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This article was published 8/9/2017 (1107 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Pallister government has announced it is moving ahead with three new personal care home (PCH) projects that will add a total of 258 beds to the provincial system.

Included is a 108-bed project slated for Bridgwater in southwest Winnipeg that had been previously halted by the Progressive Conservatives because of its high budgeted cost.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Health, Seniors and Active Living Minister Kelvin Goertzen

The government cancelled or froze several nursing home projects planned under the former NDP government, balking at construction costs in the neighbourhood of $400,000 per bed. When they came to office last year, the Tories said they would be prepared to fund new PCHs to the tune of $133,000 per bed.

Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen admitted Friday that the new funding guidelines upset some organizations that were sponsoring new care home projects, but the high cost of new facilities was no longer sustainable.

"I think we went through a few stages of shock and denial. But then, as people often do, they kind of rolled up their sleeves and got to work," he said.

In an interview, Goertzen said all the projects approved Friday, including the one slated for Bridgwater, either met the new funding guidelines or came close to doing so.

In addition to the Bridgwater development, two facilities outside of Winnipeg will be expanded. Up to 140 beds will be added to the Rest Haven Personal Care Home in Steinbach. And, the Boyne Lodge in Carman will see up to 10 new beds, 70 replacement beds and up to 30 new transitional-care beds.

Cost estimates for the three projects were not disclosed.

Goertzen said the approved projects are going to areas in the greatest need of service. The health minister, who represents Steinbach in the Manitoba legislature, pointed out that city has not seen "a net new" personal care home bed since the early 1970s.

"The community has gone from probably being the 10th largest city to the third largest city in the province (in that time)," he added.

The Bridgwater project, sponsored by Winnipeg Mennonite Seniors Care (WMSC), had been ready to go to tender early this year before the government slammed the brakes on it.

John Thiessen, executive director of WMSC, was out of town Friday and unavailable for comment.

Goertzen said the group was subsequently able to submit a plan that was acceptable to the government.

Design work for all three projects is about to get underway. No estimated completion dates were provided.

Goertzen said groups wishing to sponsor new personal care homes in Manitoba should be able to learn from the organizations whose projects were approved on Friday.

"I’m not suggesting that they can build them for $133,000 a bed, but that’s what government is providing," the minister said. "And if the numbers are higher than that, then they find a way to bridge that."

With an aging population, the demand in Manitoba for new personal care homes is expected to increase in the coming decades. The PCs promised in the last election to "fast-track" the construction of 1,200 nursing home beds and spend "more than $160 million over the next eight years" to make it happen.

The beds announced Friday were the first to be formally approved by the PCs.

NDP health critic Matt Wiebe said the Pallister government cancelled hundreds of PCH beds barely six months ago, "causing deep confusion and uncertainty" in communities across the province. One of them was Lac du Bonnet, where proponents had spent nearly $2.5 million on project design when the plug was pulled on that project.

"(Friday's) announcement is a failed attempt at playing catchup for projects (they) cancelled when they came into government," Wiebe said of the Tories.

There are 9,697 licensed personal care home beds in Manitoba. A study five years ago by the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy determined the province could need as many as 6,300 additional personal care home or supportive housing beds in the next few decades.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca