Manitoba’s NDP government is promising to build, saying in its third throne speech it will construct an overpass at the location of a bus crash that killed 17 seniors, set up the province’s first supervised consumption site and build a new fuel-burning generation station to stave off a forecast power shortage.
The address — which outlines the priorities of Wab Kinew’s government for the coming legislative session — also commits to improving the health-care system for staff and patients.
The province will begin the process of ending mandatory overtime for health-care workers, starting with nurses, said a copy of the speech read in the legislature Tuesday by Lt.-Gov. Anita Neville.
“You wouldn’t get on a plane with a pilot who has worked two back-to-back shifts. Why should you go to an ER where nurses have been asked to do that very thing?” the speech says.
There’s also a pledge to legislate staff-to-patient ratios in unnamed priority areas of the health-care system.
Kinew, speaking at an embargoed briefing before the throne speech was read, said the province will first look at ending mandatory overtime and legislating staffing ratios in emergency departments.
He took aim at health-care administrators, saying the province has enough nurses to end mandatory overtime, but it will persist unless leaders are given a hard deadline.
“We think we have a performance issue with our management in health care, and we need to push them further.”
The Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals suggested it’s going to take more workers to hit some of the province’s goals.
“Without a credible health human resources plan, I think it’s very unlikely that there’s going to be successes in filling many of the vacancies across the province,” said Jason Linklater, the association’s president.
Meanwhile, patients will soon have access to digital health cards and, later in the year, a new online portal to see their lab results and immunizations.
The province is also planning to stop provincially regulated employers from requiring workers to get sick notes for absences of less than a week, a move doctors have demanded as a way to free up time to treat patients.
“We all end up paying for sick notes through longer wait times to see a doctor and as taxpayers too,” Doctors Manitoba, which represents physicians across the province, said in a news release.
The province is also vowing to create a patient safety charter that will enshrine into law “your right to good health care,” the speech says.
The government’s pledge to build an overpass at the intersection of Highway 5 and the Trans-Canada near Carberry is expected to be celebrated by locals, who fiercely opposed the government’s initial proposal — an intersection configuration that would have required merges and U-turns to get onto the busy Trans-Canada Highway.
“This intersection is different now than any other intersection in Manitoba because of the loss of life and how sad it was to see those seniors passing away,” Kinew said.
“And because this intersection is different, with that scrutiny and that history, it means that we have that extra responsibility to listen to community voices on this.”
A semi-trailer and a bus full of seniors on their way to a casino collided at the intersection on June 15, 2023, killing 17 people. The other eight people on the bus were seriously injured.
Some area residents, as well as Carberry’s town council, wanted an overpass at the intersection, but the government initially said it wasn’t an option because current traffic volumes aren’t high enough.
The throne speech commits to starting the design work for the overpass next year.
“The town of Carberry is over the moon over this,” said Carberry Mayor Ray Muirhead.
“It was a long time coming…. It’s been decades we’ve been trying to get something done with that intersection.”
The speech also promises to open a supervised consumption site in Winnipeg in January but doesn’t specify where it will be located, apart from being west of Main Street in downtown Winnipeg, or how the government can guarantee Health Canada’s approval in time.
Kinew said he’s confident the January timeline can be met, because the province has already done much of the legwork on the application and will now file the paperwork and consult with the public.
The province will apply for a licence through Health Canada’s urgent public health needs stream.
Opposition Leader Obby Khan said the NDP haven’t adequately consulted with the local community about the planned consumption site, normally required under federal law.
“When the premier doesn’t get his way, he just goes around the rules,” the Progressive Conservative leader said.
The new $3-billion fuel-generating system in Westman is bigger in scope than Manitoba Hydro’s original plan for a $1.36-billion station to prevent the province from running out of power in winter in the future.
The proposed facility will feature three turbines, rather than the previous plan for two, producing 750 megawatts of power. It will start with burning natural gas, but Kinew hopes the facility will eventually be fuelled with cleaner renewables.
The province already has 600 megawatts of wind power in the works.
Other infrastructure projects in the throne speech include starting construction on the Victoria Hospital emergency department in January, a new ER in Eriksdale this winter and twinning the Trans-Canada Highway from the Ontario border to West Hawk Lake next year.
The speech also commits to finding a way to help Manitobans with the cost of groceries.
The province will commission a study, and Kinew told reporters that next year’s budget will feature some mechanism to help people reduce costs.
