It was a homecoming of sorts – several hundred emboldened nurses chanting “we are the nurses, the mighty, mighty nurses,” wielding placards and waving flags on the front steps of the Manitoba legislature, demanding government reverse its “reckless cuts” to health care.

It wasn’t quite the 1990s where, under the former Filmon government, protests as large as 1,000-strong spilled out onto the front lawn of the legislature to oppose proposed ER closures and other hospital cuts. But Wednesday’s protest was strikingly familiar, at least in spirit, to those who witnessed the super-charged union rallies that occurred regularly on Broadway in those days, the kind that seem to grow in size and intensity under Conservative governments.

After 17 long years of organized labour peace in Manitoba, the union rallies are back. And they will undoubtedly grow as the Pallister government rolls out its austerity plan.

But Wednesday’s rally, organized by the Manitoba Nurses Union, wasn’t just a partisan attack on an anti-union government. The fact the current administration is a Tory one certainly boosts the octane level among union protesters. But in many ways, what the current Conservative government is proposing in its bid to reorganize hospitals in Winnipeg – including the closing of three emergency rooms – is more far reaching than anything the previous Filmon government did in the 1990s. And there are some valid concerns that government may be moving too fast on a reorganization plan that’s surprisingly short on specifics.

No doubt health care unions are concerned first and foremost with their members’ jobs and whether the proposed changes will result in layoffs and/or workforce reductions through attrition. That’s what unions are paid to be concerned about and that’s what Wednesday’s rally was largely about.

Nevertheless, there are legitimate questions about how closing three emergency rooms and one urgent care centre will impact patient care. Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen and the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority have been frustratingly vague about how closing ERs is supposed result in shorter wait times. Their argument is that by turning two ERs into urgent care centres and beefing up capacity at three existing ERs – Grace General Hospital, Health Sciences Centre and St. Boniface General Hospital – patients will get the appropriate care they need faster. For example, instead of waiting hours at an ER with a less serious medical condition like an ear infection, non-emergent patients will get faster care at one of the two new urgent care centres – Victoria General Hospital and Seven Oaks General Hospital. And the city’s three ERs can concentrate on more acute patients.

That may sound plausible in theory, but there are a lot of questions surrounding this model that haven’t been answered.

For starters, the chief reason ERs are clogged now is not because they’re crowded with low-acuity patients. They’re congested because there are too many admitted patients in ERs that should be in medical beds that aren’t available or don’t exist. In many cases medical beds aren’t available because they’re occupied by long-term patients who should be elsewhere, like in personal care homes or in their own homes with home care. So what are the plans to bolster the availability of medical beds in the system to alleviate ER overcrowding? Neither the WRHA nor the health minister are saying.

Also, what is stopping low-acuity patients from continuing to show up at ERs in the future? Government can do all the public service announcements it wants about where folks should go to get the “right care.” But at the end of the day, hospitals like HSC and St. Boniface are still going to have high volumes of walk-in patients who aren’t really that sick but who still need to see a doctor at 2 am.

If there are answers to these and many more questions about the Pallister government’s hospital reorganization plan, the Tories have done an exceptionally poor job of communicating them.

And if they want public buy-in, they’re going to have to do a much better job of explaining how all this is supposed to work. If they have any answers, that is.