Unions, advocacy groups decry health-care ‘blame game

Organizations representing health-care workers and Manitoba patients say they’re fed up with the NDP government “playing the blame game” nearly two years into its mandate.

In just the past week, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara’s comments in Free Press stories included accusations that the previous Progressive Conservative government “hid behind numbers they just made up” in an article about hiring new nurses and “refused to sit down with (nurses)” on health-care concerns.

Manitoba Health Coalition director Noah Schulz said he’s grown weary of watching the blame for the province’s struggling health-care system being punted back and forth, and wonders how much longer the NDP can claim to be “picking up the pieces” of a previous government.

“There have been some important investments in health care, but it’s just the tip, really, of that iceberg. It’s unfortunate that, instead of taking that responsibility… a lot of that focus is on how bad the situation they inherited was, or how badly the PCs bungled things,” said the head of the non-profit group focused on protecting and expanding universal health care.

“We’re not expecting everything to be turned around overnight, but it’s not overnight, it’s (nearly) two years now, and health care needs to be something that all governments prioritize, not a way that they score political points off each other.”

Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals president Jason Linklater agreed, suggesting partisan politics needed to take a back seat.

“At many levels of the health-care system, including among some of the key players and decision-makers, the culture hasn’t changed. It needs to,” he said in an email.

“If Manitobans don’t get lower wait times and better access to care, they’re not going to blame the party out of power. Manitobans can see through the political blame game. They want action from the people they elected.”

At the Manitoba Nurses Union, president Darlene Jackson said that a new government promising to prioritize health care with a minister who previously worked as a nurse, had given union members a feeling of optimism that has waned in the time since, in part because of comments from the party in power.

“I can honestly say that I am, and I think nurses are, tired of the blame game of this government continuously blaming a previous government,” she said. “We’re almost two years into their mandate, the election promise was to ensure that they fixed health care — it was all about health care — and we are still waiting.”

Opposition leader Obby Khan said the blame was being unfairly placed on a party with a new leader, with a “new energy” and a “new message.”

“You want to talk about a football being thrown back and forth? Well, the football is in (the NDP’s) hands now, and they’re fumbling it embarrassingly,” he said. “And they’re letting down Manitobans and health-care workers.”

With a provincial byelection in Spruce Woods Aug. 26, Khan said the focus for the PC party is making that clear to voters.

“They solely campaigned on fixing health care, and two years in, health care is worse,” he said.

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Asagwara, a former psychiatric nurse, said the reason for repeated references to the previous government is clear when discussing the current health-care crisis.

“I can certainly appreciate folks don’t necessarily like to remember the damaging and the dark days of the PCs… my hope is that in being honest about how we got here, and in committing to not taking the same callous approach as the previous government, we will not only again repair the damage they did, but really make health care stronger for the long term,” Asagwara said.

It is not the first time in Manitoba that health care has been kicked around as a political football.

Depoliticizing health care is impossible, a spokesperson from physicians’ advocacy organization Doctors Manitoba suggested.

“Any publicly funded service can never be separated from politics because politicians make funding and policy decisions, and because health care is the most personal and intimate service the government oversees, it is very dependent on political decisions and priorities,” the spokesperson said in an email.

“What matters most to physicians is that all political parties seek advice from doctors and other experts working in the system, invite feedback from the patients and citizens who use the system, and use evidence to guide their decisions.”

University of Manitoba political studies adjunct professor Christopher Adams suggested that the back-and-forth is a natural response to how widespread and all-encompassing health-care failings have become in Manitoba and across Canada.

“I would say it’s just natural for it to be a political football, and if the opposition isn’t running with this, then they aren’t doing their job,” he said.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca