We can stop Heather Stefanson
Like her close friend Brian Pallister before her, Heather Stefanson is a premier who can’t be trusted to protect what matters.
How the PCs have hurt healthcare
Creeping privatization
In July 2023 the federal government deducted $350,000 from transfers to Manitoba after it was revealed a clinic was charging patients for medically necessary services.
Outpatient physiotherapy has been dramatically privatized for patients recovering from total hip or knee replacement.
Stefanson has promised more healthcare privatization, ensuring that working people will face either chaos or higher out-of-pocket costs.
Patients in Manitoba are suffering worse than most other provinces
Wait times for tests has increased the length of time it takes to receive a proper diagnosis. MRI wait times are up 70% since August of 2022—something the Stefanson government was forced to concede is the result of staffing shortages.
The PCs have let Manitoba fall behind other provinces
Poverty
At 20.7%, Manitoba had the highest rate of child poverty in Canada, an astounding seven percentage points above the national average (13.5%).
Poverty is racialised
In 2021, 41.6% of First Nations children with single Indigenous identities in the province experienced child poverty, followed by those children identified as Arab (39.8%), West Asian (37.7%), Chinese (30.1%) and Black (25.0%).
Precarious Work
The proportion of multiple job holders—a key measure of the prevalence of precarious work—was 7.3% in Manitoba in July 2023, the highest Canada.
Nearly 25% of wage-earners in Manitoba fell below the national wage floor for low pay.
Almost one in ten wage-earners in Manitoba earned less than $15/hour in July 2023, the second-highest percentage in Canada.
We can’t trust Pallister or Stefanson with Manitoba Hydro
Under Heather Stefanson and Brian Pallister before her, the publicly owned Manitoba Hydro has descended into chaos.
In 2018 the entire board of directors at Hydro resigned to protest Pallister’s mismanagement of the utility. The mass followed job cuts, consumer rate increases and wage freezes for staff at the Crown corporation that provides the 2nd cheapest hydro-electric rates in the country.
In March 2022, an arbitrator ruled Pallister lay-offs at Hydro were a clear violation of the collective agreement.
Later in 2022, Unifor Local 681 were forced to take action with rotating strikes, simply to get a similar wage increase other workers already received under the Stefanson government.
Search the landfill
Police believe the bodies of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran were deposited in the Brady Road landfill by their killer last year.
Unifor supports the calls by families of missing women to conduct a thorough search of the landfill. Unifor supports extending the search at the landfill to include Tanya Nepinak, whose remains were suspected to have been taken there in 2011.
The union representing the municipal staff at Brady Road have already provided a letter of support to families and state unequivocally that their members are prepared to assist in a safe search of the site.
Premier Heather Stefanson’s refusal to work with families of the missing women to find a solution is disconcerting and ill-founded. Unifor calls on the premier to do the right thing and listen to the experts who have suggested a search can be conducted under the right conditions.
Finding the remains of the missing women is not just a matter of closure for the families, but a testament to the broader need for justice, recognition, and action on the tragic issue of missing and murdered indigenous women. Every step taken towards justice is a step towards healing and reconciliation.
PCs have made choices that hurt workers
From healthcare cuts and closures to anti-worker laws that suppress wages across the province, Heather Stefanson’s PCs are responsible for a decline in public services and good jobs.
Manitobans deserve better than Heather Stefanson, Brian Pallister, and the PCs.