Manitoba’s Response

In Manitoba, a lack of money had prevented Winnipeg from paying for medical services for relief recipients. As doctors’ incomes declined, they resented the city’s failure to provide even a token amount, and in March 1933 they started the first doctors’ strike in Canadian history, in the city’s hospitals. The strike lasted for seven months. After lengthy negotiations, the Greater Winnipeg Relief Plan was created; until 1965, it provided payments to doctors who treated the indigent.