Letters, July 12

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/07/2022 (1423 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hold the phone

Re: Frustrated Manitobans wait, worry as outage puts commerce on hold (July 8)

So someone flipped over the Monopoly board and all the pieces went flying. And then we waited as Rogers tried to find them all and put the board back the way it was.

Competition spurs innovation. Without someone breathing down your neck or nipping at your heels, you have no incentive to move forward. Such is the case with telecommunications in Canada. Why invest in new infrastructure or technologies to prevent an outage such as this, when your customers have no other choice but to suck it up and pay their bill?

As long as Rogers and Bell keep in lockstep with one another, they will never have to move that fast, let alone move forward. I miss when MTS was a Crown corporation and services and costs were election issues. SaskTel is still owned by the Saskatchewan government, and its services, especially to rural communities, far exceed what we are getting for what we are paying.

Brian Spencler

Winnipeg

Re: Far-reaching implications of Rogers outage shows need for competition: Expert (July 9)

If the nearly all-day Rogers outage proved anything beyond Rogers being the absolute worst company ever, it’s that the deal to acquire Shaw Communications absolutely cannot happen. Consolidation of the telecom companies will only lead one place: one ultra-terrible experience for everyone, so we need to stave that off any way we can. Keeping Rogers and Shaw separate would help achieve that.

One wonders what it would be like to have a national Crown carrier, so what if the government bought Shaw? Well, that’s a good idea in theory, but the federal government was for a very long time going to let Huawei install key infrastructure onto our network that would have potentially allowed the People’s Republic of China to snoop and possibly shut down our networks at any time. Thankfully, they’ve excluded them now, but we came very close.

So what do we do here? The big three telecoms are all awful, dehumanizing institutions that have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders at the expense of people like you and me, so let’s demand more regulation, let’s allow foreign competition, and let’s continue to demand lower prices. What are we paying for, if we can’t use not only the service we pay for, but are shut out of our banking, too?!

Will Jones

Winnipeg

Column misses mark

Re: A key question in the abortion debate (July 9)

Carl DeGurse’s quaint personal musings on abortion reveal how out of his depth he is in this discussion.

The issue is not “when life begins,” but bodily autonomy and reproductive choice as a woman’s human right.

If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. But since men cannot get pregnant, their function as sperm donor only offers them the choice of whether and where to deposit their sperm — never the choice of how to respond to the existential consequences of it.

Zygotes are clearly alive, but the issue of personhood and the rights of the person is more complicated than merely affirming biological life. I recommend DeGurse read some contemporary philosophical discussions on abortion, which assume a developmental view of human organisms rather than the notion of the inviolable potential of a fetus.

I recommend a recent analysis by Lynn Morgan, “The Potentiality Principle from Aristotle to Abortion,” published in Current Anthropology.

Karen Zoppa, PhD

Humanities instructor, University of Winnipeg Collegiate

Traffic funding already found

Re: In this case, speed could save lives (July 6)

Thank you to the Winnipeg Free Press for the editorial supporting my position to “immediately address the $7.5 million in warranted engineering enhancements” to “produce instant improvements in traffic safety.” I recently identified millions of dollars in this program account that have not been spent, some of it since 2018.

With that in mind, I would like to address the following statement: “Discretionary dollars, of the sort Mr. Allard suggests could be directed to immediate traffic-safety improvements, will be very hard to find.”

In fact, according to city financial documents, there are millions already budgeted to the Traffic Engineering Improvement Program (TEIP), which is a program that enhances traffic safety. These funds are unspent, and so far there is no detailed explanation why these funds have not been used when there are millions in unfunded safety projects that could begin at any time.

The unspent funding includes:

1. $225,000 in 2018

2. $2,255,270 in 2019

3. $1,191,745 in 2020

4. $1,702,602 in 2021

The May monthly open capital report identifies $3,119,347 in budgeted TEIP funds not yet expended, in addition to $2.5 million in 2019 federal gas tax money earmarked for the Road Safety Strategy, of which only a small portion has been used, leaving an over $5-million balance.

So, concerning the subsequent line in the editorial: “While it might not be possible to affect the immediate transfer of civic funds to the engineering enhancements he describes” — we don’t even need to! Most of the money needed is sitting unspent in the program account. It ought to be spent. When I asked the public service for a list of what these funds were going to be used for, that information was not provided.

The TEIP is for safety projects including traffic calming, lights, crosswalks, road safety engineering. According to the most recent public documents, it has millions already sitting in the program account. There is $7.5 million in “warranted” unfunded safety projects. We could build much of it with existing account funds.

Coun. Matt Allard

Chair, City of Winnipeg public works committee

More than mere anger

Re: Anger can be justified (Letters, July 11)

One has to wonder how it is that anyone can think people are angry because “governments at all levels mismanaged COVID-19.”

Many were concerned, and still are, that not enough was being done, but the only ones who expressed anger, some seething, were those who opposed any attempts to manage the crisis at all. Has anyone forgotten illegal occupations, blockades, upside-down flags, swastikas, harassment of those complying, and large secret gatherings?

As far as conservatives being hatemongers for “simply expressing their views in public,” one also has to ask why those views often sound like, if not hatred, a thinly disguised facsimile. Demonizing mainstream media would be a good example.

Gordon Kidder

Winnipeg

Turn the page

Re: Cornstarch will remove that musty book odour (July 9)

These days, it’s difficult finding something to bring about a chuckle — but I broke out in laughter reading Saturday’s Homes section.

A reader writes in asking how she can remove the musty smell of books in her house. She is advised to sprinkle cornstarch between the pages, leave for an hour then then shake out. Probably good advice it you have a few books — but if only have a few, it’s unlikely you’ll have a musty spell.

As I and many others have hundreds of books in various rooms of our domiciles, you can appreciate my seeing humour in this household tip.

Ron Buffie

Winnipeg