The Manitoba Government and General Employees Union

Leaders on the Issues

During this election campaign, the MGEU has developed a questionnaire which allows each of the three main political parties to respond to several important questions on the minds of MGEU members. We asked the leaders ten questions and gave them the opportunity, in 200 words or less, to express their party's stance on each issue. Here's what they had to say.

Question #1: Describe what your government’s strategy would be to deal with the overcrowding in Manitoba jails?

A Liberal approach to dealing with overcrowding of Manitoba jails requires a modern understanding of the conditions that lead to crime and a willingness to deal with these issues head on.

Through an understanding of these conditions – such as addictions, mental health issues, lack of activities for young people, the changing nature of gang activity, just to name a few- we will take a preventative approach, rather than a reactive one, to reduce crime and the overcrowding of Manitoba jails.

Manitoba currently has the highest percentage of custodial cases in remand as a result of the NDP government’s failure to speed up the court system. For years we have called on the NDP government to introduce a supernumerary judges program to speed up the court process and address this backlog. We would follow through on this commitment and set up a supernumerary judges program to hold court more often and reduce remand numbers.

We also recognize the need to reduce recidivism so the same prisoners are not returning to custody as we see in the current revolving-door justice system. That involves ensuring people have the resources they need on release.

Finally, we will conduct a review, with your input, to determine what additional resources, including staff and jail space, are required to ensure safety within and outside of our jails.

We are planning to design and build new jails. We know that this is a matter not just of public safety, but also of making sure that people who work in jails are protected. In June we appointed a three-person panel to provide advice and guidance on how much additional bed space should be added to Manitoba’s provincial correctional facilities in the next 10 years.

The panel will also advise on what services and retraining should be available to inmates at provincial correctional centres to reduce repeat offences and ensure inmates are ready for life outside jail.

Since 1999 we have made significant investments into policing and corrections to make communities safer. We have added 520 new beds to Manitoba jails – more than the equivalent of adding an extra Headingly-sized facility – and 422 are currently under construction.

We’ve also added funding for 250 new positions in corrections in the last three years. In contrast, just a year and a half ago Hugh McFadyen put forward a budget amendment that would have required a half a billion dollars in new budget cuts – meaning short-sighted cuts to prosecutions, policing, correctional officers and victims’ services.

 

Question #2: What would your government do to increase the number of personal care home beds available to Manitoba seniors?

With an aging population that is living longer, we know how important it is to offer supports to seniors who want to live safely in their own homes, as well as expanding other living options such as personal-care homes and supportive housing.

This February we launched a renewed long-term care plan that will invest $16 million to provide more home-care supports, to help seniors regain and maintain their independence following surgery or injury, and to provide a new income-protection benefit to make supportive housing an affordable alternative to PCH placement for low-income seniors.

We will also invest $200 million to add hundreds of new personal-care home beds over the next several years. This is in addition to a new 80-bed PCH currently under construction in south Winnipeg and 100 new beds currently being developed in Morden.

This plan builds on investments in long-term care since 1999 that have resulted in more than 400 additional PCH beds, over 500 new supportive housing units, and a caregiver tax credit for caregivers of home-care clients. We will continue making investments into long-term care in Manitoba.

Manitoba Liberals will develop a plan which assesses the need for additional and affordable personal care home spaces and personal care home construction which recognizes the need for culturally based personal care homes for immigrant groups which have culturally specific foods and practices in relation to elder care, as well as make it easier to qualify for homecare, provide more home care resources, and offer increased support to families to care for their relatives with tax credits.

Manitoba has an aging population and we must ensure that the care that seniors require is there when they need it. Despite obvious demographic shifts, the NDP failed to plan for the needs of Manitobans and for a time froze admissions to personal care home beds from the community, only taking referrals from hospitals. As a result the number of personal care home beds in Manitoba has remained stagnant under the NDP, despite the significant growth in the health care budget.

Manitoba will soon have more grandparents than grandchildren. The number of Manitobans over the age of 75 is expected to nearly double by 2036. In order to address this significant growth, we would follow through on the government’s last minute commitment to invest in more personal care home beds in the next several years.

 

Question #3: Families of residents at the Manitoba Development Centre (MDC) are worried about the kind of care their loved ones will receive if the Centre closes. Would your government support keeping the MDC open, and would those plans include continuing the residential treatment option at MDC for families who want this for their loved ones?

