Health minister won’t remove WRHA board chair for travelling during pandemic By: Larry Kusch Posted: 7:00 PM CST Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2021 Last Modified: 10:48 PM CST Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2021 Updates

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Health Minister Heather Stefanson said the province has no plans to rescind the appointment of the chairman of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority board of directors after he travelled to Arizona earlier this month.

Stefanson neither directly criticized nor defended the actions of Wayne McWhirter at a press conference Wednesday.

Instead, she said that chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin, Premier Brian Pallister and others have “been very clear that now is not the time for non-essential travel” and that McWhirter would be expected to “properly isolate” on his return home.

“At this time we are not looking to rescind his appointment, no,” Stefanson said when asked by the Free Press.

Manitoba’s opposition parties took a harsher stance in response to news that McWhirter had visited the southern U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic against the advice of federal and provincial leaders and health officials.

The NDP said the Pallister government appointee should resign, and if he doesn’t, the government should remove him.

“He should consider, at the very minimum, extending a heartfelt and sincere apology to Manitobans,” NDP health critic Uzoma Asagwara said Wednesday.

Winnipeg Regional Health Authority board chairman in Arizona

Posted: 7:00 PM CST Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2021

The chairman of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority board of directors is in sunny Arizona, at a time when the health system is in crisis and governments are pleading with the public to avoid international travel.

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“What we need to see is accountability. What we need to see are some actual consequences,” Asagwara said.

Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said McWhirter, who was appointed chairman of the WRHA board in 2019, “should be removed.”

Lamont said that as a key figure in the health system, McWhirter showed a lack of judgment in travelling to Arizona during the height of the pandemic.

When Stefanson was asked Wednesday what message it sends when the head of a health care board ignores government and public health advice, she expressed no personal disappointment in McWhirter’s actions. She gave no hint that there would be any consequences for the WRHA board chairman, who has donated money to the Progressive Conservative party in the past.

The Free Press was unable to press the minister about whether she was upset at learning about McWhirter’s trip or whether she planned to speak to him about it because reporters were limited to only two questions at the news conference.

McWhirter could not be reached Wednesday to respond to opposition demands that he be removed from his position.

On Tuesday, he confirmed that he was in Arizona but would not say why he had travelled there or when he had arrived.

Progressive Conservative MLA James Teitsma also made headlines recently when it was learned he and his family had gone on a driving trip to British Columbia over the holidays. The province’s chief bureaucrat, David McLaughlin, was allowed to work from his Ottawa home during the last two weeks of December, while a senior PC political staffer was permitted to travel to eastern Canada as well.

Asagwara noted Wednesday that Teitsma has yet to apologize for his indiscretion.

While he was not initially punished, a Pallister spokeswoman said this week the Radisson MLA had been removed from one of the committees he previously served on.

Lamont lamented the fact that some of the very people who should be trumpeting the message that Manitobans should stay home during the pandemic are not following the government’s advice.

“It’s a two-tier pandemic where there’s one set of rules for Pallister and his buddies and another set of rules for everybody else,” he said. “And that’s the worst possible thing you can be doing in a (one-in-) 100-year crisis.”

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca

Larry Kusch
Legislature reporter

Larry Kusch didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life until he attended a high school newspaper editor’s workshop in Regina in the summer of 1969 and listened to a university student speak glowingly about the journalism program at Carleton University in Ottawa.

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