The Progressive Conservatives party has held power in MB since 2016. Ideologically they are about fiscal austerity, reducing the deficit, and reducing taxes.
Early in their first term funding for certain health care services just "evaporated" and regular meetings with MB Health to decide and prioritize diagnostic imaging equipment needing replacement just didn't happen.
I call this “erosion management” which involves not spending money, or significantly deferring spending money, creating the allusion that health care is costing less when, in fact, we are just kicking the can down the road. This causes cracks in the health care system to appear and they are dealt with on emergency crisis by crisis bases. This is less than ideal.
An analogy would be road repair. You can chose to properly resurface and repair streets or you can defer proper street maintenance by just filling in the biggest pot holes. The latter, in the end, will probably cost you more.
Now that we have eroded the health care system over the last four years there will be even less money to spend on health care after pandemic recovery due to the economic impacts of COVID-19.
We have created some pretty big “health care potholes” and we can’t afford continued “erosion management” post COVID-19.