There is a major problem in Health Minister Theresa Oswald's office

More than a month ago, I wrote to our Minister of Health, Theresa Oswald about a very serious circumstance.  I was approached by a fine gentleman whose mother had been put in a Manitoba personal care home.  It was immediately apparent that there were problems. Let me explain.

His mother, I will call her Mary (not her real name) is 78 years old with a physical disability.  She is mentally very bright.  She is "sharp as a tack". 

Imagine Mary's surprise when the first night her roommate tried to crawl in bed with her!  Politely Mary showed her roommate back to her bed.  But then, an hour or so later, Mary awoke to find her roommate climbing into bed with her again.  Once more, Mary politely showed her roommate back into her own bed.  Twice more during the night her roomate came climbing into her bed.  Twice more Mary, getting more and more exasperated, and more tired with her sleep interrupted in this fashion, got out of bed to show her roommate back to her own bed.   It was not a good start to her time in the personal care home.

But this was not all.  When Mary had first arrived the day before, she was put in a wheelchair, but was unable to go to the bathroom without help.  She had had to wait 8 hours before help came!  Fortunately her son arrived in the evening, but by this time she had had no other recourse but to urinate in her pants.  Her mother had been pulling the "help" cord but help did not come.  Her son Barry (again not his real name) arrived at this point to find his mother crying she was so embarrassed.  Barry helped his mother change out of her urine soaked pants.  Without Barry, who knows how long it would have been before help had come.

Care does not seem to be a word that is understood well at this facility.  The first day Mary had her toothpaste and two shirts go missing from her room.  From October 18th till October 30th, the commode Mary was using was not emptied.  The atmosphere in the care home is a difficult one for a person like Mary who is fully mentally with it, as almost all the residents are severely cognitively challenged.  There are many patients who are drooling, yelling, asking for help, crying etc without anyone to assist.  Barry, being a kind gentleman has frequently helped patients get up who are lying on the floor.  As you can imagine, Mary has not got much rest in this environment.  Indeed, it is worse.  As Barry puts it "My mother is so sad and depressed so far it is ripping my heart out having her in this facility."

At the end of October, I wrote urgently to our Minister of Health Theresa Oswald about this terrible situation.  It is now more than a month later.  There has been no change at the facility.  There has been no action taken by the Minister, and I have had no reply to my letter.  Mary's roommate still tries to crawl into bed with her.  The other conditions at this personal care home have not changed. And Barry, who also contacted Minister Oswald's office has also had no reply.  There is a major problem in the office of Minister Oswald.  She should be embarrassed.

Kyoto Pledge dies in Manitoba - the NDP just never listened and never developed an adequate plan

Today, December 6th, 2011 will be known as the day the NDP Kyoto pledge died.   The NDP just never listened.  For many of the last 12 years I have been telling them in the Legislature that they needed to have an adequate plan to reduce agricultural greenhouse gases and they never did.  Agricultural emissions were the emissions which have increased the most!  This was not the only shortcoming (see below), but it was a major one.

Agriculture and Nitrous Oxide: A particular problem in this respect has been nitrous oxide which is an extraordinarily potent greenhouse gas (about 350 times more potent than carbon dioxide).  Nitrous oxide is especially produced under conditions where fertilizer containing nitrogen is put on wet fields (or when fields to which nitrogen is applied become wet). Studies in North Dakota suggest that reducing nitrous oxide production by half (perhaps more) is feasible.  This is a win for farmers as the nitrogen applied at significant cost, is better used to help the crop grow instead of just going up in the air as nitrous oxide.  It is a win for greenhouse gas reduction.  Much improved approaches to water management are part of what is needed, as well as improved application of nitrogen so that more ends up in the crops and less as nitrous oxide.  There has never been a serious plan presented by the NDP to reduce nitrous oxide production.

Other reductions in greenhouse gases: As has been well documented in the Auditor General's report http://www.oag.mb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/rtl_performance_audits_2010.pdf the plan that the NDP government did present was inadequate.  The documentation is all there in detail.  The NDP did not have a plan to reduce the greenhouse gases to the extent needed by their Kyoto pledge.  The NDP did not even meet the reductions they had set out in the plan.  All in all, the NDP performance was poor when it comes to addressing climate change and meeting the target they pledged to meet, and put in Legislation that they would meet.

The Sunrise Ceremony at the Legislature this morning to remember the 14 who died in the 1989 at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal - and stories from people there

This morning I attended the Sunrise Ceremony.  We were there to remember the terrible day in 1989 when 14 women were killed at the Ecole Polytechnique.  The ceremony was a sobering reminder of what happened 22 years ago, and the need to be vigilant to prevent hate against women, or against any group in society.

After the ceremony, I talked to several women who shared stories with me:

Major Karen Hoeft of the Salvation Army Booth Centre in Winnipeg (top photo), talked about the history of the Salvation Army and its support for women's rights.  Founded in 1865, the Salvation Army by 1878 was a very strong supporter of women's rights and had in its Foundation Deed of that year, the principle that women had the same rights to preach as men.   Karen reminded me of the many times in its subsequent history when the Salvation Army led in ways that incorporated women's ideas.  She cited as an example the principles for social action put forward in 1890 which were:
1. Programming must lift up and facilitate change at the personal level whenever matters of character or conduct are at the root of individual or familial dysfunction;
2. Effective intervention must include strategies that alter social circumstances and outside forces as they contribute to suffering;
3. The scale of the intervention must, by design, be commensurate with the human outcomes and life changes sought;
4. Effort must be sustained over time, sufficient to support long-term growth;
5. Efforts must be specific, measurable, realistic, feasible, and motivating yet practical in every sense;
6. Intervention must not unintentionally injure those it is intended to benefit;
7. While assisting one individual or population, our intervention must not negatively impact the well-being of others
These principles are still good today when looking at pushing for social action and social change as we do in our own efforts in the Manitoba Liberal Party.

Margaret Lesperance, of Portage la Prairie, (second photo) told me of her family which came to Manitoba in about 1898 to the Riding Mountain area.  In the early years, many children died because of Scarlett Fever.  It was a tough time, and Margaret is writing up this family history so it will be better known.

Shannon MacFarlane, told me of the story told by Gordon Sinclair today.  She mentioned his crediting Kevin Lamoureux prompt response to Marsha Dozar.  I know that this is just what Kevin does every day, and what we, in my office, try to do every day in helping people.  We don't always succeed, but we do our best, and, as is fitting today, on the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, we try to help those who are targetted or victimized to build a better province and a better society.

Poor performance by the WRHA needs more drastic steps

When I saw this morning how badly the WRHA continues to manage our emergency rooms in Winnipeg, my reaction was - How on earth is it that the problems in our Emergency Rooms in Winnipeg continue?   A reduction of 3 minutes in waiting times over many months is simply not good enough.

We have had numerous reports and a number of deaths in our emergency rooms - including Dorothy Madden, John Klassen and Brian Sinclair, among others - and yet the WRHA continues an inadequate approach to managing emergency rooms.  The leadership in government (the Minister of Health) and the leadership in the WRHA (the President and Vice Presidents) need a salary cut ‘wakeup call’.   I called today for Selinger to reduce salaries of the Minister of Health and WRHA senior management on a monthly basis until this situation is resolved.

Reports today show the WRHA paid close to $250,000 to the City of Winnipeg for ambulances waiting excessive lengths of time.  This indifference to taxpayer dollars and the WRHA’s inadequate delivery of service should result in monthly ten per cent reductions in the salaries until the situation is resolved, with the first 10 per cent reduction happening immediately.

