Letters, Aug.12

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/08/2025 (229 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CORRECTION

An op-ed titled Pharmacare at risk, published Aug.9, had the wrong byline. The author is Noah Shulz, director of the Manitoba Health Coalition.

Get rid of time limit

Re: Wrongfully convicted man ‘satisfied’ after settling suit against lawyers (Aug. 9)

There should be no time limit for legal recourse of damages when dealing with wrongful convictions.

If Frank Ostrowski served 23 years that should have not been served, the court should be able to wait for his compensation due process lawsuit filing. The time limit suggests to me a legal market failure. That legal sentiment does not even touch on the moral sentiment of a second miscarriage of justice based on an “arbitrary” time limit.

Was there any time limit to Ostrowski’s wrongful conviction and incarceration? This case, among other wrongful conviction cases, is how the public starts to lose patience, faith, and trust in police and the legal system.

David Albert Newman

Winnipeg

How to survive

Re: Wab Kinew: not a climate change denialist (Think Tank, Aug. 8)

The op-ed by Norman Brandson misses the most important point; that climate change is already an existential threat to life on this planet. We have already passed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming and we need to start talking about how we are going to survive the severe weather and disruptions to supply chains that await us.

We will need to find sources of food, water and energy. Manitoba Hydro will have disruptions and we will need back up supplies of renewable energy like solar and wind and batteries to store power. The stored energy will be particularly important to give us air conditioning during heat waves. Above all else, to survive we will need the help of other people.

Let’s start talking to each other about how to deal with climate change today.

Jim Lapp

Winnipeg

Bland design

Re: “Suiting the neighbourhood” (Letters, Aug. 9)

While acknowledging that what some perceive as attractive others see as unattractive, and also acknowledging the effort put into selecting siding, finishing and trims on new builds or renovations, the new neighbourhoods are extremely bland. In fact, the word unattractive may apply.

Consumers (buyers or renters) seem intent on square footage, the more the better. In California, architecturally designed bungalows are being knocked down and hauled away like garbage to make way for a mammoth glass box.

I’m saddened by this. My preference has always been for a colourful, cosy, inexpensive-to-heat, low-maintenance, well-situated home where I can pay the bills without killing myself. Hard to find these days.

Real estate is a commodity. Real estate developers and investors are driven by consumer demand, and motivated by profit. As consumers, we’ve been feeding their frenzy. After all, we all need a place to live.

Marilyn Bird

Winnipeg

Tariffs salt on a wound

In Canada, we allow big business lobbyists way too much influential access to governmental decision-makers — all without a truly independent news media willing to investigate and expose corporate lobbyists’ corrupting overreach. This also applies to decisions made about our bulk/raw/unprocessed natural-resource exports.

Yet, our governments consistently refuse to alter this practice, which undoubtedly is the most profitable for the corporations extracting and exporting en masse our natural resources.

After almost four decades of consuming mainstream news media, I cannot recall a serious discussion on why our national and provincial governments will not insist upon processing all of our own oil (and lumber) here at home in Canada, instead of exporting it bulk raw abroad and purchasing it back processed at a notably higher price (as we do with the U.S., for example).

(That is, without the topic discussion strongly seeming to have already been parameterized and thus the outcome predetermined. And I’m not talking about just on the one and same-day, open-and-closed topic, as I’ve witnessed two or three of those insufficient efforts.)

The salt on this open wound is that the U.S. has used these raw-log bulk exports to justify its anti-dumping duties (recently increased to 35 per cent) on Canadian softwood lumber, since the American lumber industry processes their logs for value added. Processing our own lumber would dampen this justification/excuse — while also adding lumber-processing jobs and other economic gains up here. Is this not a no-brainer?

As for American tariffs, ever since the U.S. (under both Democrat and Republican party administrations) began applying tariffs on B.C. softwood lumber imports in (I believe) the early 1990s, the international trade tribunal has consistently ruled that there are no grounds for the tariffs under the trade agreement between the U.S. and Canada (albeit not much of it is now still intact).

Yet, U.S. governments have to this day disregarded those rulings, perhaps in large part due to the formidable lobbyist influence of the American big lumber industry.

Frank Sterle Jr.

White Rock, B.C.

Small bugs, big problem

Re: As insect numbers continue to fall, scientists worry (Editorial, Aug. 6)

The alarming decline of insect diversity and numbers should worry all citizens, not just scientists. We are, however, not surprised that this is happening.

It is the ongoing and decades-long increase of human activity that destroys natural habitats, pollutes waterways, airways and land with plastics and other litter, and liberally uses toxic materials like pesticides to “control those nasty pests.” Our collective refusal, especially by misguided political leaders, to end our reliance on fossil fuels and slow the continued heating of the planet condemns all of us, insects and beyond, to a dim present and a desperate future. Even the disastrous fires and smoke choking us right now do not seem to be cause for alarm or incentive for serious, immediate action. Without collective awareness and action, we see no end to our human exploitation and the pollution and destruction of the ecosystems of which we are a part, and upon which we rely to live.

Since the early 1990s, we have been planting and nurturing, at our suburban home, habitat gardens that feature primarily native grasses, shrubs and wildflowers. These amazing habitats have been hosting a variety of butterflies, bees, birds, and small and large mammals. A few years ago we observed a severe decline in, and disappearance of, many butterfly species that used to grace our gardens. Fritillary, painted lady, red admiral and mourning cloak butterflies have not been seen at all. Only a few black swallowtails were observed. For the first time in over 30 years, not one monarch butterfly or their caterpillars were seen in our gardens this year. We knew that collective human destructive actions were coming home to roost right in our backyard! The host plants for these species are thriving and will continue to be nurtured for as long as we live here. Will these butterflies ever return?

We have been alarmed and upset for decades at the lack of meaningful action to curb climate change. We humans are not the centre of anything in nature, except in its destruction. Land, air and water, as well as the other species that inhabit them, are not here solely for our use. Rather, humans are part of a beautiful and intricate web of life. We are unravelling that web at an increasing pace, often unwittingly. It’s long past time that we pay attention and take immediate action to support all beings, including our future selves, with whom we supposedly share the Earth, our one and only home.

Kim Tyson and John Shearer

Winnipeg