The Manitoba Progressive Conservative Caucus supports community living initiatives and funding aimed at ensuring Manitobans with disabilities are able to gain independence and participate fully in their communities. We recognize that community living supports benefit both individual Manitobans and our province as a whole. Community living initiatives improve the quality of life of Manitobans with disabilities, allowing these Manitobans to fulfill their potential both personally and professionally and make important contributions to our province.

We do appreciate, however, that for some Manitobans and their families, the Manitoba Developmental Centre is a facility that should be available as an option. We believe that this decision is a matter to be determined between these individuals and their families, with the benefit of professional advice. We would work diligently to avoid any situation where an individual who wishes to live in the community is forced to live at MDC because of a lack of available housing or community supports. We would place the dignity of the individual and the right to make informed choices as the highest value underpinning our policies.

Our first priority has been and will continue to be the best interests of the people living at MDC. Our next priority is to protect the expertise of MDC workers as the institution evolves and changes.

We have consulted broadly on the future of MDC, including with families of residents, Portage la Prairie, staff and other community stakeholders. Any changes at MDC will take time to implement and must be done respecting resident wishes.

The MDC will not be closing, but it will need to change and evolve. We are committed to ensuring an ongoing role for MDC staff as that evolution takes place.

MGEU members deserve credit for their leadership in developing options related to MDC’s changing role. We appreciated the work of the Government-MGEU Workforce Planning Committee and are committed to continuing to partner with the MGEU on this important issue. In June we created a stakeholder implementation committee including MGEU which will oversee the transformation of MDC from a traditional institutional setting to a centre of excellence campus that provides services for people with unique and challenging needs. This group will also help ensure employment stability, either at MDC or elsewhere in the civil service.

The Manitoba Liberal Party recognizes that individuals with intellectual disabilities are increasingly being looked after in the community. Indeed, over the last several years, the number of people who live at the Manitoba Developmental Centre has decreased substantially as those living at MDC have been transitioned to the community or died. With the present trend in ten years it is predicted that there will be fewer than 50 people living at the Manitoba Development Centre.

Recognizing that there are many skilled people in Portage la Prairie and region, and that the buildings can serve an important function with a new vision of the future for the present site, Manitoba Liberals are now actively engaged in seeking a new role for this site which can build upon the expertise available in Portage la Prairie. Such a new role could include being a centre of learning, a centre for individuals with FASD and/or possibly a centre for the treatment of adults with addictions. Our Liberal candidate in Portage la Prairie, Michelle Cudmore-Armstrong is actively engaged with others in Portage la Prairie in looking for a new vision for MDC.

 

Question #4: Paramedics have the training and expertise to play a much bigger role in health care delivery in Manitoba. Do you envision adopting community paramedicine as a way to improve health care delivery in our province?

This is a concept that merits our support; quality of care and adequate training must be a part of this effort to improve public health care delivery.

 

Yes. Paramedics are on the front lines of the front lines of care and have demonstrated how much more they could be doing to improve the delivery of health care in our province if they had greater access to post secondary education. A McFadyen would work with paramedics to increase access to continuing education for primary care paramedics and offer advanced care paramedic education at a post secondary institution.

We recognize that not every patient who calls 911 to receive paramedic care needs to go to an emergency room – they may be able to access faster care for minor injuries at a community clinic, for example. A McFadyen government will expand community paramedicine by providing paramedics with the ability to refer patients to locations other than hospital emergency rooms.

As a related initiative, we plan to establish a network of Community Care Centres capable of providing extended hours of care for those who do not need to wait in hospital emergency rooms. Along with other improvements we can make to EMS procedures, this will help reduce current offload times.

New Democrats support paramedics and a continued expansion of the role of paramedics in our health care system. The last decade has seen the paramedic profession and EMS system mature from what used to be a largely volunteer and casually staffed workforce with a patchwork of municipally-run ambulance stations, to a highly skilled profession offering life-saving pre-hospital emergency care. There are triple the number of full time paramedics today than in 1999.

We were pleased to support and provide funding to establish a 24/7 paramedic position at Main Street Project in Winnipeg. Each month this community paramedic model is helping approximately 1,000 patients who might otherwise have had an ambulance called and been transported to an ER for treatment.

We are committed to expanding community paramedicine into other areas. Our vision for health care includes an increasing role for paramedics outside of ambulances, working in community paramedicine. We believe there are additional areas where community paramedics can play an important role, including as part of our primary care plan to ensure all Manitobans have a family doctor by 2015.

 

Question #5: Advocates of user pay health care tend to ignore the impact that it has on the publicly funded system by drawing away scarce, skilled health care workers. Would your government continue the prohibition on user-pay health care for services insured under the Canada Health Act?

