Letters, April 12

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/04/2025 (469 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Poilievre’s predicament

Re: Saboteur inside Conservative campaign identified as Pierre Poilievre (April 11)

On top of everything else, Tom Brodbeck said Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s crowd sizes at his rallies are now considered proof by his base that the polls are lying to Canadians. So it’s not even Poilievre’s Trump-like tactics that are turning off Canadian voters but his Trump-like supporters who think you can judge a national election by the size of a turnout at a campaign stop. Images and statements all too fresh in our minds for anyone to miss the comparisons playing out.

All this does is make it seem like nobody who actually wants Poilievre to win is doing anything to make that happen. From Alberta Premier Danielle Smith asking the U.S. president to ease off making Canadians patriotic enough to realize Poilievre is a Trump wannabe, to supporters holding up recycled slogans from the last American election, none of it helps pull undecided voters Poilievre’s way. All it does is deepen and entrench the support he has had all along. And that won’t even win him a minority government.

As for pivoting, I don’t think the Conservatives have the currency left, literally or figuratively, to change their messaging now.

At the end of the day Poilievre needs to come to terms with the very sad fact that those people behind their polling numbers from two years ago were never pro-Poilievre … they were anti-Trudeau. And Trudeau is gone. And with him went everything Poilievre mistook as a sign that voters liked him for who he was and what he had to say.

Brian Spencler

Winnipeg

DEI measures need support

Re: The problem with categorizing people (April 10)

Professor Dennis Hiebert offers a subtle and no doubt well-meaning op-ed on the backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) among American MAGA Republicans and in the Trump administration (such as it is).

I fear, however, that he concedes too much to the backlash. In fact, in an odd reversal, proponents of DEI are now being faulted with facilitating prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination.

Yes indeed, “every word is a category of thought,” and this would include the categories, “theory and practice.” At an intellectual and theoretical level the complexities of race, neurodiversity and gender fluidity are admirably described, but at the practical level of actual political and social policy, this may be less than useful.

I share Hiebert’s hope that the backlash we are witnessing might be the beginning of a necessary conversation, rather than as it seems, its end. But the DEI policies we currently have, and the good-faith efforts being made to implement a measure of social justice, need our support and ongoing engagement with the admitted complexities.

Sig Laser

Winnipeg

Election issues for the disabled

No one running for office has said anything about Disability Income Assistance. Canadians with disabilities, relying on Income Assistance, are generally in a life below the poverty line, often having to choose between buying groceries or having prescribed medicines and medical therapies.

Things are so bad that now the United Nations is calling on Canada to tighten the MAID program, as some people opt for a medical death over a life in poverty.

Canada as a nation has no excuse for keeping people with medical disabilities, unable to have employment through no choice of their own, in such bad conditions.

Judy Herscovitch

Winnipeg

Reasons not to travel

Re: Travel to the United States ‘goes south’ (Editorial, April 10)

Surely, Canadians were also prompted to reconsider their spending (and overall impression of America) due to the U.S. federal government’s treatment of (in no particular order): public education; people of colour; people who are not “straight”; Ukrainians; people legally in the U.S. under temporary protective status; people who like to read books; people who refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of Mexico”; the media; reproductive health; people who believe in science and facts; Panama; Greenland, and more. I sure hope so.

No question, U.S. President Donald Trump’s actions on trade and tariffs are causing distress to many around the world, including Canadians. However, this is just one of a long list of reasons to recalibrate this relationship.

I am not expecting a return to basic human decency nor fact-based policy making in the next four years, regardless of what happens on trade. I was surprised and saddened when a large majority of Americans either voted for this guy or didn’t vote for Kamala Harris, especially given the events of Jan. 6, 2021. I don’t know how anyone could be surprised by what we’ve seen over the past few months.

Michelle Burdz

Winnipeg

Our basic needs

Health-care wait times for problems that cannot wait till a doctor’s appointment have been such a long-standing feature of life in Manitoba that the subject hardly seems to warrant attention any longer. Especially in our current scenario of multiple crises it seems to have become even further off-topic.

Yet not only is it is very much still present, it is in fact all the more so as delays in diagnosis and treatments result in cascades of unfortunate health outcomes, increased health-care use and no rest for all the weary health-care workers. The usual causes and solutions are trotted out, without meaningful impact. Could it be that the problem needs a fresh point of view? What if the focus changed to instead center on improvements to society so that it’s possible for people to be healthy, and to stay that way?

Could we imagine a scenario where health care is only rarely needed on an urgent, same-day basis?

It’s not that far-fetched. There is solid evidence from science, Indigenous knowledge and lived experience for the benefits of a healthy environment. Regular access to nearby natural spaces, the ability to move about safely on active transport routes, breathing air that is free of excess pollutants from vehicle emissions and wildfires, protection from the threat of climate change-induced harms — all of these contribute to healthier people who need fewer health-care services.

Safe and welcoming spaces where all citizens can live, convene, and feel supported, located in places that are not loaded with toxins and waste from excess consumption such as microplastics and forever chemicals — these are the elements of a healthy population. This evidence and its implications for decision-makers are often bypassed in the analysis of problems with health care access and wait times, in part because they fall outside of traditional disease models and funding frameworks.

As much as a healthy environment has healthy citizens, the opposite is also true and is very much our present-day reality. This ongoing forced exposure to contaminants in land, air and water — along with ever-increasing limits on the ability to move our bodies in safe and natural outdoor spaces — contributes significantly to the cost of health care, which then pulls resources away from initiatives that could improve collective health. And so the negative downward spiral goes.

Everyone, and all levels of leadership, need to understand the ways we have gone astray from our basic health needs. And how the current built environment is an impediment to health, and thus a cause of health suffering and health care overburdening. We are, still and after everything, hunter-gatherers who have great capacity to self-propel and be stronger for it, to be reflective and calmed by natural surroundings, whose inner workings deserve to be free of the burden of invisible but no less real environmental harms. To hold these as our standards could do much to assist with the problems of health-care wait times and access.

Ann Loewen

Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment

MB Chapter

Winnipeg