Liberals promise to create seniors’ advocate

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This article was published 19/08/2023 (957 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The creation of an independent provincial Seniors’ Advocate and increasing staffing at personal care homes were among the campaign promises made by the Manitoba Liberal Party on Friday.

That included a pledge to establish a Brandon campus of the University of Manitoba’s medical school to teach family medicine in the Wheat City.

Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said during a media conference near the Maples Care Home, that the proposals were in response to the COVID-19 outbreak that killed 57 people at the facility in 2020 as well as Auditor General Tyson Shtykalo’s report on failures at the Protection for Persons in Care Office (PPCO) earlier this year.

In that report, Shtykalo said there were numerous instances of the office concluding allegations of abuse were unfounded despite evidence to the contrary, that the office had not released any annual reports since 2016 and that as of last year, there was a backlog in investigations dating back to 2018, including some that had yet to begin at all.

After that report, Justice Minister and Steinbach Progressive Conservative MLA Kelvin Goertzen announced the PPCO was to be disbanded and former Court of King’s Bench justice William Burnett appointed as the special commissioner to create a new independent office over the next 18 to 24 months.

On top of that, Goertzen announced the government would be undertaking a deeper examination of files investigated by the PPCO and would clear the existing backlog of cases with $2 million in dedicated funding.

Speaking to the Sun by phone, Lamont accused both the Progressive Conservatives and NDP of trying to evade their culpability in the matter as both parties had been in power since a 2011 report on the PPCO found similar problems with the office.

“Both parties have done absolutely nothing,” Lamont said. “Even while you have truly horrific cases of abuse, cases where seniors were being assaulted, punched, crushed with machinery deliberately.”

Despite the Tories’ plans to replace the office, Lamont said the timeline they’ve presented is too long and change is needed sooner than that.

The Liberals’ plan, if elected, would be to follow the lead of British Columbia. That province created an independent Seniors Advocate in 2014 which can receive and investigate complaints on top of making broader recommendations on all topics involving seniors.

It would be quite similar, Lamont said, to the work carried out by the Manitoba Advocate for Children in Youth.

With regards to staffing, the Liberals made two commitments — the first would be to hire nurse practitioners to improve preventative care in care homes, the second would be to improve staffing ratios at care homes so that each resident will receive 4.1 hours of direct care per day.

Asked how those initiatives would be staffed, since Manitoba’s health authorities already spend millions of dollars a year to hire nurses from for-profit nursing agencies to make up for staffing shortages, Lamont said the key would be to do a better job of recruiting and retaining nurses.

“One of our first commitments to rebuilding the health-care system is to provide bonuses to nurses and other health-care professionals who return to work in the public system,” Lamont said.

Nurses who commit to working for at least two years in the public system at would be eligible for a $10,000 signing bonus with the amount being pro-rated for those working less than full time. Other health-care professionals would be eligible for bonuses up to $5,000.

The party’s pledge to establish a Brandon campus for the University of Manitoba’s medical school would not just train doctors, but also for nurse practitioners and other health professions.

“Right now the PCs have planned a $1.5 billion project for downtown Winnipeg, when what we need to be doing is focusing on better care out in the community and across the province,” Lamont said.

As for paying for those bonuses, Lamont said providing a higher level of care at personal care homes and keeping Manitobans healthier would save the province money. On top of that, Lamont pointed to recent health transfer increases from the federal government.

Though the Progressive Conservatives have put programs in place to help foreign-trained health-care workers get their Canadian credentials, Lamont said they aren’t making a difference.

“I can guarantee it because we’re hearing from nurses and doctors and people who are unable to work as nurses and doctors” he said.

The final plank announced Friday was a promise to introduce legislation that will require ministerial approval before affordable housing for seniors is sold, like the sale of Lions Place in Winnipeg.

In a statement sent by email, Assiniboia MLA and PC candidate Scott Johnston pointed to improvements his government has made while in power.

“Under Heather Stefanson’s leadership, PCs created Manitoba’s first-ever minister of seniors and long-term care,” Johnston’s statement read.

“We also launched a new strategy to ensure Manitoba seniors have high-quality services to lead active, independent lives, as well as support for their changing needs while keeping them connected to their families and communities. We will always fight for Manitoba seniors and to make our province the best place to age.”

The statement also pointed to the party’s promises made after the Auditor General’s report as well as the government’s $3.3 million pilot program for community care introduced earlier this year, planning work for the construction of six new personal care homes in the province and $16 million allocated for care home staffing and training.

During a media conference in Dauphin, Manitoba NDP Leader Wab Kinew said the Liberals ideas were good, but only his party is in a position to implement those sorts of measures.

“I know we’ve already committed to many of the things they were talking about today, in particular around the Seniors’ Advocate and around increasing staffing in personal care homes,” Kinew said. “But what I would also say is this: only the Manitoba NDP can deliver on these ideas because only the Manitoba NDP can replace the PCs as a government.”

Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson applauded the nurse practitioner pledge.

“We believe an initiative like this is long overdue,” Jackson’s said in a statement.

“Acuity in long term care and personal care homes has been steadily increasing. Nurse practitioners in Manitoba have amongst the widest scope of treatment interventions in Canada and would be instrumental in ensuring our seniors in care get the medial treatment they deserve. Nurse practitioners are an under-utilized resource in our view, and this is but one of the many areas that we can improve our health system overall by engaging NPs to a greater degree throughout the system.”

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