We agree that the research has been clear - a two-tier health system would lead to longer wait lists and reduced access for patients.

We are committed to strengthening our public health care system. In 2001 we passed legislation banning private hospitals – both the Tories and the Liberals voted against it. We also brought the formerly private Pan Am Clinic into our public system, showing that the public system can operate with innovation, efficiency and patient-friendly care.

The last time the Tories were in power, they allowed for-profit clinics to sell insured services directly to patients, which resulted in increased wait times in the public system. When running for leadership of the Tories, Hugh McFadyen said he “would give people the right to purchase private services”, and he bragged about his role in advising Gary Filmon on home care privatization.

As we enter this election, the very future of Medicare as we know it is threatened.

Governments of the left in Manitoba have so poorly managed delivery of health care that too many Manitobans can not get excellent health care quickly when it is needed, and are calling for change. Indeed, the situation has been called a crisis with deteriorating outcomes, serious patient safety issues, spiraling increases in costs and a decrease in trust in our system. The status quo is not an answer. Governments of the right may increasingly privatize health delivery.

Only Manitoba Liberals have a vision for ensuring all Manitobans can get the best care possible quickly when it is needed and would continue the prohibition on user-pay health care for services insured under the Canada Health Act. Only Manitoba Liberals can save, preserve and enhance our beloved Medicare system and provide a great health care system for all Manitobans.

Yes. We believe in the fundamental importance of a publicly funded, accessible, single-payer health care system. We will work to grow the number of health professionals in Manitoba, including 1,700 more nurses, 250 more doctors and 215 other health professionals over the next six years.

 

Question #6: At a time when budgets are stretched due to recent economic downturn and the flood of 2011, do you believe this is a good time to cut personal income taxes, and if so where would you find the money to replace this revenue or what specific services would you cut?

Unlike the NDP, we are going to take more time to balance the books so that we can protect services, keep taxes down, and grow our economy. We fear that the NDP’s plan to balance the books by 2014 will lead to tax increases or front line service cuts.

When the economic downturn hit, we had a choice to make. We could have absorbed the effects of the global recession all at once – with major cuts to health, education, and public safety, and at the risk of derailing economic recovery. This is what the Opposition demanded we do – they even introduced an amendment to the provincial budget which would have required $500 million in cuts.

But we rejected calls to cut public services and we refused to let thousands of Manitobans lose their jobs.

We have a Five-Year Economic Plan that keeps us on track to maintain fiscal stability and return to surplus by 2014. Our plan shows how we can continue delivering the services that Manitoba families depend on, while managing expenditures and returning to balance responsibly.

The 2010/11 Public Accounts show that our Five year Economic Plan is on track to return the budget to balance by 2014 while protecting jobs and services, without raising taxes.

In a Liberal mandate, there will be opportunity to reduce income tax. In years where we have significant expenditures, like this year’s flooding, it may not be a priority; but it would be in the following years of our mandate.

 

Question #7: Does your government intend to amend any of the following legislation: the Labour Relations Act, Labour Standards Act, or Civil Service Act? If so, what do you intend to change?

A Liberal Provincial Government would review the Labour Relations Act, Labour Standards Act, and Civil Service Act to determine whether any changes are required to improve legislation.

 

We have not made any platform commitments with regard to this legislation.

 

Since 1999 the NDP has made a number of changes to these and other Acts aimed at protecting Manitobans in their workplaces. For example, in 2002 we modernized our workplace health and safety legislation. As you may know, the Conservatives voted against these rules and claimed they would “punish” businesses. In the last decade, the workplace injury rate has fallen by more than 40%. Hugh McFadyen also criticized increased fines for serious violations of the Act, and called them “red tape, regulation and bureaucracy”.

If re-elected we have committed to putting into law our tougher regulations aimed at protecting nurses and other front-line workers, along with patients and their families, from violence in health-care facilities.

Our approach to any further changes to these Acts would be consistent with our record of seeking consensus between business and labour, with an aim of making life better for all Manitoba families.

 

Question #8: Would your government increase funding to addictions treatment and mental health services as a method for dealing with crime in our communities?

We know that diverting people with mental illness from jails into treatment will help prevent crime and reduce re-offence rates. That’s why we recently announced that we are investing more than $600,000 to establish a special court to work with accused whose mental-health issues are the likely cause of their criminal behavior, as well as expanding mental health services to better support these individuals.

