The provincial NDP government announced early last month it’s investing $72 million to expand the Park Manor Personal Care Home in Winnipeg’s Transcona neighbourhood, but Interlake MLAs say the greatest need for PCH beds is in the Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority.
Interlake-Gimli MLA Derek Johnson (PC) said the highest need, statistically, for PCH beds is not in Transcona – it’s in his riding and other ridings that fall within the IERHA’s catchment area.
“The highest need for PCH beds is in the Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority. Within this health authority – and in the province – the greatest need is in Lac du Bonnet. The second-highest need is in the northern Interlake area, in Ashern, Arborg and Fisher Branch – all these areas are in very high need of PCH beds,” said Johnson. “If you look at the demographics in the province, Gimli has the highest average age and the Interlake follows suit. The highest age per capita will have the highest needs for PCH beds. They’ll also have the highest need for doctors.”
The previous Conservative government had laid out a new plan for building/expanding PCHs in July 2023. It promised to build six new PCHs, four of which would be in the IERHA (Arborg, Lac du Bonnet, Oakbank and Stonewall) and two of which would be in Winnipeg (one in the Bridgwater neighbourhood and one on Portage Avenue). The six sites were selected to “build capacity in areas with the highest needs…,” according to the plan.
And Johnson, who sat on the treasury board, said the Conservatives had allocated funding to three of those six PCHs: Lac du Bonnet, Arborg and Bridgwater.
The NDP government, which came to power in October 2023, had a different plan for building / expanding PCH beds. It announced it would build four new PCHs, one a year. That would start with “one in Lac du Bonnet in 2024/25, followed by two in Winnipeg, and one in Arborg,” according to the 2024 Budget.
Work on the Lac du Bonnet PCH has already started.
The IERHA’s Community Health Assessment report from 2019 – the latest posted on its website – says all areas in the IERHA for the period 2015-2017 had “significantly high median wait times for admission to PCH from hospital compared to Manitoba.” And for residents in the community waiting for a PCH bed in that 2015-2017 period, the eastern part of the RHA had the “longest median wait time” than other areas of the province.
The IERHA has a “greater percentage of population represented in the 50 years and more age categories compared with that of Manitoba,” according to the IERHA’s 2023-2024 annual report. The population is expected to grow by 13 per cent by 2030, with the “most noticeable change being higher counts of residents in the 65 and older age groupings.” The prevalence of chronic diseases and conditions increases with age, and this will drive up demand for long-term care housing, emergency care, primary care and other health-care services.
Given the demand for PCH beds, People in Arborg and the surrounding Bifrost-Riverton area may have to move to a PCH in Selkirk or elsewhere, said Johnson. Having to relocate farther from Arborg could affect the mental health and wellbeing of seniors. Family members who could have visited their loved ones three or four times a week may be forced to visit once a week depending on how far they are.
And the health-care system in Manitoba as a whole can experience bottlenecks when there’s a shortage of PCH beds, he added.
“There’s a ripple effect when there aren’t enough PCH beds. Patient flow can affect the entire system. People in hospital could be tying up higher acuity beds when they could be having their needs best met in a PCH. Tying up those beds also prevents [surgical patients] – who have to go to Winnipeg for a procedure – from coming back and convalescing in Arborg because beds are being taken up by someone who may be better suited for a PCH,” said Johnson. “Having fewer beds also ties into the surgical backlog; it’s not always [a shortage of] doctors and operating rooms. Very often there’s nowhere to put patients after surgery.”
Both the NDP and the Conservatives recognize the need to provide more PCH capacity in the province.
In 2016, former Conservative leader Brian Pallister stood on the lawn of the Park Manor PCH in Transcona and announced his government would fund 1,200 new personal care home beds “across the province” over a period of eight years (it’s unclear whether Pallister had specifically promised new beds for Park Manor.) The Conservatives built PCH beds in Morden and expanded PCH bed numbers in Winnipeg’s Holy Family, in Carman and in Steinbach before announcing six more in 2023.
NDP leader Wab Kinew also stood on Park Manor’s lawn in 2019 and promised the NDP would expand that PCH, as well as add more beds in communities across the province.
Johnson is questioning why the government decided to allocate funding to the Transcona PCH when the government would have access to data provided by all the regional health authorities regarding service needs.
“The regional health authority reports identify the greatest needs. They identify the number of personal care home beds needed per capita. The government has that information at their fingertips regardless of whether they choose to look at it. It’s not elected officials who determine this need – the need is statistical and identified by reporting processes,” said Johnson. “We [Conservatives] didn’t do a study on where the needs were; we took the data that was available publicly from the regional health authorities and deduced where the needs are.”
There is a petition for a new Arborg PCH.
Lakeside MLA Trevor King (PC) said in a post that the province faces a critical PCH bed shortage and that the IERHA has the “greatest need” followed by Southwest Winnipeg.
“Despite this, the NDP government isn’t putting resources where they’re needed most,” said King.
He’s encouraging residents to sign a petition for a new Stonewall PCH. The petition is available at the Odd Fellows Hall and at the MLA’s office at 319 Main Street in Stonewall. It asks the province, the premier and the minister of health to prioritize a PCH for Stonewall.
“… a new PCH has been announced, but its location raises some questions. Why has the government chosen the location that they have? Why are they not proceeding with a shovel-ready project in Stonewall, choosing instead to start at square one in Transcona?” said King. “One new PCH per year is not enough—this slow approach fails our seniors and their families who need care now, not years from now.”
The Express reached out to the province to ask why it chose to expand the Transcona PCH when the needs are higher in the Interlake-Eastern RHA.
A spokesperson said that because there’s a byelection in Transcona, the government is in a blackout period and is limited as to what information it can provide.
But the government’s health minister said they’re committed to building the personal care home in Arborg.
“Interlake residents advocated for years under the previous government to get more care for seniors in their communities. The previous government failed to deliver, leaving families with empty promises,” said health minister Uzoma Asagwara in a statement. “That’s why our government took immediate action and committed to building two personal care homes in the Interlake: one in Lac du Bonnet and another in Arborg. Work is underway on the 95-bed personal care home in Lac du Bonnet, with shovels in the ground last December. We continue to work closely with both communities to see these projects through, with more details coming soon in our provincial budget.”
