Letters, May 23

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/05/2024 (860 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Conditions of support

Re: Graduate’s speech raises donor’s ire (May 22)

Clearly Ernest Rady is an extraordinarily successful businessman and exceedingly generous. He donated $30 million to the University of Manitoba in 2016.

If Rady expected to exert some control over students’ expression of free speech, he ought to have made that a condition of his endowment.

If he had done so, it’s likely the university would not have accepted the gift. Unlike Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Mr. Gem Newman is not in a position of power and to classify his convocation address as hate speech would mean Mr. Trudeau should be wearing an orange jumpsuit.

Robert K. Froese

Winnipeg

So much for optimism

Re: Hidden asset or cynical shell game? (May 18)

As the climate disaster unfolds, I have sometimes managed to be optimistic by telling myself two things. One, that the brightest minds in the world of science and engineering are working on this problem and may yet be able to save us. Two, that rapid advances in artificial intelligence may reach a point where AI can figure out what to do, even if our limited human intelligences cannot.

Saturday’s article on carbon capture has dashed both these hopes. The brightest minds have come up with a scheme: keep on producing greenhouse gases, while pumping some of the gas underground. A scheme that has already caused massive explosions and poisoned air. If that is the best they can do, we really are doomed. And AI, far from solving climate change, turns out to be one of its causes. The article mentions “the insatiable electricity appetite of artificial-intelligence developers” as a prime reason for society’s fossil-fuel addiction.

It is hard to face up to what now seems obvious: we cannot continue an unsustainable way of life while hoping that new technologies will make it sustainable. We need movements and leaders that advocate for a lower standard of living, so that we can continue living at all. I hope they will speak out loudly, and be heard before it is too late.

But I am not optimistic.

Justin Jaron Lewis

Winnipeg

Broader financial discussion needed

Re: City’s finances look better, but long-term outlook bleak (May 17)

I read with interest Tom Brodbeck’s article. The City of Winnipeg’s public service floated the idea of “growth revenue” taxes at least as early as 2013 when Sam Katz was mayor. Later, Brian Bowman made the case that, for many of the reasons Mr. Brodbeck provides in his article, Winnipeg needed either (a) a share of revenue growth from the province annually or (b) the means of collecting the same via municipal tax streams.

I agree with the premise of Mr. Brodbeck’s article, that the financial health and long-term stability of the City of Winnipeg is important and a matter of concern for all citizens of Winnipeg.

I am curious to know what other cities/municipalities have implemented a “growth revenue” pathway/tax for cities? Although I agree the financial viability of Winnipeg’s finances is a matter of great importance, I would be very reticent as a municipal voter to agree to any additional tax-stream for the city without a broader public conversation about things such as (a) the size of Winnipeg’s civil service relative to other jurisdictions of comparable size, (b) the relative performance of the city, perhaps via a third-party analysis, and, (c) what the city is doing to attract non-residential ratepayers in order to ease the burden on residents. (For context, according to a 2020 analysis by the City of Edmonton, Winnipeg’s share of non-residential tax revenue was lower than Edmonton, Halifax, Hamilton, London, Mississauga, Ottawa and Toronto — put another way, lower than every other jurisdiction evaluated save for Vancouver.)

I hope Mr. Brodbeck’s piece serves as the start of a broader conversation about the health of our cities, let’s keep in mind though, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Rob Pankhurst

Winnipeg

On elections and pensions

Re: Public service, or self-service? (Think Tank, May 21)

As a former provincial minister, Ms. Squires has had the privilege of being invited to attend many festive events important to Manitobans of South Asian heritage, including Diwali celebrations and she has certainly taken these opportunities to be visible and supportive.

Yet she now decries the decision by the federal Liberals to avoid holding an election on Diwali 2025, calling it a merely a play for pensions and dismissing the culturally sensitive argument as irrelevant.

Would she prefer an election on Christmas or Easter? If these holidays get to be protected, why should a holy day central to multiple faiths be trampled by a federal election? If she cannot see the public value and service of supporting and maintaining Canada’s multicultural identity, then her spurious concern about pensions is truly nothing but hypocritical self-service.

Sowmya Dakshinamurti

Winnipeg

The column suggests that those federal public servants (politicians), who serve (only) five years and 364 days (one day short of the six-year qualification for pension), do not deserve a pension. Because of one day! And that by moving the election date the federal Liberals are contributing to “cynicism” and “lowering voter skepticism and overall disdain of politicians.”

In the black-or-white lens of this legal pension situation and in the face of mounting skepticism and disdain, is there no room for compassion, humanity, fairness? How will we attract talented and intelligent people to the public service if we treat them so shabbily?

Ted Stoesz

Winnipeg

Bad deal for Canada

I am dismayed with the rationale proffered by the federal government for subsidies promised to Honda Global for locating its new electric vehicle battery plants in Ontario. The government proudly states that Canada beat out all other competition, including China, for the contracts, but that was simply because no other country was stupid enough to take the deal. It just does not make good economic sense. For anyone other than Honda, that is.

The $5-billion subsidy will create up to 1,000 jobs, an amount that will not affect the national employment rate whatsoever. Honda will naturally want the best, most experienced employees it can find, and that means it will likely be gleaned from other industries in which the workers are currently employed. These “new” jobs will actually be job-creation neutral, taking workers from companies that pay taxes to one that our taxes pay.

So, for taxpayers’ $5 billion, we will be paying the wages for 1,000 workers to be employed in low-end manufacturing jobs, or $5 million per job. Jobs such as assembly-line workers, shipping/receiving and warehousing, and custodial workers as Honda brings in its own management teams, engineers and technologists. That equates to paying each employee over $115,000 per year for every year of their working lives, from ages 22 to 65. That is if Honda doesn’t evaporate when the last of the subsidy is spent. We would save a ton of cash by paying these 1,000 workers $75,000 per year and telling them to stay home and enjoy their 40-year pre-retirement.

Now here’s Ottawa’s rationale: the benefits to be realized are in the spin-off jobs in new supply chains created. Granted, but Canada would benefit from new supply chains even if the plants were located in the U.S. Our right to bid is entrenched in free-trade agreements, as is their right to bid against us when the plants are built.

We don’t have to buy the restaurant in order to have a meal there.

Randy Clinch

Winnipeg