Premier’s claims don’t match the facts

Last week, during a question period exchange between Premier Wab Kinew and Opposition Leader Obby Khan, the premier bragged that “We’re clearly doing an amazing job on health care. We’ve clearly done a lot — with much more to do — on the cost of living. All the economic policies are going great.”

That same day, I received a flyer in my mailbox from my NDP MLA. On one side of the flyer is a photo of Kinew with the words “Better health care. Lower costs.” On the other side, the flyer claims there are 3,500 new health-care workers.

Is the government doing an “amazing” job in managing our health-care system? Is the Manitoba economy “going great?” Those words don’t reflect reality for many Manitobans.

Our ER and diagnostic wait times continue to be among the highest in Canada. Five patient deaths due to delays in the health-care system were among 16 deaths and 43 major injuries listed in the province’s critical-incident reports for the period of April 1 to Sept. 30 of last year. At least four more patients have died after long waits in Manitoba ERs since then.

The new $120-million critical care centre at the Brandon Regional Health Centre was unveiled last week, but only 12 of the 16 beds in the new intensive care unit, and just 15 of the 30 beds in the new internal medicine unit, will be available for use due to staffing shortages. That’s a big problem given the fact that the province reportedly has no data-driven process to accurately forecast staffing needs.

Up to 3,500 “health-care workers” of various kinds and capabilities may have been added to the system throughout the province, but the CBC recently reported that almost 1,000 nurses left the public health-care system between April of 2024 and May of last year. That same report revealed that Prairie Mountain Health, which includes Brandon and Westman, experienced a net loss of 23 nurses (161 departures, compared to 138 hires) during that time frame.

To make matters even worse, our NDP government promised to add 200 paramedics in its first term, but only 18 net new paramedics have been employed by Shared Health since October of 2023. New data released by the agency last week reveal there were 60 unfilled paramedic positions in Westman and a 43 per cent vacancy rate at the end of 2025. In a region so vast, paramedic response times are often a matter of life and death.

Kinew claims the provincial economy is “going great,” but the numbers suggest otherwise. His government ran a huge $1.666-billion deficit for the just-ended fiscal year — more than double the budgeted amount — and could incur yet another billion-plus deficit this year if the province doesn’t hit its highly-optimistic economic growth projections and doesn’t receive above-average rainfall this spring and summer.

Given the province’s low economic growth rate and 5.7 per cent unemployment rate, combined with the challenges posed by high fuel prices and global trade uncertainty, it is impossible to credibly claim the Manitoba economy is performing well under his government’s stewardship. Like our health-care system, our economy is on life support.

That conclusion is borne out by a poll recently conducted by the Angus Reid organization, which found that just 26 per cent of respondents feel the government is doing a “good job” on health care and the cost of living/inflation. Given those were the top-ranked issues of importance — far more than any other issues — Kinew’s rosy rhetoric is at odds with the opinion of a large majority of Manitoba voters. On that point, the Reid report says that “While Manitobans generally like their premier, they — like most of the country — are not overly positive about the performance of the government he leads.”

That harsh reality would ordinarily signal a crisis for a government facing a general election in fewer than 18 months, but Kinew is fortunate that most voters do not perceive the opposition Progressive Conservatives as a viable alternative to his NDP government. If Khan and his caucus can somehow change that perception in the coming months —that’s a huge “if” — next year’s election could be closer than many expect it to be.

Deveryn Ross is a political commentator living in Brandon.

deverynrossletters@gmail.com X: @deverynross