Candidates spar over health care

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This article was published 19/09/2023 (929 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Millions of dollars in new funding have been promised to bring more health-care workers to Brandon and rural areas of Westman if Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative party is re-elected in October.

Of the $120-million campaign promise made by the PCs in Winnipeg on Monday, $40 million would be made available for rural recruitment, said Len Isleifson, the PC candidate for Brandon East.

“When you do planning, you want to plan for the future, not just for today,” Isleifson said. “So, this is a new permanent $120-million fund for the next four years that will recruit staff from across the province, with $10 million a year for four years coming into the rural area.”

In November 2022, the provincial government announced its $200-million Health Human Resources Action Plan (HHRAP). That amount was doubled to $400 million two months ago, in July.

Included in the action plan is the goal to bring 2,000 more health-care professionals into the system by improving recruitment, training, and retention, which Isleifson said has been achieved.

To claim that more than 2,000 new health-care workers are now on board in Manitoba, said Quentin Robinson, the NDP’s candidate for Brandon West, “flies in the face of any evidence that I have seen.”

“Every health-care professional I talk with testifies to the fact that staff numbers are declining. This is just a desperate attempt to whitewash a record which is full of failure on the health-care front,” Robinson said.

Manitoba’s NDP leader Wab Kinew announced his health-care platform in late August with $500 million over four years to hire 300 nurses in two years in Winnipeg, an equivalent commitment for northern and rural Manitoba within four years, and 400 physicians in five years.

The PC candidate for Brandon West, Wayne Balcaen, said that the NDP have “cynical, vote-buying promises with no plan on how to staff all these new facilities, in the middle of a worldwide staffing crisis.”

“Wab Kinew simply can’t do it without cutting projects or raising your taxes,” Balcaen stated in a news release.

In response, Brandon East NDP candidate Glen Simard said the NDP is focused on helping families and not raising taxes.

“We have made it very clear that we will not raise the provincial sales tax. The Manitoba NDP has a plan that is focused on lowering costs for working families like hydro and gas while growing our economy,” Simard said.

In the Wheat City, expansion at the Brandon Regional Health Centre and construction of the Western Manitoba Cancer Centre has been underway since the fall of 2022, but Isleifson said the projects may be jeopardized if his government is not re-elected.

“Earlier this year, work started for the $136-million upgrades to the Brandon Regional (Health Centre), and the Western Manitoba Cancer Centre. These projects are at risk if the NDP form government,” Isleifson stated in a news release.

The people who broke health care can’t be trusted to fix it, said Simard.

“We’ve made a number of commitments to Brandon like a new Neighborhood Minor Illness and Injury Clinic, a new primary care clinic, 10 new doctor training seats for Westman medical students and an LPN-RN pathway so nurses can upgrade their training without leaving their home community. These commitments are over and above what is already in the provincial budget — a budget we have adopted as our fiscal frame,” said Simard.

Staffing levels in health-care facilities continue to cause a strain across the system after the COVID-19 pandemic, with some advocacy groups saying doctor shortages in the province have reached an all-time high this year.

Recruiting and retaining health care professionals isn’t something that will be “fixed overnight,” said Isleifson, who added some physicians are in a mindset that they’ll only live in a place with an NHL, CFL or Major League Baseball team.

“The biggest drawback from what I’m hearing from the doctors themselves is our weather. Beautiful summers, but you know, when new doctors come to Canada, they want to go to the West Coast, where it’s a little bit warmer. Even my doctor said he’s got a line on a bunch of physicians, and that’s the number-one problem. He says he just needs to get them here because once they get here, chances are they won’t leave,” Isleifson said.

The key to recruitment and retention is a government that respects front-line health-care workers and creates a positive and rewarding work environment, said Simard.

“We know fixing health care won’t be easy, but we have the support of Manitoba’s nurses, paramedics, home-care workers and many doctors and specialists, like the former head of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and the former head of CancerCare Manitoba,” Simard said.

Manitobans go to the polls Oct. 3

» mmcdougall@brandonsun.com

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