Letters, July 31

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/07/2023 (1157 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Reasons for pork practices

Re: Fight for a healthier future (Letters, July 28)

Look, another letter bemoaning modern hog production without the Free Press presenting an alternative view. Swine are kept inside barns for many good reasons. For example, sows can be kept in tight gestation pens to stop them from eating their piglets.

Free-range hogs can be a source of many parasites because they root in the soil and will eat anything. Keeping them inside a controlled environment eliminates those issues. For example, Toxoplasma is a personality-altering parasite that makes mice unafraid of cats: it needs to complete its life-cycle inside a cat. Pigs will eat cat feces as well as the zombie mice, becoming infected.

A 1990s Ontario study found 40 per cent of people had antibodies to the parasite. When people are infected they display a higher “neuroticism” score, such as being more dogmatic and more likely to be involved in traffic accidents.

That is why historically we used to cook pork well-done and tough. Today’s barn-raised hogs are not exposed to parasites, so we can happily consume cheap medium-rare protein. In contrast, wild boar should be cooked on low heat for eight hours before consuming. Can you say pulled pork?

Gregory Teleglow

Steinbach

New epidemic

Re: Province replacing office responsible for protecting vulnerable in care following ‘sickening’ findings (July 26)

It seems there is another epidemic running unchecked through Manitoba’s personal-care homes these days, but it’s not COVID-19 this time, it’s physical and sexual abuse.

With 2,282 reports of abuse or neglect in 2020-21, and only 50 investigations per year, there is little deterrence. And with the proposed creation of a new, independent investigation office, I’m wondering who will be overseeing the treatment of PCH residents during the 18 months to two years it will take to complete?

The Protection for Persons in Care Office bears much of the blame for the mishandling of the abuse allegations. They followed very narrow definitions of abuse and neglect as outlined in law, but was their interpretation of these laws unreasonable? Hitting the legal target while missing the humanity? Perhaps. But the humanity of the residents was lost to some care workers.

These workers lost sight of the patients as parents and grandparents, as humans. It was these individual personal-care workers who thought it okay to lash out at patients when they were angry or frustrated, the ones we once called “health-care heroes.” But that was before we learned of the filthy conditions and infestations of rodents and cockroaches of some of the care homes. Before we learned that residents were left in urine-soaked clothing and bedding for days, none of which was management policy.

What we need to stop the abuses in personal care homes is better training for workers, closer supervision and accountability, and enhanced sentences for those convicted of abusing vulnerable people. After all, what is our society if we are incapable of protecting our weakest and most vulnerable?

Randy Clinch

Winnipeg

Carney’s legacy

Re: Pat Carney, former MP, senator, remembered as kind, ‘wise leader’ (July 27)

Pat Carney deserves the respect and appreciation of women across Canada but her whole story needs to be told. In 1990 the Supreme Court of Canada threw out the existing abortion laws. Kim Campbell was the Attorney General at the time and she introduced a new, slightly improved law, arguing it was pro choice.

It passed the House of Commons and like all bills had to be ratified by the Senate. Women across Canada were outraged and their anger could be felt and heard across the land.

Meanwhile, quietly in the Senate three powerful women began to act: Mira Spivak and Janis Johnson, from Manitoba and Pat Carney from B.C. The met with their colleagues and presented their arguments against passing this law. They were determined and articulate. When the Senate came to a vote the vote was a tie and in the Senate a tie is a loss.

These three women acted with integrity and voted against the bill put forward by their own party . As a result women in Canadian women won a fundamental human right, the right to control of our own body. The world is a better place because of Carney, Spivak and Johnson.

Linda Taylor

Winnipeg

Fool me once…

Re: Health-care staffing plan doubles to $400M (July 28)

I’ve been watching the political process for a long time now, perhaps more than any sane person ought, but never have I seen such brazen cynicism as that of a desperate government trying to buy itself an undeserved re-election. Here’s looking at you, Manitoba Progressive Conservatives.

By some accounting the recently announced “expenditures” are approaching $2.5 billion, and in the absence of a balanced budget, all of this will be borrowed money. So, fiscal conservatives, how does that rock your boat? You down with being bribed with your own, borrowed money?

Which isn’t to say that many of these financial “commitments” aren’t needed, in some cases desperately needed. But where have they been for the last eight years? Maddening to watch this lazy and incompetent government create most of the problems and failures, and then attempt to run on repairing the damage. And highly likely that these financial “promises” will be subject to deferred timelines and underspent department budgets, their consistent default; surprise, fool me once!

There’s lots of talk about accountability but little evidence of that in this government’ s caucus and cabinet. Whether on health care, climate change, crime, or reconciliation, not a whiff of shame or acknowledged responsibility. Perhaps Oct. 3. will allow for a proper accounting and a time-out on the bench; our choice.

Sig Laser

Winnipeg

Reading instruction not so simple

Re: Teacher of dyslexic children decries new reading-instruction guidelines (July 27)

The article reminds me of the amount of ink that has been spilled and time wasted on the so-called “reading wars.” The essence of these conflicts is seemingly simple: to what extent should kids’ early reading explicitly focus on sound symbol relationships? Though many parents and educators have tended to line up into opposing camps generally seen as “pro phonics” or “anti phonics”, most realize reading instruction is more complex than it seems.

What complicates matters is the paradoxical nature of teaching kids to read. It all begins (surprisingly) with the “ears” not the “eyes.” Through auditory activities such as rhyming and word games, children develop the insight that a word (or parts of a word) can be mapped onto a written representation of it. After that is well established, they need to learn some basic sound-letter associations, i.e., phonics. Once these connections are firmly established, the emergent reader learns to essentially let go of them in favour of the (more efficient) visual features of a word. e.g., developing a ‘sight vocabulary or seeing ‘chucks’ of letters within unknown words.

In short, a child begins to learn to read through her “ears” and then connects those insights with her “eyes” and a little later, leaves behind her reliance on only those connections. In a sense, kids need to learn phonics only to abandon them in order to become more visually sensitive to words. As with so many educational issues, the paradox of early reading is best dealt with by applying a developmental perspective. Just as a baby’s crawl gives way to walking, the capacity to crawl remains as a kind of “back up” system, in which we may get on our hands and knees to crawl out of a burning building.

Effective teachers have always known this (explicitly or intuitively) and have focused their instruction on a key child-centred question: “What does this child (or these children) need at this time in order to become a more strategic readers?”

Edwin Buettner Ph.D.

Retired reading clinician/reading recovery teacher

Winnipeg