![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Richard-Frechette.jpg\")
Manitoba father Richard Frechette standing outside St. Boniface Hospital, Nov. 3, 2025. (CityNews)<\/p>\nManitoba is boasting that it\u2019s more prepared than it has been for a while to handle flu and cold season.<\/p>\n
The province says it\u2019s added 323 beds to the healthcare system in the past two years, including 10 new intensive care unit beds in 2025.<\/p>\n
Those ICU beds were added at the Health Sciences Centre Children\u2019s Hospital (six), St. Boniface Hospital (two) and Grace Hospital (two). <\/p>\n
\u201cEvery single year we\u2019ve worked very hard to get the system better prepared for flu season, for respiratory illness season,\u201d said Uzoma Asagwara, the minister of health, seniors and long-term care.<\/p>\n
But families waiting on loved ones at St. Boniface Hospital \u2014 the same hospital where the Manitoba NDP government made the announcement Monday \u2014 say they are not seeing these beds.<\/p>\n
Richard Frechette says his 18-year-old daughter has been in constant pain with fainting episodes since the end of August. He says he\u2019s had to bring her to the emergency room often, where wait times broke his heart.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was crying in pain, in pain, in pain,\u201d Frechette recounted. \u201cFour days before she got to see a doctor. Four days, we were waiting in the waiting area.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never seen it this bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frechette says doctors found a tumour in his daughter\u2019s liver and scheduled her surgery for September, which got pushed back to November.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe said, we can\u2019t go on this way. It\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manitoba father Richard Frechette standing outside St. Boniface Hospital, Nov. 3, 2025. (CityNews)<\/p>\n
The father says doctors also didn\u2019t have time to sign his note from Service Canada after he took time away from work to care for his daughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need to get paid somehow,\u201d Frechette told CityNews. \u201cI\u2019m with my daughter. They don\u2019t have the time to talk to you or spend time to do anything inside the room.\u201d<\/p>\n
CityNews asked Minister Asagwara how they reconciled the new beds with the still-long wait times.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it really does show Manitobans the magnitude of the damage done by the previous government,\u201d they replied. \u201cWe lost over 500 beds from the system under the previous administration, hundreds of healthcare workers and our three largest emergency rooms in Winnipeg.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Progressive Conservatives responded by saying the governing NDP is simply not fulfilling its promise to Manitobans.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can say you hired doctors and you can say you hired nurses and you can say these things you\u2019re doing, but talk is cheap,\u201d PC Leader Obby Khan said. \u201cManitobans deserve and want and demand action.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey ran on the platform that they had all the answers, that they were going to fix healthcare. Two years later, and everything is worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The province is acknowledging there\u2019s still more work to be done. Minister Asagwara says they\u2019re aiming to add another 34 beds to the system by the end of December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manitoba is boasting that it\u2019s more prepared than it has been for a while to handle flu and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-262028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}