Letters, Jan. 10

Dealing with poor roads

I’m writing to raise concerns about ice control near schools and the risks created when known hazards are not addressed promptly.

Recently, I spent about 10 minutes on a 311 call reporting a school-zone intersection that was completely glazed with ice. This was not a minor slick area — it was sheer ice across the entire intersection. I emphasized during the call that children were actively using the crossing and were at risk.

Despite the posted 30 km/h speed limit, vehicles were sliding and struggling to stop. Drivers were clearly trying to be cautious, but ice eliminates safe stopping distances. Children don’t always look carefully or understand these risks.

When I returned to the intersection approximately three hours later, conditions were unchanged. There was no sand, no salt and no visible treatment. The intersection remained fully glazed while children continued to cross.

School zones should be treated as an immediate priority when dangerous conditions are reported. Leaving a known school-zone hazard untreated for hours is not a front-line failure — it is a leadership failure.

Public works falls under the oversight of Coun. Janice Lukes, chair of the public works committee. When systems allow known hazards near schools to persist, public works leadership has failed the children they are responsible for protecting.

We should not have to wait for an injury before action is taken.

Dave Gaudreau

Winnipeg

People complain when the snow isn’t cleared off streets in a timely matter, and it depends on who you talk to in regard to (the definition of) timely fashion.

Cyclists complain snow isn’t cleared off bike paths and demand more bike lanes, yet don’t pay insurance or have a plate on their bicycles. Motorists complain when their vehicles are ticketed during street cleaning or snow plowing, but oddly aren’t thankful their vehicle wasn’t towed.

Some people still complain about waiting in line at a liquor store but don’t mind standing in line at a grocery store with their phone in their hand. Some people complain when they hear there are plans to build an apartment block or a centre to help treat addictions or mental issues in their area, yet you don’t hear their voices when it comes to other areas of the city.

One thing’s for certain: nowhere else in the country can hold a candle to Winnipeg when it comes to being the whine capital of Canada.

Harry Peterson

Winnipeg

Strange logic

Re: Winnipeggers detail misery of WestJet baggage delays, last-minute vacation-package changes (Jan. 8)

So, WestJet feels their planes can carry enough additional weight to jam in an extra row of seating, but then supposedly doesn’t load all the luggage because the planes are too heavy.

Interesting!

Ursula Delfing

Winnipeg

Pimicikamak deserves help

Pimicikamak Cree Nation has a total population close to the size of the city of Selkirk, but their community has likely tolerated far worse than the latter would have after their power outage.

This is because of the bureaucracy surrounding First Nations communities since they were forced onto postage stamps of land when the treaties were signed. But why?

The difference between Selkirk and Pimicikamak is the political bill — Selkirk is covered by the province so there’s no qualms about responsibility, but we have a fiduciary duty (feds pay the bill) to First Nations communities whose lands we occupy. So, much like the decades-long fight lawyer Cindy Blackstock fought and won to speed up urgent health care for First Nations children, we end up wasting money in the courts while kids suffer.

Is this our so-called reconciliation in action? I think not.

Instead of hemming and hawing about who pays for everything, let’s set up a similar system and help families now, then worry about who pays the tab later.

Colleen Simard

Winnipeg

Need to put pucks in nets

Re: Losing streak cranked to 11 (Jan. 9)

Kevin Cheveldayoff needs to just do the math! Defenceman Logan Stanley, who has been much maligned in the past, has seven goals so far this season and with all of the crossbars and posts he’s hit, it could be 10 or more.

There are only three players on the Jets with a better goal-scoring total than Stanley. They are elite forwards Gabe Vilardi, Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor. There is no one among the remaining 22 players on the team who has more goals than Stanley, whether a forward or a defenceman.

Josh Morrissey, another defenceman, is tied with Stanley for goals. Two forwards, Alex Iafallo and Morgan Barron, are also tied with Stanley.

The rest of the team have low single-digit totals with forward Gustav Nyquist at zero in 31 games.

Chevy needs to start looking for some goal-scorers. The best part of the Jets’ game against the Oilers was watching Danil Zhilkin in his first NHL game. Unlike many of the other players, he looks like he wants a future with the Jets.

Wally Barton

Winnipeg

Balancing rights

Re: Defending Canada’s notwithstanding clause (Think Tank, Jan. 6)

Allow me a few comments on Jerry Storie’s ode to Canada’s notwithstanding clause. To start, he and I likely fall somewhat on the side of collective rights over individual rights. Myself, significantly on the basis of Indigenous treaty rights, and Storie, if I were to guess, partly in alignment with the Saskatchewan NDP’s favouring of provincial rights over national prerogatives.

No doubt we also agree on the need for an appropriate balance between individual and collective rights, but I fear that in making his case he stacks the deck by casting the debate in terms of personal safety. As a backdrop, he first invokes the ongoing gun carnage in the U.S. with its intractable Second Amendment to the constitution (the so-called “right to bear arms.”)

And with undue sensationalism he then invokes “Letters to the editor, stories about brazen thefts, vandalism and violence in public places and in businesses…”

Yikes, It’s a jungle out there! The Winnipeg and Manitoba issue of safe-injection sites and 72-hour involuntary detention is then brought into the discussion. As the legality of the 72-hour detention will likely be moving to the courts, is Storie suggesting a pre-emptive declaration of intent to use the notwithstanding clause in this instance?

The 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was itself the result of political negotiation and legislation, and the compromise injected by the notwithstanding clause became necessary to achieve consensus. Forging national agreement in a sometimes unruly federation proved necessary. But the individual rights enshrined in the Charter should not be so easily abrogated by particular legislatures that find themselves temporarily inconvenienced.

Recent uses of the clause, as in Alberta and Quebec, have in fact not been directed towards supporting community and personal safety, rather they have excluded certain people from safe community, and have arguably endangered transgender individuals in Alberta and religious and ethnic communities in Quebec.

In the necessary balance between individual and collective rights, the notwithstanding clause has its place, but it should never become a political weapon. And in Manitoba, perhaps it’s the homeless who are the community most in danger for their personal safety.

Sig Laser

Winnipeg