Treaty 1 Territory, Winnipeg MB - Manitoba Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont, MLA for St. Boniface says the PCs and the WRHA must release reports into the Covid-19 disaster at the Revera-owned Maples Care home.
In November, multiple ambulances were called to the Maples Care home after a major outbreak of Covid-19. Paramedics on the scene arrived and found patients who had been dead for hours in rigor mortis.
Lamont said the day of the tragedy, he received multiple e-mails from family members with relatives in the home who said they had been receiving e-mail and robocalls from Maples telling them everything was fine for days.
Then, they received notice that their loved ones were "unresponsive" and were told hours later they were dead.
A spokesperson from Revera participated in a government media conference, and openly misled families and the public about the state of the home.
"The PCs hired Dr. Lynn Stevenson to do a report, and now we're hearing it won't be released. That is little better than a cover-up at this point," said Lamont. "We need to know what went wrong, and people need to be held to account, for healing, for accountability, for justice, and so that it doesn't happen again."
Manitoba Liberals are renewing their call for a public inquiry to look into the deaths and the catastrophic failure of the Pallister government to prepare care homes for a second wave.
Manitoba Liberal Health Critic Jon Gerrard said that in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, openness and transparency are more important than ever. "To be less than fully open only reduces the credibility of the government in handling the epidemic, and will lead to a lack of trust instead of maintaining and improving the trust which is so important for the government's actions to be taken seriously. Trust is critical for the pandemic to be well addressed and for having everyone following the rules and keeping themselves and others safe," said Gerrard.
"Inquests are too limited in scope, and it's clear that reports will just be swept under a rug," said Lamont. "We need an independent public inquiry where the decision makers will have to answer questions under oath about what went wrong."
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