The Sun chats with Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont

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This article was published 30/09/2023 (877 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Following the Brandon Chamber of Commerce debate on Tuesday, Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont joined The Brandon Sun editorial board to discuss the last week of his election campaign. What follows is part of his conversation with editor Matt Goerzen. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

MG — We keep coming back to this issue. And I’ll bring it out first — the premier’s and the Tories’ insistence that what feels like a dog whistle is actually a car horn, when it comes down to kids, parents and their rights to know what’s happening with children. Now, in that debate this morning, you basically call this a waste of our time, which I think is …

DL — No I will, I immediately corrected myself, these things are important. The treatment of kids in school is important. But this has been this entire thing. And actually, Wab Kinew said the same thing, but this is to distract us, and pretend there’s a problem when there isn’t one. Parents already have rights. So what they’re going and telling people is they’re suggesting you don’t have rights when you do, you can’t find things out when you can. It’s about fear-mongering and that to parents … in the name of child safety, and but in doing that, they’re actually completely attacking the entire school system they run — teachers, guidance counsellors. This is a campaign tactic pulled from Florida, pulled from the U.S. to fill people with fear that somehow the children will not be safe. And that is — I don’t think it’s extortion, but it might be verging on emotional blackmail. This is not a fit way to act in politics. And actually the same thing is true for the landfill. These are issues that are being used to enrage people, to make people frightened and to make people think about anything except all the other things that also matter, which some of which are also very serious matters of life and death …

MG — (Brian) Pallister, basically — What happened after Queen Victoria’s statue was toppled, and his comments thereafter, it could be pointed to as the tipping point, literally, for his administration. Have we done any better? Has Premier Stefanson done any better in the last few years?

DL — No, it’s worse. Because like the entire landfill issue, it should never have been a political issue. Like you were talking about victims of crime, there would searches like this everywhere, and the PCs have changed their story over and over and over again, to justify this before settling on one.

MG — She keeps saying that it’s all about safety. And I get there are people out there — Brandon University professors saying that’s not the case, and that it can be done safely. But she, I think the underlying feeling is that it’s really about cost. Now, I guess my question to you on that very subject would it ever be cost prohibitive to do something like that — to go in? Is cost even a factor here? Should it be?

DL — I was at a press conference with that individual from Brandon, and the entire team. They’ve done this in other places. There was one man went missing in a landfill in Toronto, and hundreds of police officers searched for his body for months, and no one blinked. This should never have become anything political … This is a police investigation into multiple murders. And the fact that we’re having a referendum on whether some murder victims get to be investigated and not others on the basis of safety, when every single one of the excuses offered up is just that — it’s an excuse. I’ve spent more time than I ever expected in this job meeting with people who’ve been victims of horrific crimes. Families of murder victims. People who’ve been sexually assaulted, and there is a broken look in their eyes. And this isn’t just about emotion. But it’s not just that they’re grieving. It’s that they cannot get justice. This has turned into a situation where people who are Indigenous in Manitoba do not believe they can get justice in this province. And for the premier to be running on that, that is a travesty of justice. And it’s incredibly harmful to our province because they’re willing to risk torching that entire relationship, for a few seats.

MG — Doctors Manitoba told media earlier this year that doctor shortages in the province have reached an all-time high. In fact, a report released last year from the Canadian Institute for Health Information found Manitoba would need about 405 more doctors to meet just on par with the Canadian average. What can the Liberals hope to do? Let’s assume that you get four seats. All things being equal, you get more. What can the Liberal party hope to do differently that the Tories and the NDP haven’t already done?

DL — Well, I’ll say two things. One is that, like everyone is talking about this being a majority government. And I don’t think that needs to be the case. Right? There’s a possibility of a minority government, and Manitoba Liberals can help make that happen. And that is absolutely the case. Because there are constituencies where we can beat the NDP, and we can hold our own and we can beat PCs as well.

MG — So let’s say then that we have a minority government. Let’s put it in that context. What can you do to push something that hasn’t been tried yet, by either of these two major parts?

