Letters, March 23

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/03/2024 (920 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

School’s policy misused

Re: Son’s toy mistaken for weapon, father fumes (March 22)

As a former school social worker, my sympathies are with the father who was upset that he was subjected to a threat assessment because his son took a “Popsicle stick weapon” to school.

Threat assessments, when used properly, are an important mechanism in keeping our schools safe. Canadian schools, in particular, are far ahead of our American counterparts and private industry in using this tool to assess legitimate threats.

Having said that, I am reminded of the time I did a threat assessment on a boy who took a water pistol to school and used it to spray other students. Unbeknownst to me, a school official had contacted the threat assessment trainer who had told him that the boy might be using the water pistol as a rehearsal for the real thing — ie. taking a gun to school to shoot up the school.

The boy in question posed no threat to the school. The school and the threat assessment trainer overreacted to the boy’s behaviour. Sometimes a water pistol is just a water pistol and a Popsicle stick is just a Popsicle stick.

Mac Horsburgh

Winnipeg

I think the school division went a little overboard with the Popsicle stick toy. If they have a problem with it, why did they introduce the game it is modelled after at school?

As that is the only place the student is involved in the game, they should look at their curriculum. In a perfect world, the request for an assessment is not supposed to have a negative impact on a person’s record, but we all know better.

If half this much attention was given to children obtaining machetes, maybe our streets would be safer.

Brenda Boss

Winnipeg

Am I reading this correctly?! A school conducts an e-sports team where a youngster is allowed to play a “fighting game, Brawlhalla” (exclusively played at the school).

One of them then fashions Popsicle sticks to imitate a “weapon” that he sees used in the game, resulting in the youngster being reprimanded and the family being asked to participate in a violent threat assessment?

Why are the parents being asked to participate in the threat assessment and trauma response when it’s the school, not parents in this case, allowing students to participate in violent e-games, which is why this “incident” occurred in the first place?

If there is anyone to be held responsible for this incident it is the school for allowing violent games. It’s a mad, mad world.

Penny Maletic

Winnipeg

When collective needs are greater

Re: Individual rights aren’t the only rights (Editorial, March 22)

There is an even simpler way to think about the tension between individual rights and collective rights. No one individual lives in a vacuum. We are a society of humans who all share the same fundamental human rights.

Those rights are both individual and collective. When the society made up of individuals is threatened in a way that affects all its members, those collective rights need to be weighted in favour of the whole. A communicable disease that is affecting all humans with life and death consequences would seem to fit this scenario

Melanie Beth Oliviero

Winnipeg

The market at work

Confused about how this whole gas pipeline shutdown thing will play out? Allow me to be your “gas buddy.”

You start out with a well-meaning, but probably ill-considered gas tax holiday, initiated by the provincial government that the industry used to give themselves a healthy boost in profitability in this market by filling the vacuum with a series of incremental price increases and cancelling out the price relief that consumers were supposed to benefit from.

Next, you have a well-timed declaration that the main pipeline delivering fuel to this market would need to be closed down for maintenance until roughly the time where the aforementioned gas tax holiday will end, at which time the price of gasoline will see a whopping additional hike as the tax gets re-instated. When this happen, the industry and its shills will point to the government and say “It’s not our fault that gas is now crazy expensive! That’s the government crankin’ up those taxes, those bloody socialists!”

Maybe the government will opt to delay the return of the fuel tax but the industry will wait them out and eventually the tax will return, the prices at the pump will skyrocket and the government will carry the (jerry) can. And to fully frost the fossil fuel cupcake, the big players in the industry will get to mess with the independents who have actually managed to inject a little competition into gas prices in the city by starving them for product to sell.

So to review, here’s the fuel industry’s game plan for us all: stick it to the government, stick it to the pesky little indie competitors, and of course, stick it to the consumers. And make a dump truck full of money. Sound about right?

Free market capitalism: ain’t it grand?

David Seniuk

Winnipeg

Want it? Pay for it

Re: Winds of change blowing through Portage and Main (March 21)

I find it surprising that the building owners on the four corners of Portage and Main cannot say what they think on their own. Instead, they need a third party (Building Owners and Managers Association) to intercede on their behalf, even though most of its members are not affected by the proposed closing of the pedestrian underpass.

I also find it surprising that, while these owners certainly have a right to an opinion on the issue, they seem unaware that their veto rights ended when the 40-year agreement they signed with the city expired some years ago. If the concourse is so important to the survival of their underground malls (the actual reason it was originally built), why didn’t they negotiate a 60- or 100-year agreement in the first place?

Since they now realize they still want the concourse, let them pay for it. They can front the $76 million or so to re-roof the concourse and they can take over the million a year it costs to run it. (We could reopen Happyland Pool with the money the city will save, and perhaps even salvage Bruce Head’s beautiful concrete relief sculpture as well!)

And on top of the $76 million, those building owners could add financial compensation to the city to cover the costs of citizen inconvenience for the five or so years it will take to dig up our intersection to perform their work.

And they can pay it all again in 40 more years when the roof gives up once more.

If those owners want/need it so badly, they can pay the costs. It isn’t the taxpayers’ responsibility to pay for access to their malls, nor to fund their profitability.

Bob Martin

Winnipeg

Prohibition’s failures

Re: We must deal with toxic drug supplies (Think Tank, March 21)

Prohibition does not work. It just creates a criminal underground economy, and often death.

Prohibition did not work for booze. Provincial liquor outlets do.

Prohibition did not work for marijuana. Legalization does.

Prohibition does not work for prostitution. Eliminate the pimps and human traffickers by legalizing it and let the workers have secure workplaces with health care and let them pay their taxes. It works in Costa Rica, and they’re Catholic, so why wouldn’t it work here?

Prohibition does not work for abortion. But it is a safe medical procedure when legalized.

Give us full pharmacare, including clean addiction drugs in supervised consumption sites. It works in Portugal. Prohibition here is killing people and supporting criminals as it has always done.

Why keep doing the same things that are proven throughout history not to work? Abstain from all of the above by all means, but for those involved keep them safe.

Andy Maxwell

Swan River