Letters, Feb. 5

Cheap solutions

Re: Hydro eyes incentives to reduce power usage as shortage looms (Feb. 4)

Hydro quietly released its 10-year plan. Perhaps the release was low-key because neither Hydro nor the Manitoba government are proud of the choices they are making.

Hydro’s website leads with talk of net zero and shifting away from fossil fuels, accompanied by pictures of windmills and electric vehicles, but the bottom line is “Manitoba needs new, dependable energy sources as early as 2029 to meet increasing demand.”

Hydro owns the monopoly for supplying electricity and “natural” gas in Manitoba, so no surprise that their solution is to continue burning gas for home heating and to spend $3 billion to build a facility that burns gas to generate electricity.

That sets Manitoba up to be burning hydrocarbons for years to come. Hydro is not in the business of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, so they don’t promise to capture the carbon from their smokestacks; they leave the problem of taking carbon out of the air to unnamed others.

The province is responsible both for managing environmental policy and for guiding the investment plans of Manitoba Hydro. Hydro’s 10-year plan indicates that if government policy becomes more stringent on burning hydrocarbons, this will significantly increase costs and risks for Hydro.

The government is focused on “affordability,” requiring Hydro to keep its rates low and limiting the utility’s ability to use time-of-day pricing to deal with peak demand, which is its most pressing problem. As a result, Hydro is proposing a “cheap” solution with a few windmills and energy efficiency programs thrown in to make it look good.

Help. Manitoba is headed down the wrong track, talking “net zero,” but investing in gas-burning solutions for our energy needs.

Charles Feaver

Winnipeg

Painful decisions

Re: Pair of St. B ER deaths probed (Feb. 3)

In response to the latest deaths following atrocious waits in the St. Boniface Hospital emergency room last month, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara responded in part with another useless platitude. “This is an incredibly difficult time and my thoughts are with everyone affected.”

The loss to families who have recently lost loved ones due to unacceptable wait times in emergency rooms is enormous and the consequences of their experiences have far-reaching effects on all Manitobans

Many people requiring help at our ER departments are now having second thoughts about putting their lives into the hands of a woefully understaffed medical staff. Frightened by the negative and continuing reports of preventable tragedies, they face a decision that should never have to be made: to put themselves in a position where they will wait out their suffering for hours with the possibility of not receiving the treatment they need, or deciding to tough out that suffering in their own home, at least in some degree of comfort.

Whoever would have believed that it would become a decision to do the lesser of the evils!

Irene Howard

Winnipeg

Getting up to date

Re: The time for fax machines is past (Editorial, Feb. 3)

The editorial ignores the facts on why this 1980s technology persists in our fragmented health-care system. Despite billions of public funds being spent encourageing physicians to acquire digital health record software from corporate vendors, most independent computer systems in Canadian doctor’s offices and hospitals can’t communicate with each other.

Only now has the federal government introduced Bill C-72, the Connected Care for Canadians Act, to mandate interoperability between systems to allow sharing of information. The act would require vendors to adopt common data standards and prohibit them from engaging in practices that block, restrict or inhibit the sharing of electronic health information.

Hopefully this legislation, introduced in June 2024, will finally be passed. While our health minister mentioned plans for a provincial electronic patient record by next year, caution should be taken.

The Manitoba landscape is littered with failed information technology projects such as MPI’s 2019 Project Nova (more than $160 million).

Adapting a single, non-proprietary, established electronic health record system such as that used in the U.S. veterans hospital system for all providers may be a much better investment.

Wayne Manishen

Winnipeg

Environmental rights

Re: Manitoba isn’t ready for nation-building projects (Think Tank, Jan. 31)

The article cites a recent report, one of many in the past few decades, that have been ignored by our policy makers, i.e. elected officials, to our detriment.

Case in point, the 2015 Manitoba Law Reform Commission report saw need to strengthen Manitoba’s Environmental Assessment and Licensing Regime Under The Environment Act to ensure our provincial process addresses the gaps and deficiencies created by legislative changes in 2009, 2010, and 2012 to Canada’s impact assessment regime.

If governments to date had not ignored their recommendations, we would be ready to take on the responsibility of impact assessment for these large “nation-building projects” not to mention industry’s current mining crusade. These recommendations would have also averted the degradation of our environment from past “assessed” development and liabilities now borne by Manitobans.

Our well-being demands that projects are approved on evidence-based assessments to ensure for real and enforceable environmental standards. We need the province to correct the inaction of previous governments. Our governments can no longer renege on their obligation to protect our right to a healthy environment.

Tangi Bell

Anola

What commuters need

Re: “Bureaucratic breakdown”; “Province should reject Route 90 request” (Letters, Feb. 4)

There is an interesting juxtaposition between letter-writers Steve Teller and Kenneth Klassen. Teller writes of the anti-business attitude in Manitoba, that delays projects and chases away investment, thereby stifling prosperity. Klassen is in favour of stifling the expansion of Kenaston Boulevard, thereby suggesting we should spend money for “more frequent and reliable transit, expanding active transportation options, transportation demand management and targeted operational upgrades to improve traffic flow.”

This is unrealistic in my opinion. Despite spending probably hundreds of millions on bike paths so far (my estimation based on information I have, as city council would not tell me how much has been spent) I have not seen an increase in cyclists. On the other hand it is very apparent to most people, including Klassen, that vehicle traffic has increased. This results in people spending more time in traffic and not being productive. Widening Kenaston will make traffic flow faster and also take vehicles off the side streets, which are also becoming congested as noted by complaints from residents.

In 1960 Winnipeg’s population was 463,000 and has grown to about 850,000. Kenaston was fine in the 1960s and 1970s but now it needs to be widened. The population has grown and people have chosen to drive cars. Bikes are not popular with most people (weather, slow) and buses are becoming less popular (poor redesign of routes, violence/danger, inconvenient).

For an analogy, as people grow taller as they grow up and as adults get wider as they age, all buy bigger clothes. Similarly, as Winnipeg grows, it needs wider thoroughfares to move traffic in a timely fashion. The lack of riders has shown that bikes and buses are not the answer. Continuing to throw money at this is wasteful and counterproductive. Read the market.

Ray Hignell

Winnipeg