Letters, Feb. 20

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/02/2024 (936 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Bring back hospital schools

It’s encouraging to read that $400 million has been earmarked to recruit, train and retain front-line medical workers over the next three years. I am a retired RN who graduated from the Health Sciences Centre School of Nursing (two-year program) and as I am out and about with my grandsons, I interact with other retired RN graduates from hospital schools of nursing.

We are of similar opinions: that the hospital schools of nursing should never have been phased out. I propose for whatever it’s worth, that the planning and implementing in this first of three years, be to re-establish Schools of Nursing at HSC, St. Boniface, and Grace Hospital, commencing with the training of RNs in the second year and with graduating RNs at the end of the third year. Undo what should never have been done in the early ’90s.

Leslie Ann Forgie

Winnipeg

A bad mix

The City of Winnipeg is following the Manitoba Provincial Department of Transportation in implementing the Super Pave method of designing asphalt mix for asphalt pavements. This method, though possibly effective in some jurisdictions, is particularly poorly suited for Manitoba.

Asphalt mixes are designed with a balance between strength and durability. Usually, more strength means less durability. In Manitoba there is another key factor which must be taken into account which is not present in most other locations. The pavement’s resistance to aggregate loss in freeze/thaw cycles is critical in Manitoba.

Super Pave asphalt mixes are, by design, highly resistant to rutting. The same reason they are so resistant to rutting is also why they are less durable and very susceptible to aggregate loss under freeze thaw conditions. Presently, there is not an economically usable asphalt cement which does not crack at temperatures below 34C.

When the pavement cracks and the freeze/thaw occurs, the Super Pave mixes —which by design are high stone/low asphalt mixes — will ravel out.

Not only will these pavements perform poorly, they will cost significantly more.

Douglas L. Fisher

Former engineering audit and quality assurance manager

Province of Manitoba transportation department

Winnipeg

We could do more on sewage

Re: Sewer, water funds may go into the garbage (Feb. 16); Winnipeg’s sewage pipes ‘falling apart at the seams’ (Feb. 13)

In the recent story about Winnipeg’s sewage pipes falling apart, Mayor Scott Gillingham said, “We’re doing, I think, as much as we can right now. I believe that.”

On the heels of this article, there is Feb. 16’s story about the diversion of “funds from sewer and water revenue this year to help pay for garbage collection, despite needing billions for long-awaited sewage system upgrades,” which is described as “irresponsible” by Lake Winnipeg Foundation’s Alexis Kanu.

Are we really doing as much as we can? I hope Mayor Gillingham is right, because the City of Winnipeg cannot continue to contribute to the degradation of the Lake Winnipeg ecosystem. Deferring the proposed Kenaston and Chief Peguis projects, for example, in favour of known water and waste infrastructure needs, might be a way to do even more.

Gord Jones

Winnipeg

Change the name game

Re: Judging from a historical distance (Feb. 16)

Jerry Storie is correct in saying that many historical figures were working to improve the lives of others. Yet many of these people are being condemned by today’s standards resulting in the need to change the names of places such as Bishop Grandin Boulevard.

I suggest that naming anything after a person be discontinued. Humans are flawed and often self-serving and sometimes evil, even if they did good things. There are many beautiful and meaningful names we can assign to streets, rivers, and landmarks. We don’t need another person’s name attached to something significant like a city or park!

Bruce Fast

Winnipeg

Victims need more protection

Despite millions of dollars and legislation uniquely targeted at domestic violence and stalking, the domestic homicide rate has doubled in Manitoba since 2010.

Many of the problems today are the same as identified in the 1997 Lavoie Inquiry: unclear language in protection orders, difficulty in obtaining protection orders, insufficient enforcement of the orders and a lack of adequate penalties for breaches.

Preventative measures are a core part of reducing gender-based violence— risk assessments have been utilized in many jurisdictions for almost 40 years. But in Manitoba neither the Winnipeg Police Service, the domestic violence hotline or the shelter systems are equipped to provide an appropriate assessment of risk in these situations. Women are left to figure their own way out in a system full of barriers, especially if they have children with the perpetrator.

It’s imperative that the provincial government take the opportunity of their majority government to finally rectify the long-known deficiencies in the Domestic Violence and Stalking Act to better reflect the reality women are facing, and police, the Crown and the judiciary need to actually enforce the orders once they are in place.

Sarah Mitchell

Winnipeg

Safe injection site beneficial

Re: Compassionate approach to addiction will save lives (Feb. 10)

Thank you to Tom Brodbeck for his well-written opinion article. The Kinew government’s support for safe injection sites will save lives plus, as Tom points out, the need to “reduce the sigma surrounding illicit drug use.”

And as he points out, they are “one piece of the puzzle that’s needed to fight addictions and to get people the treatment they need.”

The Illicit Drug Task Force Report, now nearly five years old, and sitting on a shelf, offers the way forward. New and accessible recovery facilities, new and modern men’s and women’s detox facilities, and wet shelters (where people can stay even if high or drunk) would go a long way to helping those in need.

And yes, there is a cost to these new facilities and programs. But the cost of substance use is already a major drain on government budgets, but in the form of reactive government policy, namely all the costs associated with policing, the courts, the prisons, and, of course, our health-care system (not to mention the loss of productivity in our economy).

Believe it or not, Alberta is now leading the country, building new recovery facilities and making it possible to obtain said services without sitting on a waiting list for months.

And the City of Calgary offers the best services to many of their front line staff in policing, fire and paramedics, who daily experience their own traumas, including here in Winnipeg, by the duties they must undertake on our behalf.

We have a long way to go. But governments today are collecting more tax dollars than ever before thanks to liquor, gambling, and cannabis sales.

It’s time to give a portion of those revenues back to help folks heal.

Coun. Russ Wyatt (Transcona)

Winnipeg