We have a strong record of investing in mental health services and addictions treatment. In June we released a five-year mental health strategic plan and announced we would invest over $400,000 to implement initiatives such as establishing a trauma resource centre to strengthen mental-health services in Manitoba. And we’re taking a comprehensive approach to dealing with addictions including working with physicians on prescribing practices, pharmacists on dispensing, Addictions Foundation of Manitoba on treatment and the community on the root causes of addiction.

During this election we announced significant new resources in the fight against crime as part of a strategy to work with police, communities, courts and all levels of government. That strategy will address crime with increased prevention – including building new jail facilities with effective addictions treatment and mental health programs, faster prosecutions, and tougher laws.

Liberals will make a substantial financial commitment to develop an integrated treatment for addictions treatment and mental health services which will be much more effective than treating these separately. For example, family and behavioral couple therapy is significantly more effective than individual treatments at inducing and sustaining abstinence, improving relationship functioning, and reducing domestic violence and emotional problems of children.

Selective combinations of proven therapeutic approaches including twelve-step facilitation therapy, contingency management (with drug testing), cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational enhancement therapy, and pharmaceutical therapy with the addition of assistance with housing, employment and psychiatric services can provide increased success even in difficult circumstances.

Yes, we are committed to hiring more mental health and addictions counselors. We recognize the link between addictions and crime and the need for more addictions treatment in Manitoba. Under the NDP government the demand for addictions treatment has outstripped supply.

 

Question #9: Will your government attempt to privatize either the Manitoba Liquor Commission or Manitoba Public Insurance?

A McFadyen government will not privatize any Crown Corporation. We share the concerns voiced by the Public Utilities Board related to the NDP’s mismanagement of MPI and Hydro. It is clear that the NDP’s mismanagement of our crowns is leading to higher rates for Manitobans. We support strong publicly owned crowns with a mandate to provide reliable, low cost services to Manitobans.

We will keep our utilities strong and publicly owned for the benefit of all Manitobans. Manitobans know that they can trust the NDP to protect and to build our Crown Corporations. We strongly believe that low autopac and hydro rates are important parts of Manitoba’s affordability advantage. That’s why as part of this election campaign we have guaranteed that Manitoba families will pay the lowest combined bills in the country for electricity, home heating, and auto insurance.

Hugh McFadyen can’t be trusted to protect Manitoba Hydro and MPI from privatization. He was Gary Filmon’s senior advisor when MTS was privatized, and he served as a lobbyist and senior consultant to Ontario Premier Mike Harris when Harris attempted to privatize hydro in Ontario. More recently, McFadyen has recruited a star candidate in Seine River, Gord Steeves, who supports privatizing Manitoba Public Insurance, which would mean higher rates for Manitoba families.

Hugh McFadyen obviously doesn’t understand the value of our crown corporations: he’s already worked to privatize both MTS and Ontario Hydro. And while he didn’t learn from those mistakes, we should. Because once Manitoba Hydro is gone, it’s gone forever.

Manitoba Liberals would not privatize either the Manitoba Liquor Commission or Manitoba Public Insurance.

 

Question #10: What would your government’s plan be to bring down the high number of caseloads that social workers in Manitoba are dealing with?

We will dedicate more resources towards reducing the caseloads of child and family service workers and better adhere to limits on caseloads per worker. This will allow workers to better respond to a voice mail within 24 hours and e-mail within 48 hours, unless an extended absence message is posted, which should be an acceptable standard.

In addition to this, Manitoba Liberals will develop provincial standards where a different case worker than the ones who are involved in the apprehension of children can work with parents and care-givers towards reuniting families. This exists as policy in some agencies but it should be a provincial standard. Parents will be less willing to work with the case worker who was initially brought in to apprehend a child and it would impede the building of a stable family life.

Child and Family Services agencies provide invaluable services to families throughout Manitoba. We are aware of the stress and strain endured by the employees of CFS agencies and by families due to unmanageable caseloads. Last year, the Children’s Advocate drew attention to the strain on social workers calling the child welfare system a “system in chaos” with high rate of social worker burnout and turnover. We are committed to working with CFS workers to identify strategies to improve conditions for social workers and address caseloads.

We know that if we want social workers to give kids the best possible care, they need to have manageable caseloads. We are in the midst of transforming a child welfare system that was neglected by the Tories during the 90s.

In 2006, we developed the Changes for Children initiative to enhance child protection services and to increase workers recruitment and training. Since 2006, we have added 231 new staff positions including front line and support workers. As we continue to implement Changes for Children, over 100 new workers will be hired to support early intervention services to families and children in Manitoba.