Opinion
Disheartening proposals
Re: Poilievre would throw Charter to the winds (April 19)
Tom Brodbeck’s op-ed in your Easter Saturday edition correctly framed how Canada leads the world on matters of human and social order.
Our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a testament to our commitment to foundational human rights for all. In Canada, everyone has the right to feel safe and to be safe in their homes and communities (and this should be a universal value). Our crime and punishment laws and their enforcement are a prime responsibility of those entrusted with that prime directive, and yes, we need more action and support for stopping and sanctioning criminals.
We need to do better.
However, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s dangerous rhetoric on subverting our Charter rights, with his shallow-minded remedies, only feed into his negative narrative of a “broken” Canada.’ His proposals are disheartening and divergent messages from a desperate politician.
Roland Stankevicius
Winnipeg
Utility pain
This past month, my water bill jumped to $450. That’s nearly $100 more than usual. And it’s just the beginning.
Winnipeggers are being gouged — hit with a $224 sewer rate increase, a $160 garbage fee hike, and a $121 property tax bump, all in the same year. Over the next three years, these fees will compound to unbearable levels, with no protection for seniors, low-income households, single parents or working families.
What’s worse? Winnipeg is the only municipality in Manitoba whose utility rates aren’t subject to Public Utilities Board review. That means City Hall can jack up our bills without independent oversight — and without accountability.
Everyone knows utility revenues are being used to pad the City’s general coffers. These aren’t just fees anymore — they’re backdoor taxes.
It’s time to bring Winnipeg under the same rules as the rest of the province. I’ve written to the Minister of Finance and the Mayor. I urge others to do the same.
Enough is enough.
Rémi Gosselin
Winnipeg
Tradition of due process
Re: Judge vs. Trump: contempt eyed in deportation case (April 17)
The ongoing showdown between a U.S. judge and the Trump administration over the government’s belief that it can bypass courts and directly deport people to El Salvadoran prisons confuses executive and judicial roles in a functioning democracy.
While undoubtedly the president is so committed, it is the role of the courts to assess what proof the executive can put forth that a given individual is, in fact and under the law, a terrorist or a criminal illegal migrant.
Due process of law is enshrined in the U.S. constitution that the executive branch has sworn to uphold, and under the common law is as old as the Magna Carta of 1215, which acted to restrain the executive power of then King John of England, and thereafter the executive power of kings and governments up to the present that recognized the rule of law.
Keith Addison
Winnipeg
U.S.-style politics
I’ve tried to avoid listening to political advertising. However, I became quite concerned when I heard one where Carney was called “Carbon Tax Carney” and “Sneaky Carney.” I hear descriptions of how the Liberal government and now Carney, as Trudeau is gone, is always included as the force behind these “broken years.” Clearly, techniques take directly out of the U.S. right-wing playbook.
I was further taken aback when people I know begin to suggest that Carney was completely unqualified and had millions in tax havens. Information that was fully believed and not open to discussion. Very similar to many MAGA Americans who simply accept what right-wing social media declares.
We have recently had a rise in the right media, declaring the right to “freedom of speech” while the same groups decide to ban books in schools and try to have them removed from libraries. We have presentation of “facts” about the last 10 years that barely fit any of the data I have seen.
All this is similar to the tactics used by the organizers of the movement to the right in the United States. We claim that Canada is not the U.S. and that we have our own values.
This election should tell us how different and how similar we are to the Americans to the south.
Robert Spencler
Winnipeg
What’s ‘woke’
Who first coined the term “woke” as a disparaging adjective? I recently received correspondence from Team Poilievre advising me not to cast my vote for the party that supports “woke” media, and this was not meant in a complimentary way.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, to be “woke” is to be aware of social discrimination and social injustice issues. I would add that to be woke is to be informed politically. Why would anyone cast their vote for a party that advocates to its supporters that they not be informed by media that speaks to the facts about issues dominating our society?
Misinformation and lack of education are no doubt the reason that the United States are starting to look less and less like a democracy. I, for one, support “woke” media and sincerely hope that the political parties that I support do as well. We must be guided by facts and the truth, contrary to those politicians asleep at the wheel.
Suzanne Therrien-Richards
Winnipeg
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has repeatedly denounced what he calls “woke culture,” including recently pledging to rebuild the military into “a warrior culture, not a woke culture,” and has pledged to end “the imposition of woke ideology in the federal public service.”
I wonder what Mr. Poilievre would think of the current Canadian Museum for Human Rights exhibit on the LGBTTQ+ purge in the military and federal public service, in which, from the 1950s to the 1990s, thousands of Canadians were illegallly harassed or fired, resulting in a $145-million settlement in 2018. Is that how he would eradicate a “woke culture”?
Poilievre has further pledged to end this “imposition” in “the allocation of federal funds for university research.” Does anyone hear echoes of U.S. President Donald Trump’s attacks on academic freedom, defunding research and threats to universities for not conforming to his ideological agenda?
But just what is “woke culture”? Originally, the term referred to racial injustice, but now generally includes other societal injustices such as feminist and LGBTTQ+ concerns. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, through his counsel, says “woke” means “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” Does Mr. Poilievre believe that there are no systemic injustices in Canadian society and therefore no need to address them? And that Canada, like Florida, should be a place, per DeSantis, “where woke goes to die”?
I see a total lack of empathy in such ideology, and perhaps actress Jane Fonda summed it up best: “Make no mistake, empathy is not weak or woke. And by the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people.”
Ron Menec
Winnipeg
Slow roll at the polls
I voted in an early poll. Attended twice — the first line I tried was over an hour, so I left. Second time, half an hour. I cannot understand the reliance of paper, ruler and marker to determine eligibility of a person appearing to cast a ballot.
All of the documents used at registration are computer generated but verified manually. This is so backward. If my drivers licence can be scanned at the liquor store to identify me, why not at the polls? It would certainly speed things up and give a great deal more accuracy to the process.
The pre-registration desk would facilitate those with no licence before they get their ballot. This is not rocket science.
Bill Lopuck
Winnipeg
