Letters, Oct. 31

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/10/2023 (1046 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Managing from home

Re: Going back to the office at city hall (Editorial, Oct. 30)

I have been working from home since before the pandemic, and the company I work for saw the value of that long before I came to work for them. This isn’t just an option, it’s a necessity — on my little team alone, I have colleagues in the United States, the Philippines, Georgia, Poland, and New Zealand. Last year, the executives decided to outright disband the company office and become a remote-only workplace. Those same executives, though, were the people who spent their time working from that office.

So while I believe strongly in the power of working from home to improve our work-life balance, I also believe that benefit should work from the ground up. It should not be the luxurious privilege of the upper echelons of the Org chart.

If you manage a team who has to go into the office, you should be in the office to support them. As a remote employee, one of my main job requirements is to be “available and responsive” during my working hours, and that should be the bare minimum for these city hall managers.

For those employees whose jobs consist of spreadsheets, PDFs, and Word documents, though? Let them work from home.

Requiring them to come into the office only forces employees to waste their time and money on a pointless commute, so that management can enjoy the illusion of a devoted workforce.

Alec Thomson

Winnipeg

Synchronicity in print

Re: A modest proposal (Think Tank, Oct. 28); Do you have your own Desiderata? (Oct. 28)

As a retired educator, I was intrigued by John Wiens’ vision for a “renewal” of education, particularly the idea of a “cap year” in which communities and schools work together to provide opportunities for graduating students to connect their school experiences with dreams for the future.

In the same paper I came across an article in the faith section in which John Longhurst explores the importance of writing a desideratum or “personal manifesto.” Though the author references a person writing such a document upon entry into the “last third of life,” it occurred to me that such self-exploration may be of value at all transitional stages, including young people embarking on their entry into the adult world.

What if Dr. Wiens’ “cap year” included an opportunity for graduating students to create an early desideratum in which they attempt to articulate those foundational aspects of their young lives at that point in time. For it to have value, it should not be yet another graded writing assignment. Rather it could be envisioned as a “living document” to be revised and refined as their lives unfold.

Sometimes things such as these two articles in the same paper in the same edition come together. Carl Jung called it synchronicity.

Edwin Buettner

Winnipeg

Enforcement problem

Re: City eyes speed limit on e-bikes (Oct.28)

A speed limit on multi-use trails is a great idea, but a numerical speed limit makes little sense as the speed a bike goes past a walker is relative to the walker’s speed. A walker averages about 2-3 miles per hour (4-5 km/h) while most bikes travel around 12 miles per hour (20 km/h). When passing a walker at this speed, the biker is going four times as fast and is thus “speeding” past a walker.

A better restriction would be to say a cyclist must travel at a speed that is safe for all users of the trail. That way all bikes can be regulated.

The problem with imposing a speed limit or any other bylaw is enforcement. Currently there is a bylaw stating all bikes must have bells, but the majority do not. I believe cyclists are required to wear helmets, yet the majority do not, and another bylaw is bikes must be pushed across the bridge from Portage Ave. to Assiniboine Park, but the majority of bikes are still ridden.

If bylaws aren’t enforced, it is a waste of councillors time to pass them.

Every complaint is from the walkers point of view, but never from the bikers.

If we are going to regulate conduct on a multi-purpose trail, the walkers should have some rules to follow as well. The first is no ear buds or other device is to be worn that will impede their ability to hear when a cyclist rings their bell to pass.

Another is to walk no more than two abreast, allowing bikes to pass and to walk on the right side of the trail, not down the middle or the left side. Keep control of children so they are not running wild on the trail. Finally, dogs. Dogs should be walked on the right side of the body as per dog training, and an owner must keep control of their pet at all times. Control cannot be kept of a dog on a 20-30 foot retractable lanyard, therefore no retractable lanyards should be allowed.

Everyone on a trail has a responsibility to others while using a trail. There are some inconsiderate cyclists who will never follow a bylaw and will give all cyclists a bad rep, but walkers have to be considerate to cyclists as well.

The city would be better to come up with a set of rules for use on a multi-purpose trail by both cyclists and walkers, and post signs with these rules at each entry point of a trail.

Arthur Matthews

Winnipeg

Don’t lose sight of energy goals

Re: Gas tax first up on new government agenda: Kinew (Oct. 23)

Our new NDP government plans to “temporarily suspend the provincial gas tax”. They will stop collecting that 14 cents per litre until inflation subsides.

Some say go further and also remove the federal carbon tax — “axe the tax” is their motto. Yet this misses the mark on a few points.

It benefits the richest households most because they travel the most. It ignores the value of these fees on carbon pollution: they nudge us to cut our emissions. And it leaves out the carbon dividend we get, a.k.a. Climate Action Incentive or CAI payments — call them “rebates on our plates.”

For example, a family with a moderate mileage car, pays $68 more this year from carbon pricing, or $5.66/month. Using Fair Path Forward’s carbon rebate calculator, they received $1,072 in CAI payments. All households, rich or poor, get the same rebate.

Inflation is impacting many around the world right now, and a short-term gas tax cut does offer proportional relief to low-mid income families. Let’s not forget to keep protecting these families as we transition off of fossil fuels to a livable world for all. Remember “rebates on our plates”!

Virginia Cail

Winnipeg

Energetic ideas

Premier Wab Kinew tells cabinet to deliver net-zero electricity grid by 2035.

Instead of having the taxpayer solely saddled with the cost of going net zero, the province should explore government/First Nations/private business partnership projects. Projects like wind, solar and possibly nuclear (I understand Pinawa residents, including neighbouring municipalities and First Nations, have shown support for new nuclear generation at that former NRC site in the past).

Companies like CPV Energy have had shovel-ready, solely financed projects like the Manitou wind farm project fully planned out in the past.

Forward-looking thinking, without hands in the pockets of taxpayers and ratepayers, is required in today’s dire financial times!

Phil Barclay

Stonewall

Compost collection not worth it

Having the city pick up compostable waste is dumb.

The benefit would be some amount of material that is mildly beneficial as a soil additive. The cost is having a fleet of diesel-burning trucks crisscrossing the city on a daily basis.

The city of Winnipeg does a good job on the essentials — keeping the garbage picked up and the traffic lights working. Let’s not ask them to operate an activity that, at first glance, sounds virtuous but is, in fact, both hopelessly cost ineffective and also counterproductive for climate-change.

John Duvenaud

Winnipeg