Have Your Say:

Critical analysis, please

In referring to the premier's announcement that the provincial government will front/finance the money for the new stadium, that is wonderful.

However, whatever happened to basing a decision on facts?

While the location at the University of Manitoba was partly based on developing a rapid transit system to get there, that reality seems to have vanished.

Therefore, there will basically be one way to get there: cars. Who really thinks a 30-minute to 60-minute bus ride from the North End, St. James or Transcona is viable?

In contrast the Polo Park location is central, with many feeder streets, not only to get to the venue, but also park on. Plus the existing retail is already in place for tax benefits.

Please somebody, give your head a shake. Somebody do some critical analysis.

Darrell Mazur

Winnipeg

Finish the job, Sam

In September 2008, Mayor Sam Katz and former premier Gary Doer announced the Southwest Rapid Transit Corridor, a 9.6-kilometre transitway connecting downtown to the University of Manitoba.

But now, with the first leg of the busway already underway, Katz has said he would prefer that federal and provincial funds earmarked for continuing the project from Jubilee Avenue to the U of M be diverted to road projects.

If the mayor has his way, we could be left with an amputated half-leg of a rapid transit line. A complete rapid transit line can draw new passengers to transit and provide lucrative new opportunities for development near the transit stations. New development increases the city's revenues and can turn transit into a paying proposition. A half rapid transit line has little potential to draw either passengers or development.

Money spent on half a rapid transit line is money wasted. Dreams of future rail lines are no substitute for an actual rapid transit line now. The mayor should finish what he started.

Christopher Leo

Paul Hesse

Winnnipeg

OxyContin a safe choice

Re: OxyContin battle heating up (March 25). Cancer patients taking OxyContin for chronic pain need to be reassured that it remains an excellent and safe choice, despite the negative publicity around its illicit use and the new restrictions on prescribing.

Addiction to painkillers happens rarely amongst cancer patients, and usually only in people with a strong personal or family experience with addictions. All strong painkillers, including morphine, hydromorphone, fentanyl and methadone are highly addictive when used for recreational rather than for medical reasons. They are also highly effective for chronic cancer pain, and a majority of patients rely on them to maintain an active life despite their illness.

Dr. Jeff Sisler

Department of Family Medicine

University of Manitoba

Jones deserves respect

Jennifer Jones deserves respect and more. If anybody deserves the key to the City of Winnipeg it is her and her team. Any team that can attain that level in the world finals and win the bronze medal deserves wholehearted respect and awe and applause from all of us and not dumb questions. Their achievement reflects but a tiny image of all the hard work the team has toiled at over the years in preparation for the competition.

CHRIS KENNEDY

Winnipeg

The public's right to own

The dangers of privatization of our water and waste system (The perils of corporatized water, March 29) are known to anyone with a modicum of intelligence. They have been stated at public meetings by many Winnipeggers objecting to a privatization of essential services.

A handful believes natural monopolies with inherent profitability should be privately owned. Sadly, they are on Mayor Sam Katz's council. Sure, we can defeat them in the next election but by then our publicly owned water and waste system will be long gone and the private owners will be laughing all the way to the bank. It will serve us right!

Over a decade ago we were fed the myth that new communications technology prohibited further public ownership of the Manitoba Telephone System. Sasktel is still publicly owned and profitable. Here profits once earned by all Manitobans ($21 million in its last publicly-owned year) go to a handful of private shareholders, and executives paid vastly more than when it was a public utility. The rest of us simply pay. It serves us right!

HERB SCHULZ

Winnipeg

Scrap the lanes

Re: City may open diamond lanes to more users (March 17). If the objective is to return the entire road space back to being the exclusive enclave of motor vehicles, then this is the way to go. It's certainly not reconcilable with any genuine (yet professed) attempt to increase cycle-commuting, and the tangible benefits that that brings to our community.

I can only hope that the city's transportation planners exhibit some common sense and recognize that allowing more vehicles into the diamond lane will essentially squeeze out the cyclists, and relegate this idea, ever so respectfully, to the scrap heap.

ROWENA FISHER

Winnipeg

Free to eat poorly

Re: Look after yourself (March 30). Lou Spakowski says: "Perhaps because we live in a free society it gives some people the freedom to choose a lifestyle that leads to illness and debilitating diseases."

I realize he is trying to put the emphasis on the illness and disease aspect of that statement, but I'd like to focus on the free society part.

Spakowski tells us that we need a complete ban on the sale of tobacco products and that we should reject foods high in salt, sugar or fat. However his totalitarian idea of enforcing a healthy lifestyle on people simply doesn't connect with the basic format of a free society, and I think our freedom to choose how we live needs to be protected from such ideologies at all costs. Most of us end up with some sort of illness or condition eventually, no matter how we live, right?

I'd like to think our country operates on a system where everyone respects and cares about each other enough to allow them the right to live as they please and I believe that our health-care system reflects that attitude. For example, when someone engages in some form of physical recreation like playing a sport, riding a bike or bouncing on a trampoline, does everyone get up in arms if they injure themselves and have to visit a hospital or go through physical therapy?

If we asked everyone to live their lives constantly trying to avoid requiring medical attention, our lives would become terribly mundane and devoid of many pleasures.

Alex Passey

Oakbank

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Re: Look after yourself.

The average person is increasingly aware of the amount of salt in grocery-store foods, but they feel it is out of their control. Most of the food manufacturers are really out of touch with people's level of awareness or are trying to seduce us to accept that seemingly low-salt items are healthy choices.

My husband and I have a relative who needs to reduce the amount of salt in their food. Our relative loves soup so we tried to find a truly low-salt soup in our local grocery stores. After visiting several stores, we were frustrated in our search.

The amount of salt in the majority of soups was in the range of 20 per cent to 35 per cent, which is too high when combined with salt in other foods that we consume each day. Food producers should be truly ashamed that there is such a small choice when you are looking at the hundreds of soup cans available. All of the rows of other regular or low-salt soups are just unhealthy for us. We choose not to buy them. This is just one food product type, but is a good everyday example of what is happening in all of the grocery aisles.

We do need to read labels, making different in-store choices, start making our own food without these additives and to be more vocal about how important this is to us.

Joan Kakoske

Winnipeg

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 1, 2010 A11