Letters, March 16

Opinion

Buyer beware

Re: Manitoba aims to lift ban on ticket resales, promises better rules (March 13)

So the government is changing the law to now allow Manitoba ticket sellers to gouge us the same as non-resident companies. How is this better?

At least with the old law, there was a faint chance you might get tickets at face value from the big companies selling tickets in Manitoba. That’ll be gone for good. Why would they sell at face value when they have now been allowed to screw us the same way the non-residents do?

All the more reason to support WECC, the Park Theatre and local house and backyard concerts. Once again, I wonder: who’s making these decisions? They certainly don’t benefit the average citizen.

Ken McLean

Starbuck

Move away from carbon economy

Re: Budget 2023 Historic Help for Manitobans ad (March 11)

A careful examination of the Manitoba government’s two-page ad promoting its budget in Saturday’s paper will find nothing about climate change. In an apparently frantic attempt to find votes for this year’s election, the PCs seem to be throwing money wildly at everything the polls have shown them might work.

I wish there were some way for politicians to survey future generations about what they would like current governments to do. The result would be a fervent plea to focus on rapidly moving away from a carbon economy.

We desperately need voters to hire politicians who have the courage and leadership skills to make long-term climate issues an urgent priority. Short-term thinkers need not apply.

Calvin Brown

R.M. of St. Andrews

Time will tell

Re: What time is it? Time to end Daylight Saving: docs (March 10)

It’s that time of year when, horror of horrors, we must laboriously change our clocks by one hour. How will people ever survive? Our poor systems will never recover from this diabolical requirement! Doctors warn that the time change will cause heart attacks, traffic accidents and mental problems.

If so, then we should ban all air, rail and bus travel outside of the time zone we live in. How can we allow the Winnipeg Jets to regularly fly from Central time to Eastern time, Mountain time, and Pacific time on multiple occasions throughout the season! Surely players are dropping dead, or requiring psychiatric help, to adjust to the different times much more often than the typical stay-at-home Winnipegger.

How about the airline pilots to whom we entrust our safety? Every trip, they need to adjust their clocks, many times by more than one hour, when flying across the country or world.

Changing the time, only twice a year by just one hour, is not an insurmountable hardship.

John Kosowski

Winnipeg

Bucking the system

Re: Jets’ once-sure playoff hopes hanging by a thread (March 11)

Mike McIntyre has correctly identified underperforming Jet players including Scheifele, Ehlers and others. However, when a team has so many under-functioning players, there must be a reason.

When Rick Bowness signed on as coach, he introduced a rather rigid but effective system focusing on puck control, increased defensive-mindedness and elevated pace.

Players varied in their ability to accept the system as it represented a significant shift from the previous approach. Gradually, through hard work, the team prospered.

Mark Scheifele developed into an all-around defensive and offensive star and was playing some of his best hockey. Blake Wheeler’s play traditionally was more in keeping with Bowness’s system and he probably had an easier time adjusting, even though it was more demanding of him because of his age.

Pierre-Luc Dubois, much like Wheeler, also fitted in more naturally into the system. Josh Morrissey developed into a a more confident player who used his intelligence and skills to up his game.

The many ex-Moose players, eager to make the team, went with the system and in a short time, virtually, all of the players were displaying the new work ethic. The team was playing playoff-type hockey. Nikolaj Ehlers was away due to injury and Kyle Connor was not scoring, but the Jets were winning.

Soon Ehlers returned, but he, like Connor, was having serious difficulty fitting into the system. In an effort to accommodate the two players and promote winning, Bowness began to deviate from his original approach and began emphasizing scoring and line changes, reminiscent of the Paul Maurice days.

By doing this, he has drifted further away from his original winning system to the extent that, currently, there seems to be no fixed system and instead, a kind of hodgepodge. No one is scoring, losses are piling up and coaching has morphed into a repetitive lament about the lack of scoring.

The fact that scoring was sufficient when hard work was emphasized has been lost.

I believe Bowness needs to go back to the way things were when winning was prevalent. Restore the lines as they used to be. Play the game as it was played at the start of the season.

Perhaps Ehlers and Connors will never fit in, despite their reputed scoring prowess. Right now, Bowness does not know what to do with them. Maybe they can learn, but don’t make it a necessity. We were winning without them. They are currently weakening lines on which they play.

Perhaps they should both be put on the same line where they can support each other. The acquisition of Nino Niederreiter and Vladislav Namestnikov has indicated that players who can play in ways consistent with the original system do help the team, even if they are not known to be star scorers.

Ivan Bilash

Winnipeg

Milk by any other name?

Re: No cow neeeded (Feb. 23)

American dairy producers would like to own the word “milk” and are unhappy the FDA decided they can’t. Never mind that milk made from plant foods has been referred to as such for centuries.

FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb expressed frustration saying, “An almond doesn’t lactate.”

Of course it doesn’t, and neither do a coconut, a soy bean or an oat. The plants they come from also don’t need to be made pregnant in order to produce milk. Plants don’t give birth to babies.

It is surprising how many people don’t realize that a cow, like any mammal, must be made pregnant in order to lactate/produce milk. I am embarrassed to say that I was one of these people.

Many also don’t know that a dairy cow’s baby is permanently taken away from her within 24 hours of having given birth. She will never have the chance to nurse and care for her baby, and the baby will never know the care of a mother. This is so that we can drink her milk and make ice cream and cheese. She will be inseminated and made pregnant again before she has finished lactating for her lost calf.

The male calves are often killed either immediately right on the property, or at the age of five months for veal or two years for beef. The female babies are destined for a life of continual pregnancy and loss of offspring, just like their mothers. At the average age of five or six years, their bodies already spent despite having a natural lifespan of 15 to 20 years, they will be trucked to the slaughterhouse.

I will continue to choose products that don’t exploit these animals, with the added bonus of my diet having a much lower water, carbon and land-use footprint. I only wish I’d known earlier.

Cathy Collins

Winnipeg