Unfortunately for them — and for patients — it doesn’t seem to be working.
Dozens of patients line ER hallways in Winnipeg hospitals on a regular basis.

Everybody knows it.
But that hasn’t stopped the Doer team from trying to claim otherwise.

Doer got into hot water earlier this year when he stood up in the legislature and claimed hallway medicine was dead, brazenly flashing a zero sign with his right hand across the chamber floor.

Premier Gary Doer claims there are “zero” patients in ER hallways.

“The average patients in the hallways in the emergency rooms in 1999 were 28 patients, Mr. Speaker,” Doer crowed June 6 in the legislature. “Today, there is zero.”

Not surprisingly, Doer’s comments sparked an angry public response, including from those who have recently spent days in ER hallways.

Despite that, Deputy Premier Rosann Wowchuk saw fit last week to make the same erroneous claim.

She, too, rose in the house, flashed the same zero sign with her right hand and claimed
hallway medicine was dead.

Deputy Premier Rosann Wowchuk continued the lie about “zero” hallway patients.

“There is zero hallway medicine,” Wowchuk shouted gleefully.

Yeah, right. Have you been to an emergency room lately, Rosie?

Health Minister Theresa Oswald tried to come to Wowchuk’s defence Tuesday, saying the agriculture minister meant there was no hallway medicine in her constituency of Swan River.

But that’s not what Wowchuk said. She simply said “there is zero hallway medicine.”

Unfortunately for patients, repeating the lie over and over again isn’t going to make the problem go away.

All it does is insult the intelligence of people who have to suffer the humiliation and discomfort of spending days and nights in the hallways because there are no hospital beds for them.

At the very least, the Doer government should apologize to Manitobans for breaking their 1999 election promise to eliminate hallway medicine in six months.