UTGB Vol 5.pdf - Robson Hall Faculty of Law

210 Underneath the Golden Boy
of any experimental treatment, and that there must be a system developed to
report and document adverse effects of new treatments. In closing, Dr. Gerrard
stated:
[L]et us proceed with this legislation which now matches other western provinces, but
, let us make sure that patients are well informed about what they are being
recommended. Let us make sure that we are doing the appropriate follow-up so that if
there are problems...we identify these early and move to make sure people are aware of
them and look at ways that they can be corrected. With that we will support this
legislation. 58
While acknowledging that the amendment introduced by Minister Sale and
passed at committee had the effect of weakening the bill in its original form, 59
Mr. Derkach acknowledged that, nonetheless, the premise of the bill was
maintained. 00 He also clarified that, in passing this bill, his intention was not to
expand health insurance to cover alternative therapies; rather, his primary and
only goal was to ''avoid doctors [from being] penalized by the College of
Physicians and Surgeons [of Manitoba] simply by prescribing alternative forms
of therapy and medicine." 61
Bill 207 came into force on 16 june 2005, the date it received Royal Assent.
The bill, undoubtedly subjected to much backroom debate and considerable
persistence on the part of the sponsoring member, quietly slipped into
Manitoba's law books, etching itself onto Manitoba's history. Unfortunately,
and perhaps somewhat surprisingly, in-depth research on Bill 207 tiiled to
uncover any media attention on the issue. Some theories on why Bill 207 may
have garnered so little media attention include: the bill appeared as a minor
amendment or one creating an incremental change to existing legislation; the
bill lost the media spotlight to other, more significant, and more controversial
bills that were passed during the same session; the content of the billalternative
health therapies-was not widely publicly appealing; and, since
similar legislation had passed in other provinces, the public perceived its passage
as occurring in due course.
58
Ibid. at 3669 (Dr. Jon Gerrard). Dr. Gerrard echoed the importance of informed decisionmaking
on the part of the patient in an interview on 5 October 2005 in Winnipeg. He also
discussed the importance of the physician informing, rather than telling, the patient
regarding different treatment options and alternatives.
59
See supra note 5 at 3670 {Len Derkach), where Mr. Derkach states: "It certainly is not
where I would have liked to have ended because it still gives considerable amount of
control to the College of Physicians and Surgeons {of Manitoba] to prescribe through
regulation the types of therapies that they would consider to be appropriate."
60
Ibid. at 3669 (Len Derkach).
61
Ibid. at 3670 (Len Derkach).