Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/5/2017 (1224 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dr. David Peachey has repudiated and rejected accusations made by NDP health critic Matt Wiebe that the Pallister government politically interfered in his seminal report on Manitoba health-care needs.

"We received zero interference from this government," Peachey said Friday afternoon in an interview from Nova Scotia. "Mr. Wiebe is absolutely unfounded. I can’t imagine where Mr. Wiebe is coming from.

"We received direction from nobody — our mandate was a blank piece of paper. At no time did we receive political or staff interference. We did our work, we did it absolutely independently," Peachey said.

"We did what we were asked to do, come up with a report on needs," said Peachey, who was adamant that he and his Health Intelligence and Associates consulting firm would have rejected any hint of interference.

In the minister’s estimates hearings Thursday afternoon, Wiebe accused Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen of political interference in the writing of the Peachey report. Wiebe accused Goertzen of ordering his staff to "steer" Peachey "into the exact ideological stance that he wanted him to be in.

"That’s the decision that the minister made. He politically interfered in that process through his staff and that’s fine, that’s where he wants to go," Wiebe said.

Goertzen fired back, accusing Wiebe of impugning Peachey’s integrity and daring Wiebe to step out of the chamber and repeat his claims where he would not be protected from legal action.

Peachey was hired by the former NDP government. Goertzen released Peachey’s report two months ago while announcing widespread changes intended to improve the health-care system, including closing three emergency rooms in Winnipeg and removing the urgent-care facility from the Misericordia Health Centre. Peachey said Friday his report does not name any specific health-care facility.

TREVOR HAGAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS NDP health critic Matt Wiebe.

"Our recommendation was that there be three major acute-care hospitals" fully staffed and equipped, he said. "Winnipeg does not need six acute-care hospitals."

Nowhere in the report does he say which emergency rooms should close and which should be retained, or which hospitals should have urgent-care centres and other major facilities, Peachey said. It has been frustrating to read claims that he named specific facilities in what Peachey sees as a "rebranding" of facilities, he said.

Peachey said that he also did not receive any interference from the former NDP government, which originally hired him.

In the same exchange Thursday, Wiebe unloaded on Goertzen when he again demanded the health minister release a KPMG value-for-money audit of the health-care system the province has withheld — arguing it contains proprietary information belonging to KPMG — and that the health minister release information from the wait times task force Wiebe insists Goertzen has.

Goertzen retorted that Wiebe is coming up with conspiracy schemes.

"Now, that, of course, impugns the reputation of Dr. Peachey, who, I understand, is renowned across Canada for his work, has done this in many other provinces. I doubt there is another province in Canada where he’s been accused by an elected official of somehow manipulating his report politically," Goertzen said.

"I’ve given him the assurance that neither I nor my staff had any interaction with Dr. Peachey. We got his report. We accepted it," said Goertzen. "I would feel embarrassed for the province that we’d have someone who’d even raise those sorts of aspersions against someone like Dr. Peachey."

Wiebe countered that Peachey’s own report said he had heard the Conservative throne speech, was aware the province was contemplating cuts and worked with a steering committee.

Goertzen said he had no idea who Peachey was when he became health minister and only later learned the province had commissioned him to do a report on planning options for clinical and preventive health-care services in Manitoba.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca