Exchange Sessions Featuring Sierra Noble

Surgery backlog, St. Boniface ER big-ticket items in health budget

The provincial government will spend more than $200 million this year to tackle the massive backlog of surgeries and expand emergency room capacity, while slashing its COVID-19 response budget.

Finance Minister Cameron Friesen said his government will spend a combined $7.2 billion to deliver health care, mental health and addictions services, a new seniors strategy and deliver promised improvements to long term care in 2022-23, representing a 2.5 per cent spending increase over last year.

The provincial budget, unveiled Tuesday, includes $9 million to fund 28 new critical care beds provincewide; $100 million for the redevelopment of the St. Boniface Hospital emergency department; and $110 million to expedite an estimated 167,000 surgical and diagnostic cases that were delayed due to the pandemic.

“Our government is very serious about driving down these times that were elongated as a consequence of a global pandemic,” Friesen said. “That’s why we’re putting a very significant effort into combating that.”

Physician watchdog under fire for ‘outrageous’ policy

The Manitoba physician watchdog’s policy of deferring its own investigations into allegations of sexual misconduct while a police probe is ongoing is “outrageous” and is further evidence an independent review is needed into the regulatory body, critics say.

WHO team in Wuhan departs quarantine for COVID origins study

WUHAN, China - A World Health Organization team emerged from quarantine in the Chinese city of Wuhan on Thursday to start field work in a fact-finding mission on the origins of the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

The researchers, who were required to isolate for 14 days after arriving in China, left their quarantine hotel with their luggage — including at least four yoga mats — in the midafternoon and headed to another hotel.

The mission has become politically charged, as China seeks to avoid blame for alleged missteps in its early response to the outbreak. A major question is where the Chinese side will allow the researchers to go and whom they will be able to talk to.

Yellow barriers blocked the entrance to the hotel, keeping the media at a distance. Before the researchers boarded their bus, workers wearing protective outfits and face shields could be seen loading their luggage, including two musical instruments and a dumbbell.

First Inuk GG sparks hope for new relationship

More than five years after he refused to intervene in a young man’s death by suicide in High Park, then lied about being on another call, a Toronto police officer has been demoted in rank for two years for his “serious” misconduct.