The leader of Manitoba's Liberal party swung through Thompson July 22 as part of his 2009 Northern community tour and says that health care is one of the major themes that came up repeatedly.
Liberal leader Jon Gerrard, the MLA for River Heights and one of only two Liberal members of the Manitoba legislature, along with Kevin Lamoureux (Inkster), says many concerns had to do with the H1N1 virus, which recently thrust Northern Manitoba - especially the living conditions in Northern First Nations communities - into the national and international spotlight.
A doctor himself, Gerrard says a recent lull in the number of new cases doesn't mean the threat has passed.
"We have to be ready for a second wave of this H1N1 flu," says Gerrard. "We've got a lot to prepare for the fall."
The leader visited Garden Hill and Wasagamack First Nations in June, and will return to Garden Hill this week. These remote communities, where many people don't even have running water, must be prepared in advance of the fall flu season so that when the virus does infect residents, the response from health officials can be quicker.
"We need to be ready," Gerrard said. "Our whole healthcare system needs to be ready. We need to be a lot better prepared than we were when this hit in April."
Included in that preparation is better management of jurisdictional issues.
"There has to be a much better working relationship between the federal and provincial governments," he says.
But H1N1 is only the acute side of what ails the health care system, says Gerrard. Just as damaging, he says, especially outside Winnipeg, is the chronic inability of people to get a family doctor, or to keep the one they've found due to high turnover. Family physicians, he said, are the "cornerstone" of the health care system and the symptoms of a shortage include overloaded emergency rooms and deterioration in the continuity of care.
"You've got to make sure that people have a family physician," said Gerrard, and the current government has not lived up to its pledges to fix the health care system.
"The NDP have done terribly in this," said Gerrard.
Speaking to the Thompson Chamber of Commerce luncheon meeting, Gerrard said the solution wasn't simply more money.
"There needs to be better support for physicians so that they feel they can do a really good job," he said.
Also needed is a province-wide specialist network.
"The way specialist care is fractured by region doesn't work," he said, with many specialists falling under the umbrella of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and failing to see the bigger, province-wide picture.
But to put his plans to work, Gerrard and his party have to form a government. And with a recent Winnipeg Free Press-Probe Research poll showing that 44 per cent of Manitoba voters would currently choose the NDP and only 14 per cent the Liberals, there's a lot of work to be done.
"We made some major changes after the last provincial election," said Gerrard, calling his party's showing unacceptable. "Our membership numbers are improving very substantially."
The party has also started making more use of Web technology, including Facebook, Twitter and Gerrard's blog.
The Liberal party says it's bringing in as many as 200 new members per week, including people disaffected with the political process after seeing the government fail to live up to its promises. The key, said Gerrard, is making sure that the Liberals present a credible option for voters. Things may not look so bright now, but Gerrard says provincial politics are more fluid than the federal level when it comes to the rise and fall of parties. Manitoba, he believes, is ready for change.
