Letters, Feb. 29

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This article was published 29/02/2024 (944 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Correcting the record

Re: Universities’ antisemitism response weak (Think Tank, Feb. 17)

We represent organizers, presenters, and supporters of the Palestine and Genocide teach-in and roundtable held via Zoom at the University of Winnipeg on Nov. 24, 2023, and we are writing to correct several factual errors in Dr. Ruth Ashrafi’s Think Tank column.

First, it is important to note that both the morning teach-in and the afternoon roundtable were presented in webinar format, meaning that only the presenters could be seen and heard. Audience members were not visible to one another and no audience member had the ability to speak. All audience members had the option of communicating with the presenters via the Q&A feature at any point.

Contrary to Dr. Ashrafi’s claim, no individual audience member was muted; all audience members were muted by virtue of the format. Dr. Ashrafi claims further that several students were removed from the event. Zoom records for the event, which attracted 400 participants, indicate that two people were removed, one from the morning session and one from the afternoon session, in both cases for repeatedly returning to issues that the presenters had dealt with thoroughly and clearly. Only one of these was a student.

Dr. Ashrafi states that the teach-in was antithetical to the exploration of ideas and reasonable debate, while YouTube recordings of the event make it clear that multiple questions from many different perspectives were dealt with over the course of the day, including questions that were addressed repeatedly, both explicitly and implicitly.

Finally, Dr. Ashrafi claims that the organizers of the event are being investigated by the university administration. No such investigation is underway.

Dr. B. Christopher, Dr. J. DeFehr, Dr. S. Joo, Dr. H. Milne, Dr. K. Venema, Dr. S. Wall

Winnipeg

Unfair charge

Re: Council pondering residential parking-pass price hike (Feb.28)

I read in your paper that city hall is considering raising the cost of residential parking passes by more than double.

It is claimed that this is to encourage people to use their driveways and garages. I would like to point out that many homes are on streets where there is time restricted parking. We use our parking passes to allow our visitors to use our driveways.

I am not able to have guests for lunch or afternoon cards unless I move my car to the street to allow them to use my driveway. It is enough that I have to pay for the right to park in front of my own home, for which I pay frontage taxes, but to have to pay the amount being proposed is unimaginable.

Jacquie Field

Winnipeg

Discouraging report

Re: Sorting fiscal fact from fiction (Editorial, Feb. 28)

Did the last ‘fiscally responsible’ provincial government deliberately cripple their own government economically to tie their opponent’s hands? Some might try to excuse tax cuts combined with increased spending, but if any other party had done the same, the conservative wailing would still be echoing.

The results speak plainly enough by themselves. Lowering taxes and increasing spending in the last year of a lame duck government raises suspicion of cynical politics, harming the government deliberately in order to harass their political opponents. Not a ‘lame duck’ government? Perhaps not technically, but the polls and their own flailing made it clear to everyone, they were lame ducks in every real sense.

Maybe there should be a law restricting sitting governments from fiscal chicanery in the year before a scheduled election. The people of Manitoba are and will be paying dearly for this misanthropic obsession that sees politics as a contest between the parties and the population can go hang. In this case, I suspect their actions might have also contained just a little motivation from panic.

Conservatives in general have made a perfect record for themselves, fiscally irresponsible while lying that they are careful with our money, attacking or undermining our health care and education systems while claiming to ‘improve’ them, eternally selling the broken pot of austerity as if it could ever lead to prosperity.

No Conservative government, to my knowledge, has ever paid one cent against their debt, but run it up enthusiastically, knowing that it will provide them a ‘casus belli’ forever. That’s why they keep pumping up the debt and slashing taxes. Those are and have been their best weapons in the fight. If the gigantic debts should ever disappear, what will be their reason to exist?

Richard Lockhart

Winnipeg

Yet another expensive consultant’s report contradicting a previously expensive consultants report on how to run our provincial finances.

Consultants to provincial governments have entirely lost their credibility with me. It’s obvious they spin what their high-priced contracts expect to hear. Why are the vast professional bureaucracies of government incapable of managing and planning our finances? Why do elected governments consistently throw our taxpayer dollars into this trough of “blame-the-previous-government-for-bad-actions-taken-on-the-advice-of-previous-independent-consultants.”

I’m tired of this and disgusted by this charade. There ought to be a legislated moratorium on consultant engagements and a clear strategic outcome with measurable metrics to be delivered by our civil service as advice to the minister. This is what we taxpayers pay for and have a right to expect. Not consultants.

Ron Janzen

Winnipeg

Jets tickets a bad deal

It is difficult to understand exactly what message True North and Gary Bettman are trying to send to the fans of Winnipeg regarding season tickets.

If you compare the number of ordinary fans buying tickets in cities with higher corporate support, you will find that, based on population, fan support is similar or even higher in some cases. So it would appear the problem in Winnipeg (if there really is one) is not with the fan base, but with corporate support. This falls squarely in the lap of True North itself.

If they are not providing attractive enough packages to local businesses that they feel they are getting value for their money then True North has to step up their game. And based by what I experience when attending Jets games, they really need to step up their game.

Last time I was there I bought a very expensive hot dog that was so bad I could not finish it. My wife bought me a surprise T-shirt for $47 that is the cheapest looking and feeling T-shirt I have in my drawer.

If this mirrors the corporate experience, no wonder they won’t support the team.

Rob McConnell

Winnipeg

With all due respect to the Jets and their die hard fans, I’m sorry, but my prediction when the Jets returned to town is coming true.

I said from the start that as soon as the novelty wore off, the attendance and ticket demand would fall way off. Again, with all due respect, I said that Winnipeg just can’t survive on the ticket prices being charged for a game.

The costs are outrageous for a family of four to go to a game. I say that is the one major reason for the attendance decline. Sorry if this is a bit of reality, but it is how I see it.

Brian Short

Stonewall