DL — One of the things it would be actually to agree to say, instead of, let’s not spend $1.5 billion, completely rebuilding the Health Sciences Centre. Instead, let’s make sure that we’re building as quickly as possible a new Faculty of Medicine, rural and northern family medicine in Brandon, I’m quite serious about that, because that is what needs to happen. That’s one of the primary things we need to have happen. What has happened — and it’s been a problem since the 1980s — everyone has known that there were going to be doctor shortages, and neither the NDP or the PCs did anything about it. So we need to make major investments into U of M, Brandon University. We have to expand medical residencies. We have to expand the international graduate program. And we have to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to increase those graduates and fill those spaces as quickly and safely as possible.

MG — I’ve been here long enough to remember when the NDP thought about the exact same solution, trying to put a medical school in Brandon — even if it was a satellite of the University of Manitoba.

DL — It would have to be yes.

MG — But it was cost-prohibitive. In fact, that was one of the major reasons that it got killed, it was hundreds of millions, or at least tens of millions, of dollars in order to put it together.

DL — Again, a fraction — a fraction — of the $1.5 billion, which has been announced for HSC (Health Sciences Centre).

MG — So is it something that can be reasonably done, beyond what the consultants said was going to be a project that was too expensive?

DL — I’ve spoken to folks here and Brandon, but you’re talking about $100 million building. That is essentially what it needs to be. U of M is already accredited. So it makes more sense to work with U of M and Brandon together. We have to recognize that we are in a massive health-care shortage crisis. It’s not an end — when I looked at the other party’s plans, the PCs don’t really have a plan. And the NDP have something on the back of a napkin, where they’ve just thrown in some numbers, some numbers and figures without any plan at all. Like, it is really dismaying. This is a party that keeps talking about health care, and has no actual plan to fix it, that has been stable. They keep making, they’ve been making it up as they go along. And to be making it up as you go along, when we’re facing a possible shortage of 700 doctors and we already have the worst doctor shortage in Canada, is like, it’s just irresponsible, quite frankly. So there’s no question we have to do this because we’re not going to have the doctors.

MG — That’s a long-term solution, because you can’t build a school overnight. So what’s the short-term solution? In terms of at least putting a Band-Aid on a problem that you’re working toward healing?

DL — OK, so number one, if you’re just talking to doctors, so the first thing is to expand the number of medical residencies. That was cut under the PCs. The PCs closed so many clinics that were teaching clinics, the University of Manitoba nearly lost its accreditation. Because they cut so many clinics without asking whether there were doctors learning there. One was in St. Boniface. So you expand the number of residencies. You expand the number of international medical graduates that the U of M can take. You could quickly expand that. So you’re taking people, and it’s not just from other countries. We have reduced our ability to teach doctors here in Manitoba so badly that there are people leaving Canada to go to Ireland to go to med school, and then come back here, because they cannot get in here. So we could be bringing those people back, and they could be going straight into residency, which means they’re working in the system right away.

MG — It was happening 20 years ago. I had friends who were trying to be doctors back then who couldn’t get into the program.

DL — And that’s why because it’s been … because 20 years ago, the NDP were in power. And they did nothing to change what the PCs did. This is a map and it was known 20 years ago that we were going to be facing a massive retirement shortage. It was completely irresponsible. So that’s one of the fastest ways you can get people in expanding residencies. The second part of it is making sure that we’re actually — when we bring doctors and nurses here — that they can work here, which is also not happening. In St. Boniface, we had two doctors leave the province who spoke French, and we need French-speaking doctors. And they could go work in Ottawa and in Quebec, but not here. They’re being blocked from working here. Again, we don’t understand why. But that’s partly — that’s the health system. So actually making sure we’re hiring people. And the third thing is that credentials recognition dealing with the Colleges of Physicians & Surgeons, dealing with the Colleges of Nurses, because … they’re turning people away who are fully qualified, or they’re requiring people who are specialists to requalify as GPs (general practitioners). None of it makes any sense … and I don’t understand what the breakdown in communication is. But that has to be addressed.

