Manitoba NDP says it will reopen 3 Winnipeg ERs shuttered under current government
Opposition Leader Wab Kinew previously said he would not consider backtracking on closures that began in 2017
The Manitoba NDP is promising to reopen emergency rooms that were shuttered at three Winnipeg hospitals if they form government in the upcoming election.
That plan will start with building a new ER at the Victoria Hospital to meet the needs of south Winnipeg's growing population, NDP Leader Wab Kinew said at a news conference on Monday.
Afterward, the New Democrats would reopen ERs at Seven Oaks General Hospital and Concordia Hospital, Kinew said.
"This is a common-sense, smart and incremental program that we are committing to today," he said outside Winnipeg's St. Boniface Hospital.
The Opposition party's latest election promise would undo what were controversial efforts that began in 2017 to cut wait times and find inefficiencies in Winnipeg's health-care system, which included closing the three Winnipeg ERs. All three currently operate as 24/7 urgent care centres.
Wait times at Winnipeg emergency departments and urgent care centres haven't dropped, however. The median wait for the past year has been 2.5 hours, well above the 1.5 hours that was reported before the first of three emergency departments was closed.
"We now have the ability as our team, as a province of Manitoba, to reject the single biggest mistake in health care that the PCs made, which was to close the three ERs," Kinew said.
The announcement comes a day after the NDP pledged to spend $500 million over four years to address health-care recruitment in Manitoba, which would include hiring 300 nurses.
Kinew said on Monday that an NDP government wouldn't build a new ER for Victoria Hospital ER until that target is met, so the new emergency departments have staff.
The Victoria Hospital project is eventually expected to include $150 million in capital costs, but only $3 million would be budgeted annually in the first few years to do consultation with experts and get the project to its first phase, he said.
The other two Winnipeg ERs are expected to come with a similar price tag, though more will be known about cost, and whether new builds or renovations are needed, after the first one is complete. All the new ERs are expected to have an annual operating cost of between $4 million and $4.8 million, Kinew said, and the hospitals will keep operating as urgent care centres.
The overall project is expected to take seven to eight years — or two terms in government, he said.
"It took the PCs seven years to break it. It might take us seven years to fix it," Kinew said.
Backtracking on stance
The NDP leader has said more than once he would not reopen the ERs — including in a year-end interview with CBC in 2020, when he said it would cost too much to convert urgent-care centres back into emergency departments.
Kinew was also asked following a provincial leaders' forum hosted by the Association of Manitoba Municipalities in April whether a first-term NDP government would reopen any emergency rooms in Winnipeg, to which he responded in the negative.
"No, that's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is using the current configuration, but adding more beds, adding more nurses, physicians, that can actually care for people when they need it," Kinew said.
On Monday, he said Manitoba is continuing to receive significantly more in transfer payments from the federal government than it was getting back in 2017 — which means the province can now afford to reopen the ERs and hire the people needed to staff them.
In response to the announcement, Manitoba PC spokesperson and outgoing McPhillips MLA Shannon Martin pointed out the change in Kinew's stance and called the NDP's pledge "simply unbelievable."
"Desperate empty promises show that Wab Kinew is just not ready for government," Martin said in an emailed statement.
Manitoba Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said opening more emergency rooms is not the solution to the province's health-care crisis.
"The answer to making our health-care system work is to find ways to keep people out of emergency rooms, not keep building more emergency rooms."
He said his party's plan is focused on opening more walk-in clinics and recruiting family doctors so that people have other options than the ER.
Health promise talks to voters: Adams
Christopher Adams, a political scientist at the University of Manitoba, said the NDP seems to be trying to appeal to a broad swath of voters by reversing a "fairly unpopular" decision that was made under former premier Brian Pallister.
"When you're talking in Manitoba about politics, about the emergency wards, you're really talking to the mainstream society. Everybody's got a connection to health care," he said.
Committing to building a new ER at Victoria Hospital first could also appeal to voters in south Winnipeg, where the NDP needs to win back seats that were captured by the Progressive Conservatives in 2016, Adams said.
Dr. Eric Jacobsohn, an anesthesiologist, intensive care physician and professor at the University of Manitoba's Max Rady College of Medicine, said at the news conference the NDP's plan to reopen ERs in Winnipeg addresses an "inexorable deterioration in access to medical care" over the past seven years.
"It is a well-known scientific fact that the lack of access to medical care manifests by partly increasing use of emergency departments," Jacobsohn said.
"Unfortunately, a series of consolidation decisions were made by the current government, including the very unwise decision to reduce the number of emergency departments in Winnipeg. This fact, combined with a lack of access to primary and secondary care, has resulted in sheer chaos in emergency departments."
Darlene Jackson, president of Manitoba Nurses Union, said she thinks building a new ER at Victoria Hospital would take some of the pressure off the city's three emergency rooms, while serving a growing area of Winnipeg.
"We're still seeing patients going to urgent care centres that need to be in an ER, should be in an ER, and [experience] prolonged waits for an ambulance to take them to the another facility. So I think this will help with that situation," she said.
Kinew said the NDP would also build a new ER in Eriksdale, Man., to improve health care for families in rural Manitoba. That project is expected to include $5 million in capital costs, he said.
"This is a town that's spoken out loud and clear that they want emergency services in their community," Kinew said.
The provincial election is on Oct. 3.
With files from Ian Froese, Radio-Canada's Catherine Moreau