Have your say

Undemocratic action

Re: Marathon vote targets Tories, 'omni-mess', (June 14). Rather than watching movies on their iPads, Harper's Conservatives should ponder their undemocratic action in ramming through the omnibus Bill C-38 (called the Jobs, Growth and Long Term Prosperity Act in Orwellian newspeak) and its impact on Canada, its citizens and future generations.

Hopefully, the push-back from constituents in ridings across the country will register with Conservative backbenchers elected by just 39 per cent of the population. Canadians deserve answers to their legitimate concerns about the environment and the 70 other pieces of legislation buried in this 425-page bill.

Spin and repeated talking points from our prime minister and his MPs are not good enough and certainly not convincing.

GERRI THORSTEINSON

Winnipeg

The omnibus bill is outrageous. So big as to not be debatable, it makes changes to laws that the general populace is not even aware of. Is the government so afraid to actually advise Canadians of what changes they are making that they insist on passing one huge pile of legislation in lieu of breaking it into smaller parcels that can actually be discussed?

Cancelling funding to the Experimental Lakes Area is unconscionable. We are a world centre of excellence in this field. To say it is no longer in our mandate implies that Canada does not belong on the forefront of international environmental research.

DOREEN KERR

Winnipeg

Post-secondary cocoon

In his June 2 letter, Al Mackling insists that "higher learning is vital to a vibrant, successful society" and "a collective investment in society's well-being."

Certainly media puff pieces lionizing post-secondary institutions are endless. Throughout the easily stampeded civil society, the sanctity and necessity of a protracted state education now seem to be a given. The notion that impressionable young adults should be sequestered with, and indoctrinated by, a passel of academic bureaucrats is rarely questioned.

Academic bureaucrats are virtually impossible to fire, have huge indexed pensions and have established a rigid, self-serving, politically correct cocoon. The economists are Keynesian and the political scientists uniformly statist. The shrill deconstructivism of so-called women's studies is never challenged.

The last thing on the minds of tenured bureaucrats is the victims of the indoctrination process. Glassy-eyed post-adolescent zombies, clutching their useless parchments and hopelessly mired in debt, stumble into the faded light of a once-free society.

FRANCIS TRUEMAN

Winnipeg

Opposing facts

Re: Misreading history (Letters, June 14). The one thing you can count on every time the Free Press publishes a letter about the conflict between Israel and Palestine over settlements and occupied territories is that there will be more letters disputing the facts and opinions in the original letter, and then the next day, there will be more letters disputing the facts and opinions of the followup letters.

Most of the letters will sound like the truth and make sense, even though they state clearly opposite positions. And those of us who want to know what is really going on in the Middle East will have no idea what to believe.

DON MARKS

Winnipeg

Confidence lacking

Re: TSX dips on nagging Eurozone fears (June 14). One year ago, the Toronto Stock Exchange was 1,400 points higher than the Dow Jones Industrial Average in New York. Today, 14 months after Prime Minister Stephen Harper won his majority government, the TSE has dropped 2,000 points, but the DJIA increased by 500 points.

I realize that the stock market does not define the current strength or weakness of an economy, but it is a good gauge of market investors' confidence in the future of an economy, considering that their goal is profit.

To grow the U.S. economy, President Barack Obama is pushing to raise revenue by closing corporate loopholes, taxing the rich fairly and spending less on the military. In Canada, Harper is cutting corporate taxes, slashing public services and spending more on the military.

It seems investors don't believe the fairy tale that conservative governments are best suited for managing economies.

DAN CHECINNI

Winnipeg

Socialist delusions

Re: Neo-con policies drive financial inequality (June 13). Frances Russell mentions a report on income inequality by five economists from the University of British Columbia. These five leftist economists figure a number of solutions are in order. These solutions include raising taxes (how original), increasing transfers to the poor and removing obstacles to unionization.

Doesn't Russell realize these policies and even more radical ones have been part of Europe's socialist paradise for the last four decades? And we can see how things have turned up in Europe. It's fast becoming the fiscal basket case of the world.

DON HERMISTON

Winnipeg

Airport artlessness

The modern art selected by a panel of so-called experts to fill the public spaces at the new Winnipeg airport terminal is nothing short of furniture gone bad. Stuff from The Brick would have been more creative.

Take the kind-of hanging triangles in the area housing the luggage turntables. What does it mean? What is it supposed to say or convey? It looks like an ad for Quebec asbestos or a failing grade in Panelling 101.

Then there's the piece on the other side of security. It reminds me of a machine-gun post for warring Inuit or the mail slots in an ice palace. Again, what does it mean? What is it trying to say? If I can't understand it, and it makes no attempt to convey what it means, in my opinion, it has no function or value as art.

There's also a huge panel (I think it's glass) flanking the stairway used by deplaning passengers going into the luggage area. It looks like something left over from a stained-glass church. Again, what's it all mean?

Because a panel of people (up to 20, I'm told) picked this stuff from a plethora of entries, it's presumed that we accept that this stuff has merit. Well, to me that's about as unerring as judging an NHL player by the way he laces his skates.

Barry Craig

Winnipeg

Waiting for a miracle

Re: Pallister preps for PC party power (June 13). When a party like the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives becomes a neutered appendage to the ruling NDP, it should come as no surprise that it cannot find leadership candidates.

Manitobans are in dire need of a political party that will, at the very least, form an effective opposition. The PC party faithful seem to be waiting for a reincarnation of Duff Roblin to appear, and it isn't Brian Pallister.

The PCs need to remove the remnants of the Filmon era and find leader who isn't afraid of stating he or she is right-wing. If they continue to flounder, another party will be born that will bury them the same way the Saskatchewan Party buried the Conservatives there.

KIM SIGURDSON

Winnipeg

Wiser investment

Recent reports state that the cuts to Parks Canada amount to $29 million. These cuts will have long-lasting repercussions on communities across Canada,

You really have to question the wisdom of the Stephen Harper government spending more than $28 million on one event -- the commemoration of the War of 1812. Surely, a wiser decision would have been to minimize the cuts to Parks Canada, investing in today rather than spending so excessively and lavishly on this one event.

SUZANNE RICHARDS

Winnipeg

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 18, 2012 0