There’s a sign on Gail MacAulay’s front lawn. But in the run-up to Tuesday’s Manitoba provincial election, it is not for any political party.
The sign says: Vote as if your life depends on it.
“Because your life does depend on it,” says the retired Legal Aid lawyer. It’s all about “public health… because what does all the other stuff matter if you are dead?… “Even housing affordability… if you’re dead, you’re not living anywhere.”
For MacAulay, who has a severely immunocompromised disabled child, the number one issue is COVID, a topic she thinks is barely discussed in this election.
In a September 25 poll by Probe Research Inc., 23 per cent of respondents cited health care as one of their top three concerns. Crime and violence, as well as poverty and homelessness, were identified as other top issues. Cost of living was the number four issue, but cited by just 14 per cent of Manitobans.
MacAulay will be voting for MLA Dr. Jon Gerrard, former Liberal leader and one of just three party members to hold a seat in the 57-seat legislature. “He’s a scholar. He’s a gentleman. He’s a doctor. He’s been representing us for years. He’s honest.”
Like many Manitobans across the spectrum, Timothy McAllister is also looking for improvements in health care. But he takes the opposite view on COVID restrictions.
“I’m begrudgingly supporting the PCs,” says McAllister of Steinbach. “I’m not impressed with the way they managed their way through the pandemic. I’d love to have another right-wing option, and there isn’t anything.”
“[The PCs] ran on a plan to make things more efficient in health care,” he said. “It seems like the system is not working properly. That wasn’t the intention. They need to present a plan to fix it. And not just more of the same.”
Schools ‘a total mess’
“The other thing that’s a total mess is the schools,” says MacAuley. “They’re not funding education. What’s going on in classrooms is the lack of support, especially for special needs students.”
The governing Progressive Conservatives promise to expand parental rights in schools after conducting consultations with parents and educators. They have proposed adding parental rights to be informed about curriculum, to be involved in addressing bullying and behavioural changes and to be notified before any presentations are made in school from outside the school system.
The NDP platform promises to give kindergarten to Grade 12 schools stable funding, to hire more teachers and education assistants to help students with special needs and reduce class sizes in the lower grades.
The Liberal party promises to invest in a school nutrition program and to create a system to screen children for learning and other disabilities.
Brenda Barrie, a fiction writer with three novels on Amazon, takes a classically Manitoban view of the election.
“It’s said Manitobans don’t tend to vote anyone in, they vote people out,” she said of the way the province has swung back and forth between PC and NDP for the last 60 years. “In this case, it’s probably a good thing.”
She said she is expecting a “sea change” as Manitobans vote an NDP government into office. “I remember when Ed Schreyer was in,” Barrie said of the province’s 16th premier, later appointed Governor General. Schreyer led the NDP to victory in 1969. “It’s going to be interesting to see, well, I am expecting a sea change. It will be interesting to see if that happens.”
Health care and education are her top concerns. Barrie fell and broke her hip in July and was impressed with the care she received. But she found what she calls “a big hole” in the system when there was no physiotherapy for her after she was discharged from a rehab facility, a topic Canadian Affairs covered this week.
“There’s this enormous empty space there. The physio people told me that was where the [outpatient] physio was. But the Tories cut it off,” she said. There was also no home-care help for her when she went home from rehab.
All three major parties acknowledge staff shortages in the health care system.
The PC and NDP platforms both promise to recruit, with the PCs pledging a $120-million investment in a permanent recruitment fund that targets $40 million for recruitment and retention in rural communities.
The NDP are promising to launch the largest health care worker recruitment in Manitoba’s history to hire 300 nurses, 400 more physicians over five years and 200 paramedics. The Liberals promise “thank you bonuses” of $5,000 to $10,000 for all front-line health workers.
Barrie would also like to see the education system improved. She has no specifics in mind as her children and grandchildren are past school age. But she knows many people who still use the system are concerned.
Barrie voted NDP in an advance poll. NDP leader Wab Kinew is the candidate in her riding.
Britt Banks, a Winnipeg social worker, says Manitoba politics are always contentious, but “somehow, this time, it feels even more contentious.”
“When I think about my vote, I think about health care, about trans kids, about the vulnerable,” she said. “And I think about the fascist push in education to keep diversity only to a certain conversation about diversity.”
“As a queer person, I feel a huge push for the government to get involved in the education system and gender identity education,” she said. “We’re only as successful as our most vulnerable… and trans kids are so vulnerable.
During the campaign, premier and PC leader Heather Stefanson announced her party’s plan to enhance parents’ rights but has declined to say if the province would follow New Brunswick and Saskatchewan in requiring parents to be informed if a child wants to use a different name and pronouns at school. Stefanson has said that will be part of consultations into the changes.
“Some of the social issues are big,” says McAllister. “You have a vocal minority that support certain social issues. There’s courage in New Brunswick and Saskatchewan. It’d be nice to see [the Manitoba PCs take] more of a stance on [parental rights]. I think that might benefit them.”
Landfill search
Banks, who voted NDP in an advanced poll, also strongly believes Manitoba must search the landfill for the bodies of Marcedes Myran and Morgan Harris, two missing Indigenous women believed to be killed and then thrown into dumpsters. Jeremy Skibicki has been charged with first-degree murder in their deaths and the deaths of two other women. The charges have not been proven in court.
Stefanson has said the government will not search for the bodies, pointing to an up to $184-million price tag and saying the work would put the searchers’ health and safety in jeopardy.
Kinew has said the NDP is committed to trying to find the women’s remains whether it involves a search or some other approach.
The Liberal party platform documents pledge to search the landfill with an initial investment of $42 million which “could increase as needed.”
Teresa Sztaba steps back and takes an overview of the election.
“What’s really important to me in an election, that gets harder to find, is honesty, decency, people actually caring about society and making things better,” says the clinical psychologist.
She said she is fed up with hearing about tax cuts, while acknowledging that she is in an income bracket that means she would benefit more than some people. “Because they’re just robbing Peter to pay Paul, and Paul happens to be the wealthy person so I don’t support that.
“What I am really interested in is people who will actually improve our healthcare system because it has been dreadful over the last little while. The Conservatives just decimated it, and it needs to be fixed… I think it has to be a priority.”
Sztaba cited Winnipeg’s addiction problem and homelessness “in a frigidly cold city… We’ve got a lot of social problems, addictions for one…. I would rather see those taken care of first.”
The PCs say they would double the number of addiction treatment spaces to 3,200 from 1,648 over the next two years and spend up to $10 million toward the development of a First Nations-operated drug treatment centre in Winnipeg.
The NDP platform calls for hiring 100 mental health workers to respond to non-violent mental health calls, adding mental health professionals to primary care teams and connecting homeless people to mental health supports.
The Liberals are committed to making mental health care free under medicare by covering the costs of regulated psychotherapy and funding a 24/7 addictions referral line for treatment so people seeking help get immediate access to detox.
Who will Sztaba vote for? She struggles with her answer.
“I actually like our Liberal Party a lot. I very much like leader [Dougald Lamont], who is a very knowledgeable, bright, hardworking and informed person. And I agree with much of what he says. It’s so sad that in Manitoba they don’t really have a chance of governing.”
“We do have a very good NDP candidate here who has been campaigning for over a year. He’s been coming around and meeting people. I met him a year ago and he said, ‘I know it’s way before the election, but I’m gonna be running. I just wanted to talk to you.’”
The polls show a tight election. At press time, polling aggregator 338Canada showed the NDP polling at 46 per cent, the PCs at 43 per cent and the Liberals at 9 per cent.
