities — including personal-care homes — that were supposed to get built or expanded never did.

That has had a profound impact on Manitoba’s economy, including on its health-care system. Every year the province delayed or cancelled the construction of personal-care homes, the wait list for a bed grew. That not only meant seniors had to wait longer for supportive housing, it also contributed to hospital overcrowding and growing emergency department wait times.

In 2017-18, the Tories underspent their infrastructure budget by $487 million. In 2018-19, the PCs were $566 million under budget. That went on every year they were in government. It was part of an austerity plan designed to reduce the province’s borrowing requirements.

While that may have helped the Finance Department’s balance sheet, it had a negative and long-term impact on health care, the education system and the province’s transportation system. You can’t starve the capital budget of hundreds of millions of dollars a year and not expect that to have a domino effect throughout the provincial economy (which, in turn, weakens the province’s balance sheet).

Health care, specifically, was hit hard by the Tories’ decision to underspend its infrastructure budget. It meant much-needed capital projects, such as the proposed personal-care home in Lac du Bonnet, did not get built. Construction of that facility was first announced by the previous NDP government under then-premier Greg Selinger in 2012.

Despite an election pledge by the Tories in 2016 to significantly expand the number of personal-care home beds in the province, the Lac du Bonnet project was cancelled. That, and the cancellation or delay of similar nursing-home projects, had a detrimental impact on hospital and ER overcrowding.

One of the main contributors to hospital overcrowding is the number of seniors in hospital beds awaiting placement in a personal-care home. The more people there are in hospital waiting for a spot in a nursing home, the fewer medical beds there are available for incoming patients.

Since the vast majority of patients are admitted to hospital through emergency rooms, that congestion builds up in ERs. The fewer hospital beds there are available on medical wards, the longer admitted patients in emergency departments wait in hallways for a bed.

The more admitted patients there are in ERs, the busier ER physicians and nurses are looking after them. That means incoming ER patients wait longer to see a physician. It’s all connected. It’s no mystery why ER wait times in Winnipeg have doubled over the past 10 years.

Building a personal-care home in Lac du Bonnet won’t solve all of that. Manitoba has fallen years behind in maintaining an adequate supply of nursing-home beds, especially given the province’s aging population. The number of personal-care home beds in Winnipeg fell from 5,678 in 2018-19 to 5,480 in 2022-23, according to Winnipeg Regional Health Authority data. It will take years to undo that damage.

The decision to cancel nursing-home projects may have reduced the province’s borrowing requirements in the short-term, but it added to hospital operating expenses. It’s far more expensive to fund a hospital bed than it is to pay for a personal-care home bed. The more seniors there are warehoused on medical wards in hospital, the more expensive it is for taxpayers. Cancelling the construction or expansion of personal-care homes may have been penny-wise, but it was pound foolish.

The $66.4 million personal-care home in Lac du Bonnet is slated for completion in 2027. The province will have to do far more than that to expand the inventory of nursing-home beds to ensure an adequate supply. But this week’s announcement was a step in the right direction.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca