Letters, May 14

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/05/2025 (340 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Trump and Canada

It’s generally considered that U.S. President Donald Trump is for the most part, unpredictable. While he has managed to combine chaos, confusion, fear and corruption into a volatile concoction, he remains true to one thing, that being himself. The man may well occupy the Oval Office but in truth he resembles the CEO whose specialty is insider trading and be damned the shareholders who placed him there in the first place. They are expendable, the cost of doing business.

To understand Trump’s motivations, toss aside rational thought as it relates to what one might expect of the supposed leader of the free world. Begin to view his actions through the myopic lens of what’s ultimately good for him, what makes him wealthier and serves to pacify the enormous insecurity complex the man has carried most of his life.

Understand the need for retribution, reprisal and harassment unleashed upon those who dared to hold him accountable for the litany of abuses he’s been accused and convicted of. It’s not just narcissism at play here, it’s sheer psychopathy. Meanwhile, the Trump family grows exponentially wealthier.

There is but one way to deal with such a character: stand up to them, surrender nothing and provide them enough rope to hang themselves. Now if Alberta Premier Danielle Smith can get out of the way, I am more than confident Prime Minister Mark Carney is up to the challenge.

Dan Donahue

Winnipeg

Not a grand sight

Our Mother’s Day walk along Grand Beach was marred by the shocking amount of trash washed along the west beach (I am guessing also along the east beach). Winter-killed fish and driftwood are common in the spring, but it was the amount of debris from ice fishing activity that was new and shocking.

There were hundreds of minnow containers and plastic drink bottles, not to mention plastic wrapping and containers for fishing tackle. It was obvious that all this debris was from nearby winter ice-fishing activity. It is shameful that people who consider themselves outdoor people and enjoying the bounty of Lake Winnipeg, do not make the effort to pack out their garbage, especially when they have a vehicle close by.

When containers are chucked down an ice fishing hole, it does not disappear forever. If that is the amount of debris along two kilometres of beach, I can’t imagine how much plastic is along the bottom of the lake in that area. Perhaps fishers should think that with next year’s pickerel, they will be ingesting microplastics from what they tossed down the holes the year (and other years) before.

Also consider this — if Manitoba’s premier beach is ruined by winter fishing activity, maybe the Manitoba government will be enacting a no-fishing zone for X kilometres out from the beach to protect it from the lazy and selfish sportsmen and sportswomen. This would certainly make life more awkward for those fishers who enjoy spending time at their cabin in Grand Beach and Grand Marais.

Lake Winnipeg is very low at this time and swimmers will have a difficult time getting past the debris field and into the water. One can only hope that the Green Team or park staff can pick up some of the trash this week before the long weekend.

Maureen and Bruce Williams

Lac du Bonnet

Smith’s demands selfish

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s pandering to the far right in her party with promises of low threshold referendums for citizens to express their wishes for separation is appalling. Further, she then fuels the idea of separation with disinformation, falsehoods and tales of how badly treated Albertans have been within the federation. How convenient it was for her to forget that Canada bought her province the Trans Mountain pipeline for $4.7 billion plus the estimated cost of $34 billion to build it.

Furthermore, what competent government uses referendums for decision-making? Whatever happened to the democratic process of electing the best candidates to make informed and knowledgeable decisions in the best interest of citizens? It’s difficult to imagine referendums as a method of good government and sound decision making.

Smith’s selfish demands and political posturing greatly weaken Canada’s strategy to present a unified country that’s “not for sale,” when dealing with the very real threat from our unhinged neighbour to the south.

Kudos to Ontario Premier Doug Ford for calling her out. Perhaps Smith should pack her bags and quietly move to Montana with her flock of malcontents.

Penny Kelly

Winnipeg

One could write a book on the contradictions and ironies of the arguments Alberta is using to promote its “rights” and make demands on our nation as a whole.

They claim that the federal government is overstepping by forcing itself into their provincial jurisdiction, but in the very same breath they say won’t be satisfied until the federal government “guarantees” pipelines to tidewater will be built. How can Ottawa guarantee that without overstepping into the jurisdictions of every other province?

Quebec blocked an earlier attempt to build a pipeline across their jurisdiction to the Atlantic provinces; does Alberta think Quebec will stand back now and let the federal government force that line to be built just to make Alberta happy? How does calling for the federal government to step back in Alberta justify them calling for the same feds to overstep everywhere else?

And if Alberta did separate, how would that improve their chances of getting more pipelines built to tidewater in the first place; what would be the incentive for more pipelines across Canada to carry what would now be foreign oil? Canadian taxpayers just built a pipeline across B.C. for the very purpose of getting Alberta crude to tidewater, but we could just turn that off, or charge exorbitant prices to use the line if it is now carrying foreign oil instead of Canadian oil.

How would that help Alberta?

Back in the 1860s the Canadian colonies watched the U.S. tear itself apart in their horribly bloody Civil War, largely caused by the division of power between their state and federal governments as defined in their constitution, which ironically was prefaced with the phrase “in order to create a more perfect union.” The Canadian delegates to our Confederation conferences were all too well aware of the problems created by the U.S.’s state’s rights versus federal powers, and were careful in crafting our articles of Confederation and in defining our separation of powers to specifically avoid the calamity that had just befallen our neighbours.

Now Alberta is angry, basically, that they don’t have the powers of a U.S. state, and that our federal government has the powers that it has at all, and yet that is exactly the intent of out own constitution. It was and is intended to preserve our country as a singular sovereign united nation.

Perhaps our public schools have been remiss in teaching all the issues around how our confederation was created. (I only learned of the U.S. Civil War’s influence a couple or few decades after I finished school, and I don’t recall my kids ever being taught that either.)

Does Alberta really want to lead us down a path than could lead to a civil war like our cousins to the south suffered? And do they understand the irony, indeed the impossibilities of the contradictions, in what they are demanding?

Bob Martin

Winnipeg