Letters, June 3

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/06/2025 (296 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Setting priorities

The provincial government has made health and affordability priorities and is working hard in both areas. Now, Manitoba is facing a wildfire crisis that has shifted, or at least added, the priority to keep people as safe and taken care of as possible.

I believe our current government is approaching these priorities with sincerity and it is doing the best it can. But, like most governments I think it is functioning in the dark when it comes to the environment.

Today’s wildfires are the result of government inaction at all levels over the last 40 years. Today’s pollution will have ecological impacts in 20 to 30 years, so what we are witnessing is the result of unaddressed and unnecessary pollution during the first decade of this century and before.

If we make climate change a priority we might have a chance to slow down its certain devastating effects, but we cannot expect to see those stabilizing effects for 15 to 20 years.

Our provincial government needs to make the environment and climate change a number one priority for the long haul. There are many avenues they can pursue, but one of them would be to establish collaborative procedures to engage closely with the environmental and scientific communities that have been working for decades to make the solutions to climate change a priority.

As we can see now, addressing climate change is not a political or economic issue, it is a matter of our survival.

Steve Rauh

Winnipeg

Don’t hesitate to evacuate

My wife and I send our wishes and prayers to Manitoba residents from Kelowna, B.C. that you all can remain safe during your current firestorm.

We have been through a number of these here and what we have learned is to listen carefully to reliable news reports, police, and fire department. If they say get ready to evacuate, do it immediately. If they say get out, go immediately.

Kenneth and Diana Warren

Kelowna, B.C.

Good advice

Re: Stopping drug sales: aim for the top (Think Tank, June 2)

I’m a reasonably knowledgeable person and I have opinions about how to handle society’s problems with illicit drugs, but they measure “diddly squat” relative to those of Sel Burrows, who has spent a lifetime of involvement with underprivileged people.

He makes so much sense that I hope our politicians and police follow his suggestions.

Greg Giesbrecht

Winnipeg

History’s lessons, lost

Re: Preparing for takeoff (May 31)

It’s amazing that some people still think that throwing still more millions of dollars of (mostly) taxpayers’ money will somehow make Portage Place successful. It will not! The elephant will only get whiter.

Most people who already avoid the downtown will not be going to Portage Place no matter how pretty they try to make it. Especially when community ambassadors “walk around the hallways in yellow vests with naloxone strapped to their waist, in case someone in the mall overdoses,” and that, “In their first six weeks, they’ve intervened in multiple overdoses.”

Oh yeah, this will really make people want to go there. Why not throw in a “safe consumption site” while they’re at it? Unbelievable!

Forty years from now, the powers-that-be will be conducting studies trying to figure out what went wrong and proposing “new” ways to make a once-again dilapidated Portage Place “successful.”

Apparently we don’t learn from history.

Gilles Roch

Winnipeg

Living in the Exchange since 1990, I regret the loss of Holt-Renfrew, McNally Robinson, and other amenities in Portage Place (PP). And while PP struggled, its parking revenue and taxes subsidized the Forks. Neglected, Portage Place becomes a glorified service centre rather than a retail hub.

Repeated promises over the years to revitalize downtown have led only to disappointment, as continued erosion followed poor decisions. Now, more of the same.

One often failed “solution” has been to attract transient visitors, a mentality that persists and puts the cart before the horse. Pedestrian areas, attractions, and special events miss the point that a stable population comes first, residential and office workers, the rest follows.

Such flawed ideas have already failed. Census data show a weak 3.9 per cent increase between 2016 and 2021 in people living downtown, versus dramatic growth in many other cities, such as Hamilton, Ont. (26.1 per cent) and Kingston, Ont. (16.1 per cent).

The 2021 census also reveals that 36.4 per cent of Exchange residents walk to work versus 4.7 per cent in Winnipeg, an important perk of living here. But it will soon be undermined as closing the underground at Portage and Main makes it harder to navigate downtown on foot.

Few people lived in the Exchange prior to 1990. Those of us who came to live, invest, and pay taxes did so with the idealistic thought that Winnipeg would honour our commitment and promote similar development to support retail and enrich downtown.

Instead, we got flawed ideas and decay that will not be stopped by more of the same. Indeed, the perception of danger and decline will only increase if downtown proper bears more of the problems that historically have afflicted its periphery.

Jim Clark

Winnipeg

Bridges done for

Re: Corrosion closes Louise Bridge until July but not ‘an Arlington scenario’ (May 30)

Who are we trying to kid here? The Louise Bridge is 114 years old and the Redwood Bridge is 110 years old. The city will undoubtedly have an assessment or two done on these bridges at about a million dollars per assessment.

Yet, any first-year engineering student could tell them that these bridges are just too old and need to closed for public safety. So save the $3 million to $4 million dollars on the assessments and start planning new bridges. Even a bridge cannot beat Father Time!

Alfred Sansregret

Winnipeg

Enough dysfunctional politics

Re: NDP, Tories spar over free-trade bill (May 30)

Enough already! Enough of the dysfunctional hyper-partisan and win-at-all-costs politics regardless of the impact on the welfare of Manitobans and, indeed, of all Canadians.

We all know the free-trade bill (or some version of it) being held hostage in the legislature to the bickering and jockeying between the governing NDP and the opposition Progressive Conservatives is vitally important in order to deal with the tariff rampage that U.S. President Donald Trump is on.

So to both parties I say, show some political maturity, work together, and find a way to pass it in the timeliest way possible. In other words, put Manitoba and Canada ahead of your perceived political interests and partisanship and find an honourable compromise and hence a way forward.

What better example of the need to put behind us the dysfunctional politics which seem to rule the day in Manitoba and elsewhere in Canada and, in fact, around the world.

Surely, doing what is in the public interest is far better and internally rewarding than winning politically.

Gerald Farthing

Winnipeg