WINNIPEG — Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew continues to enjoy a honeymoon with voters one year after his NDP government was elected, but there are challenges ahead in fulfilling promises to improve health care and balance the budget. One of the things Kinew says he has learned since the Oct. 3 vote last year is that changes can’t be made quickly.
The province has seen hundreds of new health-care workers hired as part of Kinew’s election promise to “fix” health care. But more workers, equipment and space are needed. “The change that we want for patients to be able to see improvement in health care is going to take, not just one year of doing that, but multiple years in a row of doing that,” Kinew said in an interview.
“On a personal level, I would love it if we could just snap our fingers and say, ‘New (emergency room) over here, all these people staffed up over there.’ But the reality is it will take time.” Recent opinion polls have suggested Kinew, the first First Nations premier of a Canadian province, continues to enjoy high levels of support, both personally and for his government.
The NDP won a recent byelection in the Tuxedo constituency in Winnipeg, which had been staunchly Progressive Conservative since its creation in 1979. Kinew has been an effective user of social media and has at times made announcements directly to his tens of thousands of followers instead of at traditional press conferences. A political analyst says there’s no immediate sign .
