More private-sector involvement in health care promised in Manitoba throne speech

Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson's government will explore using more private partnerships to deliver health care while making multi-year, multibillion-dollar capital investments in hospitals to address the province's health-care crisis, the government's latest speech from the throne promises.

Installing more surveillance cameras in downtown Winnipeg and providing more funding for policing were among the other promises in Stefanson's second throne speech as premier, read Tuesday afternoon at the Manitoba Legislature by new Lt.-Gov. Anita Neville.

The Progressive Conservatives hope the speech will set a renewed course for a government that must turn its fortunes around to win a provincial election set for 2023.

Other provinces have "demonstrated that a blended public-private delivery system works" in health care, and Manitoba has lagged behind, the speech said.

"If you look at other provinces … they have a significant private sector component that they contract out to within their provinces," Stefanson told reporters in an embargoed briefing before the reading of the throne speech. 

"We have lagged behind, because there was an ideological approach that was taken for decades here in our province. We're getting beyond that."

Opposition NDP Leader Wab Kinew called that approach "wrong."

"It will create a situation in Manitoba where the care that you receive is determined not by your needs, but by your bank account," he said.

"For the PCs to move in the wrong direction in the midst of a health-care crisis that is at least in part because of the cuts that they've made, it's not only wrong, but it's a very cynical conservative ploy to try to undermine public health care and try to put forward privatization as the only solution."

The head of Doctors Manitoba says she will withhold her opinion of the plan until its details become clear.

"We already have some private facilities in the city and a lot of us — for example, myself as a primary care physician — work in a private clinic within the public system, so there's a lot of blending that's already been happening for years," Candace Bradshaw said.

"I think we need to listen to what exactly that entails, because this is news to us right now."

The fact the province has resorted to sending some people for out-of-province surgeries and diagnostic tests, in order to reduce a massive backlog, is evidence Manitoba doesn't have enough private providers of those services, Stefanson said.

She stressed the government would continue to cover the tab for these procedures.