Manitoba can step up

Over the past few months, our province has found itself in the national spotlight — on wildfire maps, in climate briefings, and in health-care headlines.

The 2025 wildfire season hit harder than most of us imagined: smoke-filled skies, mass evacuations, long stretches of uncertainty. Then came the counter-move: a bold net-zero roadmap was launched, climate investments were announced, and hundreds of health-care professionals were invited to build their careers here. It’s tempting to take a victory lap.

It behooves us instead to ask: can Manitoba turn this attention into measurable results for the people who breathe the smoke, wait in crowded emergency rooms and navigate a changing economy?

The signs of progress are real. The province rolled out Manitoba’s Path to Net Zero with tangible commitments: electric-vehicle charging corridors linking Winnipeg to the North, new conservation projects, and an emphasis on efficiency upgrades. Health-care recruitment is gaining momentum too. The government recently reported Manitoba’s largest-ever net gain in physicians, alongside expanded medical-training seats at the University of Manitoba.

U.S.-trained doctors, many disillusioned with growing pressures at home, are now choosing Manitoba as a place to practice: a quiet but powerful vote of confidence in our province’s openness and stability.

Contrast that with what’s happening elsewhere. Ontario has tightened residency access for internationally trained doctors, recently restricting their eligibility in the first round of the national residency matching process that places medical graduates into hospital training programs. In Quebec, Bill 2 effectively has physicians in a chokehold of punitive obligations: new restrictions on flexibility, threats of fines, and tighter government control over practice. Analysts warn it could push more physicians to leave the province altogether.

Manitoba, by comparison, is extending a hand. That openness is more than a feel-good story: it’s a strategic advantage. But only if invitations turn into licences and licences into physicians actually serving communities.

We can’t waste this talent in paperwork purgatory.

Still, celebration must come with accountability. With unemployment hovering around 6.2 per cent, Manitobans are watching closely. Optimism is welcome, but people need to see progress in their daily lives: safer summers, cleaner air, shorter wait times.

This is where transparency becomes the bridge between promise and proof. Manitoba can set a national standard by publishing real-time dashboards for climate and health: how many clean-air shelters are operational, how many doctors have been licensed, how many chargers installed, how much energy retrofitted. Data should not be buried in PDFs; it should live where residents can see it.

Wildfire adaptation offers a place to start. The 2025 season wasn’t an anomaly. Scientists suggest this could become the new normal. We need FireSmart-like fuel breaks around at-risk communities, Indigenous-led stewardship programs reinstated, permanent clean-air shelters in rural hubs, and meaningful protection for peatlands and wetlands. Not as symbolic “green” gestures, but as living climate infrastructure.

Plans and PDFs don’t douse flames. Preparation does.

The same logic applies to our climate promises. A net-zero plan only matters if it lowers household bills and builds real resilience. Manitoba can lead by fast-tracking energy retrofits in public buildings and northern housing, completing the Winnipeg-to-Thompson charging spine by 2026, and publishing quarterly progress updates so people can see where their tax dollars are going. Climate leadership is much like public trust. Once lost to over-promising, it’s hard to regain.

Health care is perhaps our most visible test of sincerity. If we’re inviting hundreds of skilled clinicians, we owe Manitobans clear, time-bound pathways from invitation to practice. That means expanding Practice-Readiness Assessment seats, licensing U.S.-trained and internationally trained physicians without needless delay, and publicly tracking outcomes: applications received, licences issued, wait times reduced.

When new doctors arrive, Manitobans should know where — and when — they’ll start serving. That degree of transparency turns intent into impact.

Manitobans are listening. The rest of Canada is watching. If 2023 was the year of shock, smoke, system strain and wakeup calls, then 2025 is becoming the year of reckoning. Let us make 2026 the year of proof. Optimism is deserved, but it is not a destination. It’s a decision: to deliver, transparently, boldly, and for all corners of this province.

Here’s to Manitoba stepping up, not just in the spotlight but in the quiet work behind the scenes, so that when the next fire hits (and it will), the next clinic opens, and the next charger hums, we can say we weren’t just ready, we were ahead of the curve.

Marwa Suraj is a proud Manitoban and a physician by training.