Opinion

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This article was published 03/11/2022 (211 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Questions for health minister

Re: COVID corners cut amid ‘critical’ staff shortages (Nov. 1)

It would appear that health-care workers can return to work with symptoms of COVID-19 and that they also need not test negative.

This strategy is supposedly designed to prevent further stress on the health-care system. Can the health minister explain how this will work if workers who carry the COVID-19 virus are in a position to spread it to co-workers and patients who are otherwise ill but free of the virus?

Doesn’t it stand to reason that creating more illness puts more stress on the system?

Mary-Jane Robinson

Winnipeg

Verdicts too negative

In his Oct. 28 letter to the editor, Low voter turnout a bad sign, Amarjit Singh says that “72.5 per cent of Winipeggers did not vote for” Gillingham. Then letter writer Dan Donahue says, “My math indicates almost 75 per cent of voters weren’t prepared to hand him (Gillingham) the keys to the office.”

Their negative-sounding verdicts were based on reasoning that failed to consider the fact that there were 11 candidates, “the highest total since 1992” (Gillingham triumphs, Oct. 27), who shared the total number of votes. Gillingham would surely have received a larger percentage of the votes had there been four or fewer candidates.

Alfredo Velasco

Winnipeg

New campaign slogan

I was amused by your Oct. 29 story Tories accused of cutting highway maintenance fleet.

First there is Opposition Leader Wab Kinew’s clever parodying of the Johnny Cash song I’ve Been Everywhere, although he could have made it more Canadian by attributing the song to Hank Snow. He’s to be forgiven, though, for not knowing a version that was played regularly on Canadian radio in the early 1960s.

But what prompted me to laugh out loud was the statement attributed to Deputy Premier Cliff Cullen in his response to Kinew’s accusation. The article states: “The department has also been able to do less with more by buying more efficient machinery, Cullen said.”

“Doing less with more” would be a great slogan for the Tories to take into the next election. Just think of their adroit handling of anti-vaxxers, the protest convoy at the legislature and the current efforts to emasculate the Public Utilities Board.

“Less with more,” indeed.

Rick Wiens

Winnipeg

Habit of ignoring laws

Re: Tories seek to quietly lock Autopac rebates in garage, Oct. 28

Uh-oh. It’s happening again.

In 2021, Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative government approved a covert plan to divert $113 million in excess Autopac revenue — which by law should have been used for a rate reduction or rebate — to avoid having to pay for rising costs at driver and vehicle licensing.

The plan to divert excess revenue, which has never been publicly disclosed, was devised by senior management at Manitoba Public Insurance in 2020 and approved by both the Tory-appointed board and Crown Services Minister Jeff Wharton.

This government has a habit of ignoring the law and secretly avoiding public disclosure. But then, of course, we should realize there are two laws: one for us, the taxpayers, and the another for government to disregard.

Manitobans deserve the rebate, or to have their premiums reduced.

John Fefchak

Virden

An interesting change

Justin Trudeau’s view of Iran has undergone an interesting change in the last seven years.

In the federal election campaign of 2015, Trudeau stated he wanted to re-establish diplomatic relations with Iran. He criticized Stephen Harper for breaking relations in 2012 and closing our embassy in Tehran.

Yet in 2009 massive demonstrations swept Iran in what was labelled the Green Revolution. These demonstrations were triggered by a perception of dishonest elections, which allowed a hardliner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to be re-elected as president. Security forces shot many demonstrators in the street.

Yet this repression did not stop Trudeau from expressing a wish to link back with the Islamic Republic.

The irony is that Trudeau today sounds more like the Stephen Harper of 2012 than himself in 2015.

Kurt Clyde

Winnipeg

I wish success for the Iranian people, especially the female populace, protesting their government’s oppression and brutality. I can see western corporate fossil-fuel interests hoping for Iran’s government to fall, thus enabling Big Oil to access Iran’s rich oil fields.

The Iranian Revolution’s western-nation expulsion was primarily the result of U.S. (and even British) interest in further harvesting Iran’s plentiful oil resources.

Not surprising, the expulsion was a big lesson learned by the foreign oil corporation heads. They would not willingly allow this to happen to them again. Perhaps the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, and then its oil fields, is an example of this.

It may be that if the relevant oil-company heads are in fact against Iran, then so are their related western governments and, via general news-media support, the general public as well.

Frank Searle

White Rock, B.C.

Holodomor tour enlightening

I recently visited the Holodomor National Awareness Tour at The Forks.

In 1932-33 Stalin tried to starve the Ukrainians by taking away their food.

He had his soldiers actually take away the grain, vegetables and livestock so that the people would starve. Millions of Ukrainians starved to death.

Ukrainians then did not wish to give up their land and rights to Stalin’s communism, so he brought on this genocide. Much the same as the evil Vladimir Putin is doing today.

Ted Wall

Rorketon

Attack must be condemned

The attack on Paul Pelosi, obviously intended for his wife, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, must be condemned in the strongest terms.

It has been by many people, including U.S. President Joe Biden and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, but not yet by former president Donald Trump.

The use of violence as a means of supporting a political viewpoint is abhorrent, and damages the constitution and freedoms it claims to support. There are too many countries where democracy is not respected or even possible.

As a general outcome, any election will leave about 50 per cent of the people happy and 50 percent unhappy, but almost 100 per cent will accept the result.

It is just a few individuals — far too many at the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot — who are so misguided they will use violence to overturn a valid result.

Dennis Fitzgerald

Melbourne

Trudeau failed to act

Re: Cartoon contradiction (Letters, Nov. 2)

Contrary to Janice Jackson’s letter, if Justin Trudeau had had the courage to meet with the organizers of the truck convoy, that would have been actually doing something.

Instead, he chose to run and hide like the coward he is.

Art McAvoy

Winnipeg