Letters, June 11

Helping hands

Re: Jets help lift community facing ‘unacceptable’ challenges (June 10)

Thank you, Mark Chipman, for your ongoing commitment to our community. Your actions make my soul sing. Your openness to vulnerable people on our streets and your example of action gives me hope that we can and will change the frightening and growing trajectory of fascism in the United States and around the world.

Your actions demonstrate to me personally and all of us who risk being paralyzed by fear of what will happen to democracy everywhere.

You remind me that I am not helpless. Our fear serves to moves me to act — in my community to support my friends and neighbours and, in particular, our youth who will inherit the world we elders will leave to them.

Bill Martin

Gimli

Misuse of money

Re: Carney vows Canada will meet 2% NATO spending pledge this year (June 9)

With the western half of the country on fire, a massive housing and infrastructure shortage, drug epidemic, and health-care crisis, how is it at all responsible to commit to increasing Canada’s NATO spending to two per cent of GDP? It is said this increase will cost between $18 billion to $20 billion. An enormous sum of money that should be put to use addressing the aforementioned issues, which are much more of an urgent threat to our national “security” and well-being as a society than anything this NATO spending may address. Who are we at war with by the way? Other than a trade war with our belligerent neighbours to the south.

Besides, Prime Minister Mark Carney is selling this move as a way of distancing ourselves from the “unreliable” Americans, by moving closer to our European “allies.” In reality we’re trading, allegedly — the Americans are still a NATO member — one unreliable partner for another, as Europe’s economy is in shambles as well. He’s also making the case that this will boost our own homegrown defence industry through new industrial policy, developed in direct partnership with said industry leaders. And herein lies the true aim of this new direction, in my opinion; a massive corporate handout to Canadian defence contractors and firms that will send large portions of this capital to their shareholders and executives.

War is a racket, and Carney is a banker, but I think we should expect more from our government amid such dire circumstances in the year 2025. Our children and grandchildren deserve better than fanning the flames of war, especially when our own house is already on fire.

Evan Marnoch

Winnipeg

A likely story

Re: Seeking a reset on ‘parental rights’ and landfill snafus (June 7)

PC Leader Obby Kahn would have us believe that he did not know the term “parental rights” was a dog whistle for anti-LGBTTQ+ community (despite being the party spokesperson for the parental-rights movement), that he was unaware of the “stand firm” campaign and had an “a-ha” moment when he first saw the billboard (but chose not to speak against it until now), and that he did not attend the Pride Parade because he had a previous appointment and — cue the crocodile tears — he wasn’t “invited” by the Pride organizers.

With apologies to William Shakespeare, the gentleman “doth protest too much, methinks.”

Michael Bennett

Winnipeg

Manitobans not so overtaxed

Re: A sneaky way to hike taxes (Think Tank, June 6)

The Think Tank piece by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation states that “Manitoba was the only provincial government to hike taxes in its budget this year.” The piece also selectively references various tax rates and measures in other provinces. However, this is far from the complete picture.

To wit, let’s look at overall rates of taxation in Manitoba (which the CTF doesn’t do) compared to other provinces by looking at Page 145 in Budget 2025. The personal income tax top rate is 17.4 per cent in Manitoba, the third-lowest. Manitoba is the only province with no small corporation income tax, and the large corporation income tax rate is 12 per cent, with only three other provinces having a lower rate. The sales tax in Manitoba is seven per cent, the third-lowest. Does this sound like Manitobans are being overtaxed compared to those in most other provinces, income tax bracket creep notwithstanding?

So, yes, let’s have a good and fulsome discussion about affordability and who should pay how much taxes, but let’s do so in light of all relevant data and information.

Gerald Farthing

Winnipeg

The sentience of fire

Re: Flin Flon fire has ‘basically got a mind of its own’ (June 6); Cenovus latest oil company to shut down production in Alberta due to wildfires (June 3)

The headline uses the phrase, “a mind of its own.” Does fire really have a mind of its own? Is fire a sentient being, with mind and consciousness?

Alberta wildfires are now forcing the closing of some oilsands mining operations. Wildfires, sustained and driven by fossil fuel generated climate change, are now looping back to attack their fossil fuel source, suggesting there might be some sentience at play and that a warning is being sounded.

Some native Hawaiians believe that fire and lava are alive with rights and responsibilities. Pele, the goddess of volcanoes and fire, is thought to be the Earth’s mother who generates the Earth’s rebirth. If fire is alive, with agency, the ability to speak and the power to do things, should we perhaps be listening?

In his book Fire Weather, John Vaillant suggests that with the frequency and intensity of wildfires, they are no longer simply “natural events,” but the result of our reliance on fossil fuels. Ours is a fossil fuel civilization with petroleum products and plastics being ubiquitous in our daily lives. We have created a lived environment that Pele and her wildfires are only too happy to (re)colonize.

Being a scientifically minded Modern, Vaillant stops short of ascribing sentience to wildfires and fire weather, but he nudges up against the thought that, yes, fire might have a “mind of its own,” with the ability to create its own micro climates, wind patterns, and to seek out favourable fuel sources.

Perhaps, if we can open ourselves to the fire having “a mind of its own” metaphor, we might approach a perspective that combines the subtlety of traditional Indigenous knowledge with a modern scientific sensibility to inform how we can learn to better inhabit this place in which we are both cause and effect.

Sig Laser

Winnipeg

Make use of green solutions

Re: To fight wildfires and heat waves, Manitoba needs a climate plan (Think Tank, June 9)

Thank you to Scott Durling, Laura Cameron, and Chris Morrow for their well-reasoned call for a provincial climate action plan. I find it disgusting that Manitoba’s premier and other provincial and federal leaders continue to put pipelines and other fossil fuel initiatives on the table as viable ways to move Canada forwards.

I don’t want to live in a world where the “economic horse pulls the social cart” through smoke, fire, drought, mass extinction, water pollution and more. There are clean, green solutions to the climate and economic problems we face that will build a better world for present and future generations. Let’s use them.

Robin Attas

Ste. Geneviève