There were 28 hours in January when there were zero ambulances available in the City of Winnipeg to respond to emergencies, according to data obtained by the Manitoba NDP.
It made the lack of additional funding for these facilities in Wednesday’s budget shocking.
For a document titled
Protecting Manitobans, Budget 2021, the province seems to have forgotten about the most vulnerable of our population.
This was an opportunity to cement the promise of the implementation of the 17 recommendations made by the report several of which called for more funding and more staffing.
To be fair, the budget does denote an increase of $9.3 million of funding to go to the increased operational costs for two facility expansions in Steinbach and Carman. But that eats up the lion’s share of the $10.1 million increase in funding to long-term care services.
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The provincial government released data on Monday on race, ethnicity and Indigeneity (REI) information from people who test positive for COVID-19 showing that like in other parts of the world infections in Manitoba are not evenly distributed by population groups.
Collected since May 1 of last year, the data shows that despite only making up 13% of the province’s population, Indigenous and First Nations people made up 17% of Manitoba’s positive cases. Meanwhile, Filipino people showed the greatest disparity in population size burden of COVID-19 with a 12% positivity rate while having only 7% of the population. Filipino women are slightly more affected than men.