If the situation with emergency room waiting times is not resolved in one month, reductions in the salaries of the Minister of Health and of WRHA senior management should be 20 per cent in one month's time (by the second month), and be 30 per cent in two months time (the third month). This situation must be fully resolved so that ambulance patients do not have to wait excessively anymore.

The salary of the WRHA’s President and Chief Executive Officer Arlene Wilgosh is $267,140. The salaries of the WRHA’s six vice presidents are as follows: Brock Wright, $334,556; Lori Lamont, $178,515; Catherine Cook, $227,693; Réal Cloutier, $194,091; Paul Kochan, $196,595; and John Van Massenhoven, $162,078.

The WRHA burdens the City of Winnipeg with soaring paramedic costs to create the optics of reduced wait times because they are too incompetent to implement real solutions. Perhaps this disgraceful approach to management will finally turn around with drastic salary decreases to the Minister of Health and the WRHA’s senior management.

Today's Canadian Medical Association Journal highlights problems in ehealth

eHealth has been a major problem in Manitoba.   It has taken far too long and the approach has been delivered poorly with the result that we in Manitoba are far behind most jurisdictions.  As an editorial in the CMAJ points out today the development of ehealth in Canada, and this is true particularly in Manitoba, have been fraught with mistakes, poor design and top down instead of bottom up approaches.  It is a sad testament to the poor political leadership by the Manitoba NDP and the Tories before them on this issue.   See http://www.cmaj.ca/content/early/2011/12/05/cmaj.109-4065 for more details. 

I have talked about this problem on previous occasions.  One example is the slow development and use of electronic medical records in many areas of Manitoba.  http://manitobaliberals.blogspot.com/2011/07/manitoba-liberals-have-very-different.html

Saying Thank You to our Candidates and Volunteers - we do this for you.

The election October 4th was about the future of Manitoba.  But, for me it was most particularly about our candidates and our volunteers.  We had a Liberal candidate in every constituency.  Many of them came this afternoon (top photo) for a luncheon which Naomi and I hosted at the Pampanga Banquet Hall.   We are involved in politics because we believe in the people of Manitoba, and most particularly those who stand up and are counted in the democratic process.  The election was about our candidates who put themselves, their names and their efforts on the line.  The election was about our volunteers who put in endless hours helping our Liberal campaign and our Liberal team.  Naomi and I work for our team, our candidates and our volunteers and for the vision for the future of Manitoba which many of our candidates and volunteers have helped to build.  In many other places on this blog, I talk about our team's vision.  Today, we talked about our candidates and our volunteers and their efforts.  Thank you, all of you, for all you have done and all you continue to do.

In the packed hall, we sang Oh Canada, for we believe deeply in our country, and in our province (second photo).  We gave candidates like Gerard Allard (third photo) a small token of our appreciation.  We enjoyed the dancing of young Manitobans in the Urban Fusion group (fourth photo).  And (in the fourth photo) we enjoyed the singing of Keith and Renee - most particularly their song "we can be the leaders of change," for that is who we are.  

Thank you to Jim Bear and Twyla Motkaluk who were our MCees, and to Mie Larsen, Erena Donovan, Kristy Rydz, Jackie Otaguro, Nancy Chippendale, Eric Nosaluk, Peter Koroma, Brian Peel, Bob Axworthy and Kelly (from Pampanga's Banquet Hall) who all helped with the event. 

Marjory Graham (1917-2011)

This afternoon I joined many others to celebrate the life of Marjory Graham.  Marjory was a phenomenon, a multi-talented Manitoban from the community of Moline, who toured the world serving as a nurse in England, North Africa, Italy and northern China before returning to Manitoba in 1949 to work here.  As her daughter Ruth said, this afternoon, she was a seeker with a questioning mind and an adventurous spirit.  Her personality, as noted as early as her school years was "unusually strong".   She was the sounding board and the touchstone for her family, and also for Liberals in River Heights for she served on the Executive of our River Heights Liberal Association for a number of years, always contributing and helping enthusiastically.  Thank you Marjory.