The Opposition Progressive Conservatives took a swipe at the NDP government this week for its recent propaganda campaign that tries to convince the public things are looking up in health care.
The Tories have good reason to complain. The province is running radio ads that claim in health care is improving and “there’s reason to hope.”
There may be reason to hope. Hope is always good. But so far, after 15 months in government, there are no signs that health care has improved under the NDP. In some cases, including wait times for orthopedic surgery and delays in accessing diagnostic testing (such as MRIs and CT scans), things have got worse.
“There’s no denying that health care in Manitoba is in crisis, yet the NDP are spending an unknown amount of taxpayer money on ads to pat themselves on the back,” said Tory health critic Kathleen Cook. “This is a grotesque display of hubris.”
It’s propaganda. It’s an attempt to create the perception that the government has made great strides fixing the broken health care system, when in fact it’s just as lousy as it was under the previous Tory government (or worse).
The timing of the ads is particularly offensive. They were launched just a week after a man died in the Health Sciences Centre emergency department after waiting eight hours for care.
“In the wake of a tragedy last week, where a patient died after waiting hours in the ER, these ads are not just misleading, they’re in incredibly poor taste,” Cook said in a news release.
They most certainly are.
The problem for the Tories, though, is they did the same thing when they were in government.
In April 2022, they plastered Winnipeg with billboards that claimed they were “clearing the surgical and diagnostic backlog” from the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the province’s own data at the time showed that wait times for hip and knee surgery were longer than they had been a year earlier. Wait times for MRIs, CT scans and ultrasounds had either stayed the same or had grown since the previous summer.
The billboards were pure government propaganda.
A year later, just a few months before the Oct. 3, 2023 election, the Tories ran more propaganda ads, claiming they had made progress in all sorts of areas, including child care (even though wait times for child care had grown).
Not surprisingly NDP MLAs, who were then in opposition, lit their hair on fire and demanded the government stop squandering tax dollars with misleading advertising. But just like today, they did the same thing under a previous NDP government.
In 2014-15, the NDP, under then-premier Greg Selinger, spent almost $1 million on a “steady growth, good jobs” propaganda campaign. The government erected hundreds of signs around the province in an attempt to create the perception it was creating new jobs through government spending (after raising the PST by one percentage point). However, it didn’t release employment figures to show where the so-called new jobs were.
The Tories, then in opposition, made the same complaints they’re making today. It’s a cycle of propaganda both parties are guilty of when they’re in office.
It would be far more useful if the province used advertising dollars to promote important public service messages, such as getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and the flu.
For example, in the Tampa Bay Times newspaper this week, the U.S. government bought ads to inform Floridians that: “If you’re 65 or older, you’re at 10 times the risk of hospitalization from flu, COVID-19, or RSV, than those who are 50 and younger. But updated vaccines are available and will cut your hospitalization risk in half.”
The slogan they use in the ad: “Risk Less, Do More: Get the Season’s Vaccines.”
It’s a public service announcement paid for by the U.S, Department of Health and Human Services.
Those are powerful, evidence-based statistics the public should be aware of. Why isn’t the Manitoba government running those types of ads? Health officials have mountains of data that could show how vaccinations reduce the risk of serious illness, hospitalization and death. Why aren’t they plastering billboards all over the city with that kind of useful public messaging?
Instead, the government spends millions on propaganda ads to help boost its polling numbers and to ultimately get re-elected.
It’s unethical and it’s a gross misuse of taxpayers’ money.
tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca
Tom Brodbeck
Columnist
Tom Brodbeck is a columnist with the Free Press and has over 30 years experience in print media. He joined the Free Press in 2019. Born and raised in Montreal, Tom graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1993 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and commerce. Read more about Tom.
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