"The government's slogan 'Better Care Sooner' has become a joke," [Myrna Driedger] said. "When we're seeing the kind of waits we're now seeing for chemotherapy, there is a deep-seated, systemic problem in our health-care system."

There is also now a program to get patients who aren't physically ready for surgery prepared through a program called 'prehabilitation.' In Winnipeg and Brandon, 408 patients are now going through 'prehab' en route to surgery.

There is now a shortage of oncologists at CancerCare Manitoba, meaning patients with certain types of cancer are waiting months to get in to start chemotherapy treatments. That's a problem that wasn't even on the radar screen a year ago, though [Theresa Oswald] says it's something that was brought to her attention almost as soon as she was sworn in.