Mid-year Check-in on the Status of Public Health Care in Manitoba
Although the year is only half over, 2025 has already posed unprecedented challenges to Manitoba’s economy and environment. A cost-of-living crisis now worsened by tariffs from the United States is making it increasingly difficult for many to pay their bills, leaving little room in household budgets for prescription drugs or private mental health services. A devastating wildfire season arrived early and left thousands of Manitobans displaced, with smoke causing serious damage to physical and mental health.
Yet, in a time when Manitobans need it most, the public health care system remains in crisis due to sweeping cuts, ER closures, and creeping privatization. While the current NDP government has made important new investments in health care spending, this is only the beginning of what needs to be done to build a system that is accessible, equitable, and offers comprehensive coverage to all who call Manitoba home.
To achieve a fully public, accountable and equitable system, Manitoba must move faster to end reliance on costly band-aid fixes like private agency staffing and outsourcing in all aspects of health care delivery. To ensure the best results for patients and improve working conditions, privatized services like diagnostics and surgical procedures must be brought back into the public system. Profit must be kept out of health care, and the best way to ensure that is to invest in a robust public system that patients trust and providers want to work in.
More recruitment of health care professionals is urgently needed to address deep and damaging staffing deficits across the public system. There is a clear need for more publicly funded educational opportunities to train Manitobans where they live to fill these gaps. But better working conditions and a culture of safety and respect must also be secured in order to address the retention crisis facing so many health care fields.
To build a system that benefits everyone, inequities and access barriers must be addressed through meaningful anti-racism and anti-oppression training that is paid and part of professional development throughout a whole career in health care. Reconciliation must be advanced through Indigenizing health care delivery on a nation specific and ongoing basis. Disability justice and respect for gender and sexual diversity must be core health care priorities.
To build a truly comprehensive health care system, coverage must expand to include publicly funded and culturally informed mental health services for all Manitobans. Gaps in care must be eliminated through concrete measures such as the restoration of public health care funding for international students, the expansion of public dental and pharmacare, and the restoration of public funding for the shingles vaccine.
The current capacity of the public system must be better utilized through improved planning and coordination. The skills and expertise of our current health care workforce must be put to better use to improve patient results and reduce backlog, but policies of this kind will only improve access and equity in the system if those changes remain public. For example, expanding the scope of practice for pharmacists is a great step forward, but will only equitably improve access to prescriptions for all Manitobans if the costs of all assessments are publicly covered and no caps on this public coverage exist.
To improve the overall conditions of care, the conditions of work must be addressed. This must include taking immediate, concrete steps to reduce workload and ensure safe staffing levels, starting with mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios across the system. To better protect seniors living in personal care homes and ensure adequate staffing levels, guaranteed minimums for hours of care per resident per day must be entrenched in law. Across the system, action plans to support the recruitment and retention of all members of the health care team must be developed with realistic timelines, clear performance indicators, and meaningful stakeholder consultation.
To ensure the best quality health care for all Manitobans, the work to end privatization and expand public care must increase with urgency. To support a healthy, prosperous Manitoba that is resilient to economic threats and environmental crises, a long-term vision to expand and protect universal, publicly-delivered health care must be a central goal for governments in this province now and in the future.