Rural ER closures bitter pill after NDP promised to fix health care

Opinion

Manitoba’s health-care debate has a bad habit of ignoring half of the province.

We, including yours truly, fixate on how long patients wait in Winnipeg emergency rooms. Whether it’s six hours at Health Sciences Centre or eight hours at St. Boniface, ER wait times dominate the conversation, especially in election years.

We rarely talk about what happens when there’s no ER to wait in at all?

That’s the grim reality unfolding across rural and northern Manitoba, where communities are facing yet another wave of emergency department closures and reduced hours.

The impact? If you suffer a medical emergency in these areas — a heart attack, a serious injury, a child in respiratory distress — there may be nowhere local to go. No doctor. No nurse. No emergency response team. Just a long drive, a flight if the weather co-operates, or a desperate wait.

This isn’t hallway medicine. It’s no medicine at all.

What’s worse is that it’s happening under an NDP government that promised to “fix” health care — a government that vowed to keep emergency rooms open.

During the 2023 election, the NDP made health care the centrepiece of its platform. The party pledged to reverse the damage done by the Progressive Conservatives, who had closed ERs, consolidated services, and hollowed out rural hospitals. The NDP promised a better deal for front-line workers and, more importantly, a better deal for patients — in every part of the province.

The system was in crisis long before the NDP took power.

They campaigned in rural Manitoba and promised to keep ERs open.

“No more cuts. No more closures,” they said.

Now? They’re the ones presiding over a system where emergency departments in half of the province are either closing temporarily, operating on reduced hours, or teetering on the edge of collapse.

The system was in crisis long before the NDP took power. Staff shortages didn’t begin in October 2023. The rural doctor shortage has been building for more than a decade. Nurses were burning out long before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The NDP didn’t inherit this blind. They knew how bad it was and they ran on a promise to fix it.

So, where’s the fix?

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara has talked about improving rural recruitment, expanding training programs and accrediting internationally educated professionals more quickly. Those are important initiatives — but they’re all long-term. They do nothing for the patient who needs care tonight or the parent whose local ER is closed this weekend.

What Manitobans outside the Perimeter Highway need is immediate action.

Where’s the emergency deployment plan to keep rural ERs open during staff shortages? Why hasn’t the province created a rural emergency response team — one that can rotate through crisis areas on short notice? Why aren’t we seeing housing incentives, relocation bonuses or fly-in supports for doctors and nurses willing to work short-term shifts in remote areas?

We have a two-tier health-care system in Manitoba, not based on income, but geography.

If this were happening in Winnipeg — if Grace or Victoria Hospital suddenly closed the ER for a week — there would be public outrage and government intervention within hours. When it happens in a place such as Swan River, it barely makes the news.

That’s the uncomfortable truth: we have a two-tier health-care system in Manitoba, not based on income, but geography.

Inside the Perimeter Highway, patients may face delays, but they still get care, eventually. Outside of it, you’re increasingly on your own.

This isn’t just a medical issue, it’s a political one. The NDP didn’t just promise to manage health care, they promised to transform it. They said no more closures. That’s what rural voters heard. That’s what they were counting on.

Now they’re watching those promises evaporate — and not just in news releases, but in real time, in the form of closed doors and darkened ER signs.

That trust, once lost, will be hard to regain.

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The NDP needs to treat this like the crisis it is, not just a staffing issue or a regional hiccup. It’s a provincewide emergency that demands immediate, hands-on intervention.

It means pulling resources where needed, even temporarily. It means showing up in rural communities, explaining what’s happening and being honest about what’s next. It means making rural health care the priority, not a side note buried behind announcements about Winnipeg surgical backlogs.

People in nearly half of the province live with a frightening reality: in a moment of crisis, they may have nowhere to turn.

That’s not what they were promised.

The NDP asked Manitobans to trust them with the health-care file and rural Manitobans answered that call. Now it’s time for this government to deliver. Not someday. Not after more consultations. Now.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca

Tom Brodbeck
Columnist

Tom Brodbeck is an award-winning author and columnist with over 30 years experience in print media. He joined the Free Press in 2019. Born and raised in Montreal, Tom graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1993 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and commerce. Read more about Tom.

Tom provides commentary and analysis on political and related issues at the municipal, provincial and federal level. His columns are built on research and coverage of local events. The Free Press’s editing team reviews Tom’s columns before they are 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.