Letters, June 23

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/06/2023 (841 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Board meeting chaos sad to see

Re: Police called after anti-LGBTTQ+ group upends school board meeting (June 22)

Reading about the anti-LGBTTQ+ group that crashed a Louis Riel School Division board meeting just makes me sad and angry. Their behaviour was awful; shouting and using slurs. It just promotes more hate towards the LGBTTQ+ community.

The school board was right to suspend Champagne. She was promoting hate towards the LGBTTQ+ and worse; using a conspiracy theory website. Sad when the police get called to a school board meeting.

Leanne Hanuschuk

Winnipeg

Karma’s tough

The same school board that expelled Winnipeg police officers from their school has to call the same police because they can’t control a crowd at their meeting.

It’s called karma.

Stan Tataryn

Winnipeg

Teens lack guidance

Re: “All of them fought for their lives”: teen stabbed after concert (June 20)

What a tragedy. I cannot fathom the grief this family is going through but there is nothing wrong with this city that isn’t wrong with every other urban area in Canada, the U.S. and probably the western world.

A great many teens’ (not all, I refuse “to paint all with the same brush”) only loyalty is to worldly things they don’t have or don’t have but desire. They live in an illusionary and dreamy world of entitlement, having lost the virtues of respect, responsibility, motivation, ambition, self-esteem and hard work — but more importantly, many have become arrogant, lazy and/or stupid to know anything about life.

Those teens usually expect all the latest gadgets, designer clothes, bling, etc., that someone else has, without having to work for it. Those teens are the ones who strive to be accepted through a pack mentality. They are easily empowered by like-minded peers as most “feeble minded” individuals are empowered by the group mentality to become aggressive and violent to reduce fear, as, individually, they lack the courage.

A mob hides behind anonymity and emboldens, and after the crime they can run home to mom’s basement and hide. They are obsessed and influenced with Facebook, Tik Tok, texting, cellphones, tablets, Twitter, video games, selfies, Snapchat, etc., being constantly fed media violence and inaccurate information disguised as fact by ‘stupid’ people ‘brainwashing’ the need for bling, sex, and every materialistic gadget you don’t have.

All it takes is an evil alpha to suggest an assault, and peer pressure takes over. All follow in order to be accepted within the group. What is usually lacking is an absence of positive constructive guidance from caring parents, peers, teachers, social agencies etc.

Kim Trethart

Winnipeg

Transit Plus needs work

Re: Moving Transit Plus service in-house costly, report says (June 23)

I can only assume Coun. Janice Lukes has never had occasion to use the service and knows nobody who does. I base my assumption on her reported comments,”The service… has improved in recent years and most users are happier with it.” and “We’re delivering a good service right now.”

I rely on Transit Plus to ferry me to doctor’s appointments, church, meetings, and so forth, and I can assure you that while I am grateful that such a service exists, it has definitely not “improved in recent years” and most users are not “happier with it.”

How do I know this? Let me count the ways! First, the interminably long waits for one’s calls to be answered. I’ve spent anywhere between 40 minutes to an hour waiting to book a trip (and having to listen to Transit Plus information I already know or distressingly tinny non-music). Second, time was, we were given the exact time we would be picked up.

Now, we are given a half-hour range… and have to be johnny-on-the-spot when the Transit Plus vehicle rolls up to the door. Drivers will wait five minutes and then drive off without the client, and we can be penalized for being no-shows. Too often, the driver will arrive earlier than the scheduled half-hour window or later, and more of our time is wasted!

Third, Transit Plus makes the assumption that all its clients have cell phones, so that if they have signed up for the “Driver is on his/her way” alert, we’ll get it. However, those without cellphones (and they are legion) often have to wait outside in sub-zero temperatures or blistering heat so that they don’t miss their ride. All the time one wastes waiting to get through to an operator and then hanging around waiting to be picked up could be put to better use.

Whether or not the city council decides to move the service in-house or not is of little interest to me. Given the wait times when one makes a 311 call, I don’t see how in-house service would be any better than that provided by private contractors.

However, I’d be happy if the service, public or private, could be upgraded to the point where we could book online and go back to having set pick-up times for trips.

Rene Jamieson

Winnipeg

Accountability, please

Re: Elephant in the polling booth (Think Tank, June 21)

I very much appreciate Erna Buffie’s contributions to the discussions around environmental issues and thank the Free Press for making them available!

She rightly states that, “our times call for visionary leadership, women and men willing to tackle, head on, the process of planning for a future shaped by climate change” and asks, “at what point… will provincial leaders finally stand up and talk about action on climate change?”

On that I have a question of my own: At what point will those politicians, mostly of a Conservative bent, who over the last two decades at least, have denied the reality of climate change, be held to account?

It’s notable that approximately a third of the Manitoba Progressive Conservative caucus has retired or indicated they won’t be seeking re-election, thereby managing to avoid accountability for their costly ignorance.

Among other things, the upcoming Oct. 3 provincial election will provide Manitobans with the opportunity to retrospectively exact some measure of environmental justice.

Sig Laser

Winnipeg

Work ’round the clock

Re: Road work doesn’t have to be this way (Letters, June 21)

I agree with Gail Asper’s letter. Why isn’t work being done 24-7, seven days a week? I travel extensively in the states and they work through the evenings and weekends.

The St. James overpass is being worked on again — why not on weekends and evenings, as there are not residential homes?

Paul Forest

Winnipeg

Province has answer to collision problem

The tragic highway accident at Carberry was just horrendous.

The provincial government has the answer as to how to eliminate the T-bone accident by installing large round-abouts at critical intersections. Such an installation was done at the intersection of Highways 2 and 3 and pronounced by the government to have been very successful.

A public address announcement in 2020 by the Pallister government said there would be a start on construction of a larger roundabout at Highways 1 and 16 in the spring of 2021. Two years later, what happened? No ‘shovels in the ground’ yet.

But there is the answer! No need to investigate how to improve these intersections. Just follow the facts and budget for these road works.

David Tustin

Gimli