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Fringe is impressive

My wife and I have attended 14 fringe productions over the past 10 days and, as in past years, have been consistently impressed by the magnificent organization evidenced. Winnipeg should be proud!

KEN ENGLAND

Winnipeg

Inquiry should expand

Re: Inquiry into Phoenix's death wide open (July 26). The Phoenix inquiry is right to expand its mandate. It does not make sense to spend millions to figure out if there was gross negligence in the death of one child and ignore the real issues behind Manitoba's problems with regards to children in care.

The inquiry needs to figure out why Manitoba's rate of taking kids into care is 10 times higher than Sweden's and Australia's. Sweden has programs and policies to reduce child poverty and family violence and they seem to work -- so, yes, looking at poverty and its role in Manitoba makes sense.

In Sweden, intensive, in-home family support is favoured over placing a child in care. The inquiry might want to explore this and, if they agree it is important, build in-home family support into their recommendations on how to change the system.

Manitoba doesn't just take more kids into care -- we don't do well by them in all sorts of ways. Over 70 per cent of kids who have been in care do not graduate from high school. If the death of one child in care deserves investigation, the poor preparation for life that Manitoba provides the vast majority of kids in care absolutely must be a priority of the Phoenix inquiry. The expanded mandate makes sense.

NORALOU ROOS

Winnipeg

ñü

The commission of inquiry into Phoenix Sinclair's death believes it should "examine how poverty and other socio-economic conditions factored into her death." These are conditions like poverty, limited economic and employment opportunities, homelessness and substance abuse, which commission counsel Sherri Walsh says relate to "racism, colonialism and the residential school system."

Two items conspicuously absent from that list of root causes are the reserve system and the distinctions in law that come with having treaty status. The penury, stasis and homogeneity of the reserve stands in stark contrast to the dynamic, cosmopolitan milieu most of us know.

"The road of different status," then Indian Affairs Minister Jean Chrétien noted in 1969, "has led to a blind alley of deprivation and frustration." Three more generations socialized to that socio-economic cul de sac could account for the massive social dysfunction more than 8,000 children in care represents. Against so broad a landscape of suffering, one can barely hear the cries of a single child. Similarly, is anyone to blame if everyone is to blame?

MICHAEL MELANSON

Winnipeg

Playing numbers game

Dan Lett invokes the TV series The Wire in his July 25 column, Hamsterdam no solution to our city's woes, either, drawing reference to Season 3's arc of the open-air drug market "Hamsterdam."

What Lett didn't go into detail about, which has more relevance to the Winnipeg Police Service, is the "numbers game" of lowering crime stats by reclassifying crimes so that stats go down in key areas such as aggravated assault, sexual assault, robbery, weapons offences, etc.

I'm not suggesting that our police manipulate the stats. But when Chief Keith McCaskill trumpets declines in key crime stats, despite how dangerous our city really is, I tend to take him with a few grains of salt.

WILL JONES

Winnipeg

Respecting property

Re: Security fine despite bike thefts, WRHA says (July 25). I find it disturbing that the WRHA and the Grey Nuns organization, which oversee the operations of St. Boniface Hospital, have so little regard for the safety of personal property on their grounds.

Could their budget not include funding for security cameras or, at the very least, signage stating "this area under surveillance?"

I'd gladly pay for signs if the hospital's budget can't or won't cover their cost.

ALLAN HUTCHINGS

Winnipeg

Citizenry, not economy

Re: Vacations make kids fatter, dumber (July 21). As a vice-chairman of banking for Citigroup, Peter Orszag makes some interesting assertions about the role of summer break on kids and the almighty economy. Let me be clear: We do not teach kids for the sake of the economy or of business; these are two very different concepts.

I agree with Orszag that the agrarian-based two-month break makes little sense in most urban communities. As a teacher, I would love to see a system in which concepts, content and skills are not needed to be revisited for the first few months of school.

Orszag, however, suggests that we should extend the school day and year, at the same time making an assumption that teachers would bemoan such a thing and that we are overcompensated in general.

I won't dignify this free-marketeer cliché that teachers have it easy. And I don't believe keeping kids in classrooms longer is the answer to making our economy better, as Orszag suggests. I think we need to provide students with intensive, experiential and meaningful learning opportunities that allow for small breaks so that faculty and students can recharge their intellectual batteries. But we are not doing this to serve the economy, or corporations like Citibank. We should be reforming education models in an effort to create better citizens, solve complex problems and to sustain not only our species but the entire biosphere.

MATT HENDERSON

Winnipeg

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 28, 2012 A16