Letters, Sept. 19

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/09/2025 (188 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Controlling the message

Re: Kimmel’s future hangs in balance after ABC suspends his late-night show over Charlie Kirk comments (Sept. 18)

And so it begins.

Jimmy Kimmel is removed from the air for stating a true fact about Charlie Kirk’s assassin which the FCC chairman and Trump appointee Brendan Carr, found completely unacceptable, but Carr did nothing to Fox reporter Brian Kilmeade, who suggested on-air that homeless people should be given lethal injections.

Carr missed a perfect chance to remove some of the stench created by Kimmel’s removal by sacrificing a low-ranking foot soldier like Kilmeade. Let’s not kid ourselves, U.S. President Donald Trump has studied at the knee of his pal Vladimir and knows full well that when you control the message, you control the masses.

Kimmel has been a thorn in Trump’s side for years and now he’s gone and Trump kept his fingerprints off the process by having his lackey do the dirty work.

Except Carr neglected to make it less obvious than it was.

It’s a slippery slope and sadly I believe we’ve started down it.

Ken McLean

Starbuck

Missed opportunity

Re: Medical licensing costs stymie doctor from Ukraine (Sept. 18)

It’s a story we have heard over the years. Trained doctors from other countries struggling with affordability to complete the testing and upgrading requirements to became certified to practice in Canada.

Especially when Manitoba is experiencing a serious shortage of physicians. In fact, Doctors Manitoba indicates our shortage is the second worst in Canada.

What does concern me is their statement that it will have to “streamline that process for well-qualified international doctors to help speed up the process and reduce the cost.”

I wholeheartedly agree we can defray the costs to enable internationally trained doctors to be assessed and upgrade their skill needs in order to meet Canadian standards of practicing medicine safely.

But having said that, in order to maintain our higher Canadian standards of knowledge and practice, I would expect and prefer we not reduce those standards just to speed up the acceptance of more internationally trained doctors.

Canada boasts higher standards of medical education, practice protocols and the need to uphold the values of the medical profession.

Ongoing education, competency, honesty, integrity and appropriate professional relationships on and off duty must be maintained.

These requirements are taught, monitored and reinforced throughout a doctor’s career by their governing bodies.

I would hope we do not have to reduce our “gold” Canadian standards in order to allow more physicians to practice in our health-care system.

Karen Zurba

Winnipeg

Growing discord

It is troubling, and at times surreal, to watch the country south of us spiral into polarization. Fuelled by the echo chambers of social media, pseudo-intellectual podcasting, and network news, the United States appears to be dismantling what was once a global beacon of democracy and free expression.

What alarms me most, however, is how readily Canadians have waded into the same murky waters. We now see an elected official, a provincial cabinet minister, no less, celebrate the violent death of a young American political figure with a flippant and completely unnecessary social media post. However offensive his views may have been, to treat his brutal demise as cause for satisfaction is reckless and deeply un-Canadian.

Yes, the minister apologized. But in another online exchange with a constituent, she refused to engage respectfully and instead responded with the most sophomoric, demeaning, mean-spirited, power-tripping, insult-laden invective I have ever heard from any professional, never mind an elected official. This behaviour demeans not only her office but our political culture.

As participants in a global economic network, and by virtue of our proximity to the elephant, Canadians have no choice but to endure the arbitrary and artificial hardships imposed by an increasingly hostile U.S. administration, motivated primarily by blind greed, from a nation we once readily called “friend.”

But here at home, we do have a choice. We can reject the false comfort of absolutes in our civil discourse. The four values of Canadian democracy are inclusive and accountable governance, peaceful pluralism, respect for diversity, and respect for human rights. It is time we all paid greater attention to the “peaceful” part of pluralism, and to the respect for diversity, including diversity of opinion.

And that responsibility starts with those who hold the biggest megaphones.

Howard Warren

Winnipeg

Slap in the face

Re: ‘One of the highest honours of my life’ (Sept. 18)

There is only one way to describe the “royal treatment” being given to Trump by King Charles and that is a complete slap in the face to Canada.

The way Trump has treated Canada and then to see how he is being received by the King is a disgrace.

If there was a plebiscite tomorrow about severing all ties with the monarchy, my question would be: where do I go and vote?

Brian Short

Stonewall

Austerity’s consequences

Re: Deficit blows up as NDP spends, fails to shrink health bureaucracy (Sept. 17)

Despite major increases in provincial health-care spending over the last 18 months, Manitoba is still far behind its historical benchmark. The latest numbers from the Canadian Institute for Health Information — the leading information source on Canadian health systems — show Manitoba’s provincial health-care spending, adjusted for inflation and population, is the second lowest in Canada.

Due to serving a large geographic region with a smaller population, Manitoba has historically spent above the Canadian average on a per-capita basis, but dipped below the national benchmark in 2020 for the first time since 1995.

The funding shortfall created by years of austerity is hard to understate. Although it may appear health funding has been restored, Manitoba remains behind its peers and hamstrung by the $1.6 billion dollars in tax cuts implemented since 2016, a fraction of which have been recouped over the last two years.

Niall Harney

Winnipeg

Help, but don’t enable

Re: “On euphemisms”; “Trouble in the village” (Letters, Sept. 17)

These letters essentially asked the question: Should we call homeless people bums and make life a little more difficult for them, possibly in order to motivate them to make changes in their lifestyle which would in turn make our lives better and safer? It is a fair question.

People often change with the push of discomfort and the pull of hope. Going back a few years in time there were “hobos” who travelled on the rails to find work, “tramps” who travelled but avoided work and “bums” who neither travelled nor worked.

Gavin De Becker in his seminal book on personal safety The Gift of Fear says that we do ourselves no favours when we glorify or glamourize criminal activity. Instead of referring to offenders as clever and dangerous, he recommends referring to them and their lifestyle in more derogatory terms.

By all means, let’s offer housing, counselling and addictions help, but let’s not enable their behaviour by feeling sorry for them, and giving them money and places to congregate where they can harass vulnerable kids and senior citizens.

Mac Horsburgh

Winnipeg