Have your say

Military appreciation

Re: City mulls plan to offer free parking for veterans (Oct. 13). As a retired member of the Canadian Air Force, I am most unimpressed with the mayor's recent public-relations ploy.

If he really wants to show his appreciation for the military, he will show up this year at a Remembrance Day ceremony and do his duty as mayor, as he did not do last year.

GARY HOOK

Winnipeg

Cutting both ways

Re: Shaming women (Oct. 13). As an overweight male, I can assure Nsenga K. Burton that my gender is also continually judged on our appearance and on what we do.

As a person who uses the Internet daily, I find that all people are criticized, not just women. I find that all celebrities are judged and criticized, too -- not because of their gender, but because they make their lives open and do stupid things.

It is called human rights, not female rights and not male rights, but human rights.

JEFFREY DEBIUK

Winnipeg

A thoughtful balance

Reality sours vision for better city governance (Oct. 9). I fully agree with Dan Lett's suggestion that George Cuff created a philosophical context for the elimination of the city's board of commissioners that had very little to do with governance. But as Lett suggests, Cuff would never have supported the current state of governance at city hall.

Cuff had always argued for a thoughtful balance between a mandate of elected officials and the expertise of administrators. As Lett suggests, Cuff expected everyone to work together in pursuit of better governance. He can hardly be blamed if council, which was bullied by senior administrators in the 1990s, is now happy to be bullied by the mayor's office.

NICK TERNETTE

Winnipeg

Oversupply of grads

In his Oct. 6 column on the job market for recent education graduates, Those who can... teach, Jerome Cranston skirts the real issue: Faculties of education in Manitoba might be graduating too many teachers.

Cranston justifies the fact that in 2010, only 63 per cent of graduates gained employment as teachers. He does not indicate how many are substitutes and how many are working part-time. His logic is based on the idea that so long as universities keep cranking out graduates, the good teachers will gain employment and the bad ones will not. The "market" will ensure that good teachers get the jobs. I'm not convinced.

What if education faculties in Manitoba focused less on this sausage-factory model and limited the number of students in an effort to provide instruction and learning environments that produce educators who have the philosophical and technological prowess demanded by students and their parents? I am sure all try and succeed to some extent, as evidenced through the work of Cranston and his colleagues, but smaller numbers equate to a richer learning environment.

Granted, there is a financial implication to allowing fewer students within any given faculty, but therein rests a greater societal question about our priorities when it pertains to post-secondary education. The fundamental question is whether or not we want to leave the quality of the teachers in the classroom up to the market or to the institutions that are responsible for pre-service training.

MATT HENDERSON

Winnipeg

Blaming all ills

Re: Pointed questions (Oct. 2) Here is a pointed question for letter-writer Ross Wedlake. Is he aware of the League of Nations mandate unanimously calling for the recognition and reconstitution of the Jewish national home, of its implicit ratification by Article 80 of the UN Charter, of the provisions of the international laws of war which make the aggressor accountable for his aggression, or of a Jewish presence in Israel going back thousands of years which, indeed, gives Israel a legal claim to the territories?

Israel was existentially threatened by its neighbours decades before it captured the territories, for which Wedlake blames all ills. It is when destroyed olive groves stir more sympathy than the repeated targeting of Israeli schoolchildren by Gazan rockets that one questions the scales used in "speaking out against injustice in our world."

Finally, questioning the actions of Israel is not anti-Semitic. Rather, it is the act of singling Israel out from the nations of the world for selective condemnation and opprobrium that is considered discriminatory and hateful.

MICHELLE WHITEMAN

Montreal

Relatively slow

After reading the article Bieber is distant cousin of Gosling, Lavigne, I assume that Oct. 12 must have been a very slow news day.

Are relationships even relevant after the fourth-cousin mark? Does anyone care? If most of us researched our own family histories, we could all probably find some kind of relation to a celebrity.

Justin Bieber probably wasn't aware that he was "11th cousin once removed with Ryan Gosling." Since you find this newsworthy, you might as well start writing about how I am a fifth cousin of Russell Martin, the catcher for the New York Yankees.

JOELLE JEANSON

Winnipeg

Worth every dollar

Re: 16 million-dollar doctors in Manitoba (Oct. 13). I've had health care services by three of these doctors, namely Shane Silver, Daniel Chin and Ravi Dookeran. They are worth every dollar spent.

Maybe we should also treat them to a spa day to relieve the pressure they are under.

THELMA HINCE

Winnipeg

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 17, 2012 A12