Letters, March 28

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/03/2023 (1110 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Don’t overlook Lake Winnipeg

Re: Canada pledges Great Lakes funding after Trudeau-Biden talks (March 25)

Laws are needed to protect the Great Lakes from farm runoff, a joint commission study reports. “Voluntary measures to protect the Great Lakes from farm manure has proven inefficient and governments should now turn their minds to legislation, a binational report concludes.”

Does that sound familiar? It should, for it also applies to our Great Lake waters of Winnipeg.

Manitobans and renowned scientists have been expressing those same views for years about the polluted situation of those waters. The lake is not polluting itself. Government(s) did not pay attention.

Ten years ago, Lake Winnipeg won the most “Threatened Lake of the Year” award, a testament to bad, short-sighted and ill-informed decisions.

The only way to fix this situation is through political honesty, hard work, and making tough choices and sticking to them. Our future and the future of all our waters depends on such action.

There has to be action with a determined will of the people and governments to save Lake Winnipeg and our water sources. The continual rhetoric we have been subjected to has the effects of a placebo, and the lake has been studied to death.

I, along with many Manitobans, have been voicing grave concerns about Lake Winnipeg and how the algae situation has amassed in the past years.

It will not be possible for Lake Winnipeg or any of our water sources to survive, as long as politicians keep delaying the needed efforts of recovery. Wherever possible, nutrient pollution must be eliminated.

John Fefchak

Virden

Vivid glimpses of history

Congratulations to the Free Press for two unique stories and dramatic pictures in the March 25 edition: Tale of two pandemics on display, with a gorgeous colour picture of the Millennium Centre, and the historic “Then and Now” pictures and story of the 1970 fire that destroyed the Fort Garry Court apartment building, replaced in 1976 by the Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Building.

Aside from the current worthwhile exhibit, the Millennium Centre itself is awe-inspiring, as “they don’t build ’em like that anymore.” Locals and visitors really need to see this gem, which is occasionally used for film shoots as well. The Fort Garry Court pictures and story are a reminder of the city’s not-so-distant past and upcoming 150-year celebration in 2024. Also informative was the note from the Winnipeg Architectural Foundation on the new building.

Fortunately, readers can look forward to more unique echoes of our past in Then and Now.

Dan Furlan

President, Manitoba Historical Society

Winnipeg

Manitoba must be competitive

There appear to be a lot of opinions, in op-eds and letters to the Free Press, criticizing the Tory government regarding the education property tax rebates, including the cost of mailing cheques.

The obvious solution would be to eliminate or at least dramatically reduce local property taxes to fund education, thereby negating the necessity of the rebates.

According to the 2021 version of Understanding Canadian Schools: An Introduction to Educational Administration put out by the University of Saskatchewan: “Gradually, most provincial governments have eliminated local taxation by school boards in favour of providing almost all the funding from provincial revenues. Up until 1994, about 40 per cent of total school funding in Canada came from local property taxes raised by school boards, but now only Manitoba has significant local property taxes for education.”

If we want to attract and retain doctors, nurses, tradespeople, etc., we need to be more competitive.

J.D. Marion

Winnipeg

Differences in cases

In the recent article Restorative justice in the balance (March 17) and editorial Racism remains a blight on the justice system (March 22), the Free Press contrasted the sentences imposed on two people to suggest that the judge and the prosecution were racist, favouring a white, middle-class person over the Indigenous person.

One was sentenced to a conditional sentence order — in essence, house arrest — and the other was sentenced to a three-year jail sentence. Both of them had made considerable progress while released on bail to live at Morberg House, a residential recovery facility.

A judge must impose a sentence that reflects the seriousness of the offence, the moral culpability of the offender and the harm done to the victim. A sentence will also reflect the positive steps an offender has taken to better his or her life; but the Crown Attorney and the sentencing judge must follow the law. The factual circumstances of the offence are important.

While the two individuals mostly pleaded guilty to similar offences, the circumstances of those offences were quite different. For example, in one case the offender discharged a firearm in a house with people inside. In the other, there was no discharge. It is also important to note that the offender sentenced to prison had pleaded guilty to the possession of drugs for the purpose of trafficking in addition to the firearms offences. A conditional sentence was available for the firearms offences; however, it was not legally available for the drug charge at the time.

Uninformed or inaccurate public statements can undermine public confidence in the criminal justice system. To assess a decision properly, it is important to have a full appreciation of all the facts and arguments presented to the court on the record. As no system is perfect, appellate courts can correct errors as an additional safeguard.

Crown Attorneys diligently strive every day to give effect to the criminal law as laid down by Parliament and the Supreme Court of Canada. We recognize that the justice system still has much work to do. All participants in the criminal justice system, including the Crown and the courts, are committed to addressing the problem of Indigenous over-representation in prisons. The legacy of colonial policies, intergenerational trauma of residential schools and the resulting socio-economic disadvantage facing many Indigenous accused are factors that must be taken into account in the sentencing process.

In every case, these mitigating factors are carefully balanced with the seriousness of the offence and public safety needs.

Michael Conner

Assistant Deputy Attorney General

Winnipeg

Grim future for horses

I cannot remember ever being so saddened or affected emotionally by an article in the Free Press (Cruel exports, March 18). Of course, there were other emotional articles in that same edition including the horrid actions of Vladimir Putin, but this nightmare is happening right here in our province!

This treatment of horses for export to the other side of the world is so incredibly inhumane, it shames me to say I’m a human being. How one can value money over the pure torture of these beautiful animals is baffling. If you asked us Canadians for a mere two dollars more per year to stop this awful trade, I think most would prefer to pay rather than see these poor creatures end up as sashimi on some delicacy table.

I understand there are countless instances of inhumane treatment of innocent animals around the world. The question is, where do we start to make things better?

The suffering and terror these creatures are subjected to in their last hours is heartbreaking. And the article addresses only this side of their long journey to their fate. I wonder — sadly, not really wanting to know — what happens to them when the cargo plane lands in their final destination.

Debbie Waugh

Sandy Hook