Letters, July 22

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/07/2023 (1149 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Rate hikes not right fix

Re: Time to stop interest rate hikes (Think Tank, July 20)

Charles Adler’s article laments the continuing high food prices. However, it really did not address Bank of Canada interest rate hikes as a cure for inflation in 2023.

When I earned my undergraduate degree in economics decades ago, hiking the bank rate was the orthodox way to address inflation. The theory went that this would slow business down and consequently throw people out of work. Demand for consumer goods would contract. Back then, national economies were comprised of much smaller business enterprises. No one had heard of Reaganomics or Thatcherism with its combined mantras of deregulation and massive tax cuts to corporations and the ultra-rich.

We live in much different times. Multinational corporations operate with budgets in excess of many countries. They are a power unto themselves. In many situations, national governments are beholden to these multinationals who continue to extract economic advantages (read tax breaks and government subsidies).

I believe, and many noted economists believe, that it is time for the Bank of Canada (and other national banks) to cease raising the bank rate as a way to address inflation. It is time to rethink the old orthodoxies. There is a line in a Christian hymn that goes “New occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient good uncouth”.

It came from a poem criticizing the Mexican-American war. It could well apply to the ancient and orthodox bank rate hikes as a way to address inflation.

Bryan Bjerring

Winnipeg

Search must be tried

Re: Not all bodies are found (Letters, July 21)

“It is interesting to note that not all bodies are found,” Mr. Bailey states, then cites the example of the search for Michel Trudeau following his tragic death in an avalanche while skiing.

He conveniently forgets that search parties and RCMP divers worked over weeks in November 1998 and August/September 1999 to try to find his body, carried into Lake Kokanee.

Mr. Bailey cites the service men and women not recovered during the Second World War. Conveniently forgetting that to this day, DNA research is being done to identify and reunite those lost with their families, their descendants.

I’ve lost a child, a husband, my parents and parents-in-law. I understand the pain those families are feeling at the loss of their loved ones. But I have closure: I know where my loved ones rest.

Search the damn landfill. How can we tell those families that it is not even worth trying?

Jacqueline Cassel-Cramer

Winnipeg

End the War

After nearly two decades in Afghanistan, NATO finally ended its involvement in September 2021 — just in time to focus on Ukraine!

NATO is supplying Ukraine with military support to keep the war going, but Canada is also supplying the Ukraine government with money to keep the government functioning.

Canada has provided $4.85 billion in loan assistance to Ukraine to help Ukraine meet its balance of payments and to support its macroeconomic stability.

On a per capita basis, Canada’s support for Ukraine is the highest in the world (at nearly US$100 per person), ahead of France, Germany and the United States!

War destroys people, human relations, infrastructure, and negatively affects the environment. Instead of trying to help end the war in Ukraine, Canada is financing its continuation.

Does Canada believe that war is the solution to political differences? Does Canada not believe in accommodation, dialogue, compromise?

The problems in Ukraine didn’t begin with the Russian invasion in Ukraine, it began before 2014 with the Euromaidan demonstration that turned violent. Ukraine in the 2000s was a divided country, ethnically, linguistically and culturally, and was noted for its high level of corruption.

Witness all the recent wars in the Middle East in which the United States and its NATO allies were participants. Did any of them end up better off after the Americans and its allies withdrew?

With all the military and financial support flowing into Ukraine, the world has become increasingly polarized. We all share this planet. Now is the time when the world needs compromise and co-operation to tackle important global issues such as global warming.

Louise Manga

Victoria, B.C.

City no place for coyotes

Re: ‘Scaling down our operations’ (July 14)

I wholeheartedly agree with letter-writer Sally Solomon’s posit that we should be scaling up, rather than scaling down efforts to clear urban areas of coyotes. To say that coyotes are a natural part of the local ecosystem and that we must learn to co-exist with them is both erroneous and foolhardy. Coyotes in Winnipeg are a new problem, not a decades-old one. Coyotes’ place on nature’s food chain in an urban setting places our children on the food chain also; as a source of food. There is no way for an unarmed mother with two children in her care to live with a den of wild coyotes for neighbours.

Growing up in Winnipeg from the late 1950s onwards, I recall when dogs were allowed to freely roam the streets. The product of this was feces-covered boulevards and front lawns, schoolyards and parks, and dogs gathered together forming packs that attacked other dogs and occasionally people. It was normal practice to put the dog outside for the night before we retired. Dog bites happened so often, and mostly to children, that it was normalized until the City of Winnipeg adopted more stringent laws to control both unleashed dogs and uncooperative owners.

This, coupled with education campaigns, has brought about significant changes in public attitudes. Then in 1990, the city went even further and banned certain pitbull-type breeds following a rash of attacks that left several children and others horrifically maimed. Removing these animals from city streets was the only way to protect residents, and for the most part, it has been successful.

Similarly, the only way to protect residents from coyotes is through their complete removal from the urban landscape. There is no way to safely co-exist with them when they see us as a food source, and they won’t abandon an attack on our children when we ask them to please stop.

The coyote population growth can easily be reversed through diligent capture and release programs, or by euthanasia where it is deemed necessary. We were able to rid our streets from packs of dogs attacking both people and pets, and pitbull attacks are now very rare. It’s time for the City of Winnipeg to once again find the fortitude to put its citizens and residents first, and their right to life and liberty, and to ignore the appeals from special-interest groups that aggressive animals with very big teeth and very powerful jaws have the right to live in the parks and playgrounds just down the street.

Randy Clinch

Winnipeg