Letters, May 3

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This article was published 03/05/2025 (327 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Precarity in education

While generally supportive of plans to attract talent and bring in more scholars and researchers to Manitoba’s universities, it’s worth noting that we risk ignoring the resources and talents of those already working, on precarious contracts and as contingent workers, at our universities.

At the University of Winnipeg, where I am president of the faculty association, a huge number of courses are taught by per course instructors on precarious contracts, many of whom are seeking regular academic employment and whose scholarly and research expertise could be leveraged were they hired.

We certainly want investments in research and scholarship, but let’s not forget those precarious workers who are already at Manitoba’s universities, but who work without job security, research support, benefits, pensions, and with substandard wages.

Peter J. Miller

Winnipeg

The grey reality

Re: Poilievre could rebound from U.S.-style misstep (May 2); How sports affect us — for better or worse (Think Tank, May 2)

Kudos to Tom Brodbeck and Slavo Federkevic for their opinion pieces in the May 2 edition of the Free Press. These writers offer a well-balanced and nuanced treatment of their topics, and more importantly, their tone is a welcome contrast to the divisive rhetoric which seems all too common of late. Their words invite us to live in the tension of two seemingly irreconcilable views.

It’s a welcome change from the election talk in which we have immersed over the past weeks. It’s always easier to opt for one side of a polarizing question, rather than struggle with the complexity of “both and.” Yet I believe that such struggle is more likely to generate constructive action.

It seems to me that life is rarely of a black and white nature — often reality tends towards the grey.

Edwin Buettner

Winnipeg

Poilievre must resign

Re: Does Poilievre have the tools to stay on? (Editorial, May 1)

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is behaving true to character by not immediately resigning from his role as the Conservative party leader. He is acting from self-preservation and a sense of entitlement. He had a few brief moments behaving like a reasonable human being in controlled settings like the debates, but his long history of aggressive, angry and belligerent behaviour is what truly defines him. By either refusing or being unable to change during his 20-year career, or during the election campaign, why would anyone expect him to change now?

Both Poilievre and the Conservative Party are already looking for a duly elected MP representing a “safe” Conservative riding to step down so Poilievre can parachute in like a hero and win a byelection. It is a terrible betrayal to the citizens who voted for their MP, who worked diligently to earn their trust and support. Also, it shows a callous disregard for our democratic process by their willingness to do so.

Canadians across the country and the citizens of Carleton have rejected Poilievre’s angry and divisive politics. Poilievre must respect their decision, graciously accept his defeat, resign immediately as party leader, and move on to other endeavours. Equally, the Conservative Party must stop their desperate attempts to save Poilievre’s career and their perceived fortunes, and begin the process of seeking a new leader who displays humility, respect, and a willingness to co-operate with all members of Parliament.

Accomplishing this would show they put Canadians’ interests ahead of their own.

Kim Tyson

Winnipeg

Tower troubles

Re: Cell towers, urban planning and frustration (Think Tank, May 1)

Jerry Woloshyn’s experience with the City of Winnipeg planning department regarding the installation of a cell tower in Fairfield Park is being repeated in areas across Winnipeg, currently in the neighbourhood of Westwood.

By advancing a tower proposal in Westwood to the public consultation stage, the city’s planning department has endorsed the installation of a cell tower that contravenes the Winnipeg antenna systems policy in too many ways to possibly be a serious consideration.

But, frustratingly, preventing intrusive and inappropriate cell tower installations depends on whether the residents are adequately notified and are able to, within a short, imposed deadline, mount an opposition to both the proposal and the planning department’s violation of its own policies.

How many petitions, signatures, emails, and complaints are enough to convince a city department to comply with its own policies, when, as in Westwood, the city is the owner of the land at issue and leasing the land to tower and telecommunications companies creates a long-term source of revenue?

Alayna Gelley

Winnipeg

Remaking conservatism

There is an opportunity right now for conservatives who resonate with people like Andrew Coyne and Charles Adler. If you take your party back and kick the Reform Party back to Siberia in which it belongs, Canada can make history of the sort that has not been made in centuries.

We can be living in the moment in which the inflection point could be observed, where the inevitable pattern dictated by history of unstoppable plodding progress to mechanized war is in fact stopped, because the world said “absolutely not,” starting with us. There is a far gloomier future ahead, otherwise.

Conservatism was once about preserving order, maintaining the pace of change at rates that society can handle without mass disruption to anyone’s life or livelihood. It was a bulwark of responsibility, slowing down the young turks and vanguard parties before they blew up worlds and created devastation, however unintentionally.

It has not, of course, always lived up to that ideal, but it was without question one of the main ideals of classical conservatism, and we have definitely seen, over and over during the last 1.25 centuries, what happens when radicals are given control of a system predicated, however thinly, on consensus and co-operation.

And yes, I’m talking about the United States government as well as ours. Without a baseline of co-operation, you do not have a society, and while some of my leftist comrades might jeer me for saying this, whatever else he is, Trump is an outsider who is willing to act without any regard for any agreements or commitments made on behalf of the nation, and thus, he is both incredibly effective at destroying the U.S., and also terrifying enough to get us all running straight to the Liberal Party of Canada, under the inexperienced and untested guidance of a central banker.

That willingness to forsake all norms and traditions has also taken over our main “conservative” party. The CPC and its oligarch backers have been trying to break Canada for years. Look at what they did to the centrist party in BC, where the leader scuttled every single candidate, in hopes of forcing a victory of the radical “conservative” party. Likewise, up until Trudeau stepped down, they were planning to take our country and completely reshape it, with propaganda and the notwithstanding clause, on a wave of hate for a man and a desire to have the government stop putting money in their bank accounts.

In both cases, B.C. and Canada, we said no. And now we are angry.

So, my question to all people who call themselves conservative: What do you plan to do about the fascist takeover of your party, and their squawking about breaking our country up via the quisling controlling Alberta?

James Paskaruk

Arnes