A $1 million report, written after a recommendation to dissolve the Manitoba office that protects seniors in care, has been sitting on the health minister's desk since December, leaving the future of the plan in question as no work has been done to make it reality.
A scathing report from Manitoba's auditor general in July 2023 revealed a litany of issues at the Protection for Persons in Care Office.
The office, which is within the province's health department, is responsible for receiving and investigating reports of abuse or neglect of people in personal care homes or hospitals.
The auditor found serious allegations of abuse were being dismissed and complaints were taking upwards of three years to be addressed by the provincial office. Findings of wrongdoing were sometimes overturned by a director in the office, the report said.
In response, the then Progressive Conservative government said it would disband that office and create a new independent investigation office, which would report directly to the legislature instead of to a government department.
William Burnett, a former justice with Manitoba's Court of King's Bench and Court of Appeal, was hired to guide the creation of the new office.
But following the NDP's election win in October 2023, the plan appears to be stalled, with seemingly no new money allocated for the project and no firm commitment from the health minister on its future.
The president of a national seniors' advocacy organization says it's "inexcusable" the report has been sitting for months.
"Changes were promised — real substantive changes … including a new office that would take Manitoba out of these hidden dark corners and into the light," said CanAge president and CEO Laura Tamblyn Watts, who championed disbanding the Protection for Persons in Care Office in 2023.
Tamblyn Watts said she was horrified when she read the auditor general's report, which found instances where personal care home residents were punched, slapped, kicked and sexually assaulted were not deemed "abuse" by the office.
Given the office's questionable decisions, the best solution to keep seniors safe was to create an independent office to investigate such allegations, she said.
"Policing your own never really works," said Tamblyn Watts. "We've already seen that the system was quite broken."
Former judge paid over $1MHealth Minister Uzoma Asagwara told CBC News they have been exploring the recommendations in Burnett's report since they received it in December, but offered no details.
The minister refused to say whether they are moving forward with the plan for an independent office, saying only it was "the previous government's approach."
"We followed through with him [Burnett] to make sure we could learn from that work," the minister said of the former justice's report.
"We made other commitments that we're delivering on for Manitobans."
Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said the NDP government focused on fixing the immediate issues with the Protection for Persons in Care Office, rather than waiting on recommendations. (Jeff Stapleton/CBC)A copy of Burnett's contract obtained by CBC through freedom of information laws shows he was contracted from Sept. 1, 2023, to the end of August 2025.
Proactive disclosure records show that during that period, he was paid just over $1.04 million.
The contract laid out milestones for Burnett, including submitting his proposed new model for the independent office and then helping create the policies and legislation needed to set it up. In the last months of his contract, he was supposed to give advice for the office's implementation process.
Asagwara said after they received Burnett's report in December, he did no further work for the health department. He was paid over $340,000 from December until the end of his contract.
The disbanding of the Protection for Persons in Care Office appears to be stalled following the change of government in 2023. Manitoba Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said they chose to address immediate concerns rather than rely on a new office.The contract indicates there was a penalty for cancelling the contract early, but the amount of the penalty was redacted in the disclosure.
When asked why the health department didn't use him to do more work after the report was finished, the minister said they chose action over waiting on recommendations.
"They [the PCs] chose to invest in a report and giving this mandate to set up an office, instead of addressing the concerns that were right in front of them," Asagwara said.
The NDP government eliminated the existing office's backlog, hired more investigators at the office and established an independent seniors' advocate, said Asagwara. The advocate's office will identify and evaluate issues faced by seniors, and will be created this fall once legislation is proclaimed.
It will not have investigatory powers. A spokesperson for the health minister said they are open to strengthening the Seniors' Advocate Act in the future.
The health minister also mandated that all investigations be completed within 179 days.
The NDP also proclaimed legislation, introduced under the Tories, that clarified and broadened the definition of abuse under the act that governs the protection office.
'Concerning and appalling': PC criticTrevor King, the seniors and long-term care critic for the Opposition Progressive Conservatives, said the NDP is wasting money by sitting on Burnett's report.
"It's rather concerning and appalling … that a huge amount of taxpayers' dollars was spent on this individual to give recommendations, and nothing is being done with it," he said.
"We are using taxpayers' money to employ somebody to do something, so we should have given him something to do."
Progressive Conservative seniors and long-term care critic Trevor King says 'a huge amount of taxpayers' dollars was spent' on the report, 'and nothing is being done with it.' (Darin Morash/CBC)CanAge's Tamblyn Watts says the creation of a seniors' advocate is the step forward, but thinks it should exist alongside an independent investigative office.
"They are separate structures that are complementary, but unless you actually have some kind of mandate to investigate and compel answers, things will stay just as they've been," she said.
According to its 2024-25 annual report, the protection office received 2,354 reports of potential abuse or neglect. Of those, 69 were elevated to an investigation, meaning the office found reasonable grounds to believe a person in care was abused or neglected.
Of those 69 cases, 14 were deemed founded and 16 were deemed unfounded.
The other 39 were still open at the end of the fiscal year. A spokesperson for the health minister said as of this month, there were 68 active investigations.
The annual report says 10 patients were found to have been physically abused, two were neglected, one person was sexually abused and there was one case where the person faced financial abuse.
The auditor general made 12 recommendations in his report on the office, including making the outcome of its investigations public, with a brief summary including the position of the alleged abuser, the allegation, the type of abuse and the conclusion.
Those summaries were not included in the office's latest annual report, but will be in the 2025-26 report, according to the health minister's spokesperson. The auditor general's other recommendations have been addressed, she said.
Burnett's report will be released at the end of September or early October, Asagwara said.