Have your say

Invite those complicit

Re: Search speaks well of us (Aug. 10). I have no advice for the Nepinak family who, along with the families of other missing and murdered women, have displayed awesome strength. I can only say that if I were them, I'd invite every decision-maker in law enforcement, justice, education, and every government minister who ever cut funding for indigenous women and their families, and the police chiefs, politicians, mayors, premiers and senior officials who largely stood by and watched for four decades while these women disappeared, to all spend a day sifting through that garbage -- and to sift through the end result of all their decisions and non-decisions.

The police did say they expect the job to need 250 or so people. These guys are easy enough to contact; I say start there.

MONIQUE WORONIAK

Winnipeg

A timeless victory

It seems every time I opened a newspaper or turned on the TV during the Olympics, I heard some woeful tale of sad defeat from a Canadian athlete who failed to measure up to their own gold medal standard at the Olympics.

From the cries that triathlon competitor Paula Findlay's preparation was "completely mismanaged" to the accusations that the women's soccer team was ousted by crooked referees, the life of an Olympian seems cruel indeed.

I often wonder how many of these athletes, who give up everything and everyone for several years just to win a medal that fades, have the strength, courage and desire to walk two blocks to church each Sunday? It would seem from their lack of grace in defeat, not many. What a shame.

St. Paul thus reminds us of another kind of courage. In his discourse on the Olympics, he states: "Athletes deny themselves all sorts of things. They do this to win a crown of leaves that withers, but we [practising Christians] have a crown that is imperishable."

PAUL KOKOSKI

Hamilton, Ont.

A statistical invention

I wish that someone would report meaningful crime statistics. Many people want us to believe that they have serious crime under control when that is clearly not the case.

Statistics Canada gives us nonsense about crime statistics dropping for the fifth year in a row and that we have the lowest crime rate in 40 years.

Looking at serious crimes reported, our current incident rate is mediocre at best. Over the 50 years from 1962 to 2011 inclusive, we have had 23 years with a higher crime rate and 26 years with a lower crime rate.

Crime rates are a statistical invention and do not tell the story we need to hear. Our current (2011) serious crime rate is 866 incidents per 100,000 in population. That translates to 289,911 incidents in 2011.

The next worst year was 1988, when the serious crime rate was 868 incidents per 100,000 in population. But the number of serious crimes for 1988 was 232,607, given the smaller population at the time.

There were 18,455 fewer serious crimes reported in 2011 than in 2010, a year-to-year reduction of six per cent. We can only cheer about that if we ignore the victims of 289,911 serious crimes reported. We do not believe that our streets are safe when well over a quarter million citizens are victims of serious crimes each year.

We need to stop fretting over the hard lives of the perpetrators and get very serious about reducing the number of victims.

JOHN FELDSTED

Winnipeg

Friedman intervened

Letter writer John D. Perrin (Friedman overpraised, Aug. 3) has a poor understanding of the free market if he thinks our legal, public education and universal health-care system are better served by government.

There is no reason all those services could not be provided by the unhampered free market at considerable savings to all concerned while obtaining better results.

Milton Friedman, as leader of the Chicago School, was a monetarist who supported central banking rather than anything resembling a free market. Money is, after all, one half of every transaction, and those who support government intervention in money are true champions of interventionism rather than a free market.

The collective will most certainly is expressed in government regulation that hampers the market economy for political rather than economic reasons. There really is no better regulation of anything than the consumers voting with their dollars if reflecting the collective will is the goal.

CHRIS BUORS

Winnipeg

Sending poor message

Re: Feds wrong on troubled reserve: judge (Aug. 2). A federal justice has decided it was "unreasonable in all circumstances" for the federal government to appoint a third-party manager to find financial irregularities in the First Nations community of Attawapiskat. There could be many reasons for Judge Michael Phelan's decision.

But what it isn't is truthful. And it sends a message to all chiefs and councillors and others who defraud their communities that the status quo is alive and well. It also tells millions of native people living in this country that all they can look forward to is poverty and despair while their so-called leaders get rich.

Phelan wrote that the decision to appoint someone to take over the band's books was made without any indication there was a problem with the way the band was being managed.

Are you kidding? There are 2,000 people living on that reserve. They received $90 million over five years.

The Conservative government should appeal this obscene decision by Phelan immediately.

DON HERMISTON

Winnipeg

Question the purpose

Re: Audit of F-35 deal remains up in the air (Aug. 9). As critics question the delay in revealing the F-35 program's cost, they would be wiser to question its purpose.

The F-35's stealth capabilities and weaponry are designed for air-to-ground and air-to-ship attacks. By selecting a fleet of F-35s to replace our current fleet of multi-purpose CF-18s, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is preparing Canadians to go to war.

That realization, more than the costs involved, is what Canadians should really be concerned about.

GORDON WARREN

Winnipeg

Interesting, knowledgable

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Samuel Segev, your Middle East columnist and a friend of mine for many years (Samuel Segev: Wonderful, warm and wise. Aug. 10).

During the years he lived in Winnipeg, before returning to Israel after his wife passed away, he visited our retired men's professional and business group as a guest speaker many times. His talks on the Middle East were most knowledgeable and interesting, and those meetings were always well attended.

ISSIE OIRING

Winnipeg

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 13, 2012 A11