Letters, Aug. 24

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/08/2023 (1007 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Breaking the bank

The NDP must be banking on a huge surplus of provincial funds if they win the Oct. 3 election.

I have lost count of the promises the Manitoba NDP has made. Freezing Hydro rates for one year, eliminating the provincial tax on gas, reopening the useless Dauphin jail, $10 for after-school daycare, etc, etc.

Has the party ever said how it will pay for these tax cuts/freezes? Or what projects or programs will have funding pulled or stopped?

Alfred Sansregret

Winnipeg

Losing a vote

Regarding the NDP gas tax break; it seems the party doesn’t want my vote.

This might be a poor sign, given that I came around at a young age to thinking that collecting and sharing wealth for our combined well-being makes civil sense and is good for all, and that private enterprise exists to serve itself first and, so, is not a dependable source of equity and services, be it directly or through trickle-down and public-private partnerships.

There are some things where the profit motive is starkly out of place, such as health and seniors care.

I count on the NDP to champion these ideas and for progressive approaches to taxation.

Kinew and Co. have now dashed that with the proposed gas-tax holiday.

Those in greater need and who can’t afford a car will see little or no benefit — it is anti-progressive. When Business 101 supply and demand kicks in, consumption will rise.

So far as I can see gas prices have little to do with the cost of supplying fuel and will rise to what the market will bear. The holiday will be short-lived and the end will have us regretting it.

This kind of measure is what I expect from the PCs, premised on short-term political expediency and on populist appeal.

It’s to the point of choosing the least offensive candidate when core principles are set aside.

I may have to make an X with one hand while holding my nose with the other.

Ken Clark

Winnipeg

Action, not words

In response to the Aug. 15 letter “Premier needs climate reminder.”

Brian Dyck’s assessment that the carbon tax is “revenue neutral as the money collected is returned to all taxpayers with the lower income people benefiting the most generally due to lower energy consumption” is quite misleading.

In the next day’s Free Press, one of the headlines reads that federal ministers are being forced to find $15 billion in savings. Where are they going to find that money? Where else but from those exact people “benefiting” so much from the carbon tax.

Can no one else see the dichotomy? On one hand the feds are “returning” the carbon tax and on the other they will take it away through another clawback.

No one is saving the planet by paying a tax. For those that believe the planet can be saved, STOP EMITTING GREENHOUSE GASES. Quit telling everyone else to do it and do it yourself. Real change only happens when people take action. For example — don’t drive your cars to take part in a protest march. Just stop driving your cars.

As a 92-year-old Manitoba resident, I have seen and heard a lot of rhetoric over the years, but the carbon tax is one of the biggest hoaxes of them all. It’s all smoke and mirrors, while the most powerful and richest people have their own agenda and are squeezing the little guy dry. Our population will be pushed to the brink of extinction as more and more people can’t afford their next meal.

So who are we saving the planet for? The politicians and billionaires!

Edgar Penner

Brandon

Kudos

Big kudos to Free Press photographer John Woods for the amazing photo of a bubble with landscape visible in the reflection.

Thanks to the whole photo department who always contribute wonderful photos of local interest.

I appreciate your excellence. Just to let you know that we noticed!

Ruth Swan

Winnipeg

Right and left

The editorial in the Aug 21 edition (“The courage of your convictions”) points out that the left and the right aren’t speaking to each other.

It’s not hard to see what those on the right believe and want. They’d like to make Canada “great again.” A good first step is to put certain groups of people back in their place. Another worthy goal would be to stop spending so much money on those who don’t really have any.

Less clear is what it means to be on the left and what makes it “loony.” Too much kindness? Too progressive? Maybe unreasonable expectations regarding what it means to be fully human?

To some, the left may include a number of “deplorable” special interest groups, but the right is a very exclusive special interest group of its own and certain segments of society need not apply.

Gordon Kidder

Winnipeg

Tried before

Re: “Feds could spur rental construction with incentives, financing: experts” — Aug. 19 Free Press

What a novel idea: give a developer a tax incentive and they will put on their running shoes to get it as fast as they can to a low-income Canadian.

So let’s see who some of the possible beneficiaries of the tax incentive could be: will it increase the demand for land you need to build on and thus increase its value and provide a benefit to land owners?

Could the developer structure a project so that he can pass on the tax incentive to investors, who can significantly reduce their net cost, thus enriching themselves?

Could investors create a demand for this type of deal and give unusual profits to developers?

And somewhere in the food chain are the lawyers and accountants who advise on and structure the deals.

This all begs the question: how do you see that land owners, developers and investors will pass on the incentives to low-income Canadians so they can afford a place to live? Where in the pecking order will the low-income Canadian be?

We did this before way back when we called them MURBs (multiple-unit residential buildings).

Perhaps Finance Canada could dust off its evaluation of that MURB program, if it did one. And the proponents of this current idea, should map out the expected response to the proposed tax incentive and make it available to taxpayers — after all, in the end we the people will pay for it! And this will give academics the opportunity to critique proposals. And like any tax incentive, it’s available to all who want to take advantage of it — which means that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to control the cost.

Perhaps the policy wonks can figure out a better way to get rent money into the hands of a low-income Canadian.

Barry Elkin

Winnipeg

Credit where it’s due

Gerald Friesen, in conversation with the Free Press, regarding his upcoming biography of the late Manitoba premier John Norquay, describes Norquay as “a major figure who is Indigenous and nobody knows anything about him.”

Indeed.

Ironic proof of that historical amnesia is the 2010 renaming of Norquay Park in Point Douglas to Michaelle Jean Park in honour of the former Canadian governor general.

In addition to the name change, a monument to Ms. Jean was erected in the park, which is only a couple of short blocks from Hallet Street where Norquay lived.

Neither the media, politicians nor anyone else, including the area’s majority Indigenous population, seemed to have had a problem with replacing the first elected Indigenous premier of any province in Canada with an appointed representative of the British Crown.

John Paskievich

Winnipeg