Take responsibility for Manitoba through infrastructure repair

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/04/2024 (766 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

My friend and I email each other daily. We list things we’ve accomplished. “Look! I’ve done… X, Y, Z.” We cheer each other on.

We’re also saying, less directly — you exist. Your work matters. Your concerns are valid. Your successes are real. You make a difference.

I thought about this while checking about a city permitting process. First, I checked online and found an undated brochure. It indicated that I didn’t need a permit for the event I was arranging.

I wanted to be sure.

This effort began with a phone call but the recording suggested using an email. I emailed.

Eventually I received separate responses from three employees. Each response grew more confounding. The first person said something like — “I don’t think you need a permit, but we should check with this other department.”

I waited.

Second person responded with a subject header for a totally different event for an educational institution and not my individual question.

This suggested I should fill out something online with direct but dead weblinks for my “beer garden” and other incorrect details.

Alas, I’m not a school and had no beer tent plans. I tried to clarify and got a “I just used the subject header sent to me” and that the links would be back online tomorrow.

I tried to ask again, since the responses didn’t answer my questions. I then got another, more polite, response that still indicated I needed a permit with PDFs to fill out rather than dead links.

After several days and my third request, one employee copied everyone, took responsibility, cleared up confusion, and wrote: No, I didn’t need a permit.

This wasn’t a demonstration of city efficiency. Perhaps they needed an online form with click boxes that said “if X, you need a permit. If Y, you do not.” I mentioned this to another parent during a play date.

He laughed, saying, “Oh, that would include trying to work with IT, or fill out an IT request, which would add bureaucracy, take forever and possibly never happen either.”

Later, my mom reminded me about how professional accountability saved me. When I was a child, my pediatrician caught a major issue and provided a diagnosis that, after three surgeries, saved my life.

As a family friend, he visited my family one evening with his wife after the initial diagnosis. He wanted my parents to take the diagnosis seriously. Sometimes when my siblings and I needed treatment, he wasn’t on call, but I remember the on-call pediatricians in the practice, one by name. This was probably 45 years ago.

They took their responsibility for our health seriously.

Shawna Forester’s recent Free Press description of the continuity of care she receives shows how unusual this is now. (Hope can’t help but die in emergency room’s limbo, March 21.) This compares to my health-care experiences, where whomever is on duty must be brought up to date. There’s no continuity between one visit and the next. We don’t even have provincewide electronic medical files. There is often no relationship between a patient and medical professional or any follow-through.

As individuals, my friend and I connect often but we don’t comment on most household details. Yet we do these daily obligations anyway.

If we keep up with small stuff, the big stuff doesn’t become an emergency as often. Routine maintenance may mean bigger issues don’t surprise and overwhelm us.

In Winnipeg, and therefore in Manitoba, we face several systems in crisis. Our physical infrastructure: the maintenance or rebuild of the Arlington Bridge was deferred for so long that we now have no way across the railway in that part of the city. Our sewer system is so old that we have massive sewage dumps into our river. Our health-care system is so besieged that no simple, easy fix is possible.

Basic maintenance investments, such as addressing bridge building and repair or sewage overhauls should happen long before it’s an emergency.

We must fund the training of more provincial medical professionals now if we expect a functional medical system in the future. These are long-term efforts to take responsibility that our government hasn’t funded or prioritized.

As individuals, we support and applaud our friends and families. These trust relationships add up. We feel cared for and valued as individuals.

However, our governments must demonstrate a similar amount of responsibility for Manitobans. We need to be able to trust that those in power will follow through and care about helping others. Our provincial officials must plan for the short and long term to provide a better, healthier infrastructure for us.

On a small scale: it shouldn’t take three people to tell a citizen if a permit is needed. It shouldn’t take multiple steps for a medical patient to get a routine test (that a stranger suggested was unnecessary) for a lifelong problem. Just as homeowners must replace home sewage lines when they leak in the basement, the federal government, province and city must know that allowing sewage to spill into the river due to failing infrastructure is entirely unacceptable.

Manitobans need a firm to-do list, with acknowledgment, and commitment to each other. Manitobans matter. We deserve basic infrastructure and medical care.

If my friend and I offer moral support to each other daily, then Manitoba’s leaders can also consider doing more essential relationship work, in advance, to take care of everyone here. Let’s acknowledge that we deserve better care. We must work together to fund and improve our physical and human infrastructure before any more emergencies pop up.

Joanne Seiff is a Winnipeg freelance writer and the author of three books.