MG — We’ve got Wab Kinew saying he’s going to rebuild three ERs in Winnipeg over eight years (if elected). We’ve got …

DL — You know what, no, no, to be clear, Manitobans are still going to be facing the longest, they’re actually going to have to be waiting years to be seen in an ER, under the NDP. Because what we need. And I’ve talked with doctors about this, we need to shift our focus. The reason our health-care system has so many problems, and it’s so expensive, is because we expect — we’re trying to treat people in ERs instead of clinics all the time. There are lots of people who could be seen if we actually just had, like 24-7 clinics, which we don’t. So our plan is to say yes, we focus on training of family doctors, but we improve how they get paid. So it’s a kind of flex time, which means they can make more money, but they can also spend more time with patients who needed more, so the quality of care goes up and doctors can make a bit more.

MG — All levels of government have been witness to the deterioration of downtown Brandon from its historical role as the heart of the city. I asked this similar question of Stefanson and Kinew. A Liberal government … is there a promise in there somewhere to make larger investments into our downtown?

DL — It doesn’t have to be a Liberal government. Well, we can still make a difference when we’re in there for whatever government.

MG — Should there be larger investments in downtown Brandon, or has that ship sailed? Should we be looking at doing something else with downtown Brandon?

DL — No. People talk about government being like a business. But think of your city as like a product. You want your product to be convenient, and different, and unique. And having a functioning downtown makes you a unique place. That’s really important. And it’s a question of making sure you’ve got a mix of people living together, businesses, schools, making sure you have a mix of the types of people, lighting, security … absolutely needs to be done. But the issue has been that we’ve been for the most part subsidizing sprawling communities, rather than reinvesting. You can actually address it by giving municipalities new tax tools. That’s part of it. But the other is making sure that you have capital available for entrepreneurs. There are lots of people who’d like to be able to start businesses who can’t. They might start them in downtowns, who can’t, because they can’t get access to capital. So it’s a combination of public investment, private investment. And it needs to be focused on local ownership, too. Because so much of what development is about bringing in some big development in someplace else where ownership is elsewhere, and the jobs are here, when we want to make sure we have jobs and ownership as part of that as a way of building wealth and rebuilding communities.

MG — Is it a fair statement to say that successive provincial governments have ignored Brandon, to some extent?

DL — Absolutely without question, I’ve heard that. I’ve heard it. It’s the entire Southwest. If people want to understand part of the problem with Manitoba, and the other two political parties, is that they completely take their own bases for granted. So they think, well, they’re always going to vote for us, so we don’t have to do anything for them. I met folks in Boissevain who’d lost a nursing station and a couple of other things. They said, well, you know, we thought people hated us because we voted blue and then we vote blue, then the blue gets in and it turns out it’s no different. It’s because they’re being — both of them are “small c,” fundamentally conservative and not in a positive way. They’re trying to rather than taking risks to grow, rather than taking risks to invest, they always want the quick buck.

MG — I would argue that the Liberals have watched their base in western Manitoba shrivel a bit. And it’s been under (former Liberal leader Rana Bokhari). It’s a little bit under you. Is this because the focus is trying to win seats in Winnipeg?

DL — It’s because there was a pandemic. It is extremely difficult to organize, when you’re under the Arctic ice and a nuclear submarine for two years, which was what it was like during the pandemic. The reality is, because of my joke about the NDP, they’re not even a real political party. They’re just the political wing of the Manitoba Federation of Labour. So I will say when Wab Kinew was talking about going to church basements, all you had to do was to go down to the union (laughs) Union Hall. Right. We are genuinely a grassroots party, where we are not tied into, like these large, even sometimes national organizations that are supporting the other two …

MG — Last question. Is there anything you’d like to add?

DL — The one thing I will say to folks is that — and this goes back to polls — why would you let a complete stranger, one of 1,000 complete strangers tell you how to vote? Like you have no idea what they’re thinking or what they’ve read. This is an opportunity, and it is a really important opportunity. We have great candidates. You can feel good voting for Manitoba Liberals. And the more people who vote for them, it won’t result in more PCs or more NDP. It’ll just mean more Liberals.