Manitoba Bill Would Require Cardiac Patients to Be Informed of Surgery Wait Time

An ambulance drives past Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg on June 15, 2023. The Canadian Press/David Lipnowski

Manitoba’s Opposition PC Party has introduced a bill that would require health-care providers to inform patients with serious conditions about their expected wait time for treatment.

The Progressive-Conservative Party’s health critic MLA Kathleen Cook introduced Bill 226, also known as “The Health System Governance and Accountability Amendment Act (Reporting When Timely Care Not Available),” on April 23. It’s a move the PCs say will “close critical accountability gaps” in the provincial health-care system.

The PCs currently hold 20 seats in the Manitoba legislature, while the NDP have 34 seats.

The bill is dubbed “Debbie’s Law” after Debbie Fewster, a Manitoba grandmother who died in 2024 while awaiting surgery. She was told last summer she required heart surgery within a three-week timeframe and died during Thanksgiving weekend in October without having received the necessary treatment.

Fewster’s family has said if they been aware Debbie might not receive the necessary surgery in Manitoba on time, they would have sought care for her outside the country.

Key elements of the bill include the requirement to provide written notification to patients when the care for a serious condition will not be delivered within the recommended timeframe, and to inform patients about out-of-province care.

The bill also calls for mandatory reporting of all deaths linked to wait time delays for serious conditions as well as for an annual public report to be tabled by the health minister.

“This is common-sense health-care reform,” Cook said. “Debbie’s Law puts patients first by making sure they know when care is delayed, offers them alternatives when care will take too long at home, and shines a light on the consequences of delayed care.”

She said the bill will fix problems in the health-care system by “ensuring no one is left in the dark.”

Think tank SecondStreet.org, which has advocated for the change, said it could save lives by allowing patients to decide on another treatment path.

“It’s very encouraging to see the Manitoba government take this first step,” SecondStreet.org President Colin Craig said in a press release. “But the next step is to legislate this requirement along with consequences for non-compliance.”

Craig previously said there have been cases in which doctors notified patients of the potential risk of not receiving timely surgery in Canada, leading them to seek medical treatment in another country.

A survey from the think tank found that 86 percent of Canadians supported the proposed Debbie’s Law.

A previous report by SecondStreet.org had found more than 15,000 Canadians died between 2023 and 2024 while waiting for surgery or diagnostic scans. More than 75,000 people have died while on a waitlist since 2018, the organization says.

The PCs have raised this concern with the NDP government in the legislature in recent weeks, when Cook questioned the government on why wait times have climbed.

“The median waits for GP referral to treatment increased from 29 weeks in 2023 to 38 weeks in 2024—a 30 percent total increase in wait time,” Cook said during an April 10 session.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara responded, saying the NDP were looking at improving health care in the province.

“We are investing in making care better in this province, and we’re doing more surgeries as a result of those efforts, and we’re going to continue to do just that for Manitobans,” she said.

Jennifer Cowan contributed to this article.