Letters, Aug. 1

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/08/2023 (1146 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Remember Dr. Rey

Re: ‘It’s a very proud moment’ (July 29)

It is very disappointing to read ‘Liberal MP Valdez becomes first Filipino-Canadian to serve in cabinet’ in, of all places the Free Press.

If any paper in Canada is in a place to correct this erroneous feed from the Canadian Press, it should be the Free Press. The fact is that Winnipeg’s own Dr. Rey Pagtakhan was not only the first Filipino Canadian to be elected to the House of Commons but also the first to serve in the federal cabinet. He was appointed as Secretary of State (Asia Pacific) on Jan. 9, 2001, and went on to serve as Minister of Veterans Affairs and then as Minister of Western Diversification. I would like to congratulate Rechie Valdez for becoming the second Filipino-Canadian and the first female or Filipina-Canadian in Cabinet, but let us not forget the trailblazer, still fondly known to us as “Dr. Rey.”

Robert Vineberg

Winnipeg

 

Cost-effective plan

Re: Manitoba going green on long-term energy plans (July 29)

Carol Sanders wrote a very informative article on Manitoba Hydro’s planned energy generation expansion. This government when Pallister was premier, contracted Brad Wall, former Saskatchewan premier to investigate Manitoba Hydro’s development of the costly Keeyask generating station and Bipole III. The Brad Wall report was first sent to the Manitoba provincial government in November 2021.

Recommendation No. 2.1 of the Wall report states in part: “Fostering competition for merchant plants will likely drive efficiencies and cost reductions for all such projects, including those pursued by Manitoba Hydro.”

Now is the time to act on this recommendation. Allow the clean energy generators proposed by the provincial government to indeed be merchant plants, constructed by independent developers. Such merchant generators would then compete with Manitoba Hydro’s generation to provide the lowest price electric energy for Manitoba Hydro’s electric energy consumers.

To do this, Manitoba Hydro, remaining as a Crown corporation, would be divided into two divisions. One to operate and maintain the electric grid and provide open access to merchant generators. The other to manage the existing hydroelectric generators to compete with the merchant generators. The only way the existing overpriced hydroelectric generators such as Waskwatim and Keeyask can be competitive is if the provincial government absorbs a significant amount of the debt incurred by Manitoba Hydro in the construction of these costly generators.

Based on what we know elsewhere, this is a most cost effective way forward.

Dennis Woodford, P.Eng.,

Winnipeg

 

Bad joke

I had to laugh when I read in Saturday’s paper about the provincial government now touting their long-term green energy plan.

This a week or so after they reduced standards for energy-efficient housing! What’s wrong with this picture?

Doreen Kerr

Winnipeg

 

Landfill issue symbolic

Re: Practical need not be amoral (Think Tank, July 29)

Jerry Storie’s good suggestions for programs to benefit First Nations families are presented as alternative ways to use the millions of dollars that a landfill search for human remains would cost.

In my view, the landfill search has become symbolic of an issue that should concern all Manitobans: the issue of giving appropriate “value “ to the lives of women and girls, including those in economically disadvantaged communities. Three First Nations women are the focus of this current protest, but the outcry over these victims of murder is an outcry for the generations of women neglected by their communities, and by governments. How can we protect our daughters from lives of poverty and danger?

Clearly, there are not enough resources for youth — wherever they live — to be provided with opportunity. It is essential that girls as well as boys have access to the healthcare, the skills training and the education that they need.

As long as so many cultures and races, in both resident and newcomer societies, treat girls as having less intellectual potential than boys, we will have tragedies like the abuse and murder of women.

The message to our local leaders and provincial legislators is that girls’ lives matter, as much as boys’. Investments in resources to improve youth health and education must be increased substantially and urgently.

Jean A. Paterson

Winnipeg

 

CFL beware

I just read a piece by the CFL Commissioner today from Halifax stating how ratings are up, attendance is up and the expansion of the league into Atlantic Canada was in “the red zone”. What a load of rubbish. No matter how you end up watching the live games, the number of empty seats is astonishing: Calgary, Edmonton, BC, Ottawa, Montreal and of course Toronto.

Now let’s get back to being able to watch “live” CFL games on TSN. Unless you subscribe to the highest tier of TV packages, you will get TSN 2 and 3. Want to watch the CFL, nope. Channels 1, 4 and 5 will get you the games. But only if you want to sink a minimum of $180 + a month into the pockets of our wonderful media corporation monopoly.

I would think that the CFL would showcase Saturday’s game from Halifax. Nope. Sunday’s game from Montreal, nope.

TSN might have been the saviour of the CFL back in the day but they are the anchor that will eventually sink the league. The CFL commish might have misspoken. The survival of this league is in the “red zone” aka “red alert.”

Chris Beaudry

East St. Paul

 

Russia cause of NATO growth

Re: “Wiser to prevent war” (Letters, July 28)

If the letter writer would take the trouble to read any of the ongoing coverage and analysis of the illegal and unjustified invasion of Ukraine, he might glean enough facts to dispel some of the dangerous myths he seems to want to promulgate, lies which play straight into the hands of the aggressor.

The recent expansion of NATO is an effect, not a cause, of Russian aggression in Europe. Russia works hard to maintain a destabilizing presence in many Eastern European countries, to say nothing of Africa and the Middle East. Russia has meddled in American and U.K. elections. NATO is not the aggressor here, but the defender of Western values, and the alternative to its recent growth would have been capitulation to the chaos of terrorism.

Russia would have the world believe that there exists a happy population in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine which embraces Moscow’s twisted form of imperialism, while rejecting their own nation’s blossoming freedom, democracy, and quality of life in favour of squalour, authoritarianism, and colonialism at its worst. Really now?

If Canada shouldn’t provide support to Ukraine, what principle would Mr. Ward advocate instead? Negotiate with terrorists? Might makes right? Cede the sandbox to the bully, not knowing which of us would be next? Canada is right to back the aggrieved party in this conflict, and to empower Ukraine to end this horrific mediæval blood spectacle as quickly as possible, with as little loss of life as possible, and — most critically — on Ukraine’s terms.

Agreed; it is wiser to prevent a nuclear war. Russia has a simple choice to make, then; one it could make today. The blame for any escalation will lie entirely with the bully, not Canada.

Thomas L. Steur

Winnipeg