A place for garbage

Re: Spruce-up spree sweeps through downtown (April 15)

Much is being said about the garbage and dirt that is visible on Winnipeg’s streets now that the snow is gone. I am glad to see that efforts are being made to clean up what has been revealed.

However, some of that garbage would not be on the streets had there been receptacles for it.

When you flunked a test in school, you could try to soften your parents’ reaction by pointing out that your classmates did worse.

Manitoba Finance Minister Adrien Sala can barely make that argument.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation just released its annual report cards for all provincial finance ministers. Sala is tied as the second-worst-performing finance minister in the country, based on his latest budget.

Sala received an overall grade of D- this year. That’s a slight improvement over the F he received last year, but still not good enough for taxpayers.

Canada’s parliamentary budget officer says the FIFA World Cup is estimated to cost Canadian taxpayers $1.066 billion to host 13 games over 38 days.

That’s $82 million a game, or $28 million a day.

The majority of the funds will go toward operating the games, staging the venues, and paying for security and services, like the RCMP.

About 12 per cent, or $126 million, will go to infrastructure primarily in two buildings: BMO Field in Toronto and BC Place in Vancouver.

The Winnipeg Police Service is beginning its long-awaited body-worn camera (BWC) pilot project. The pilot will include 40 front-line officers who will wear the devices for the next six months.

Winnipeg police will be gathering community feedback through public forums and a public perception survey in order “to ensure that the pilot is informed by meaningful input.”

The public perception survey asks respondents to indicate their level of agreement with a series of statements, on a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree — a frequent and familiar tool for surveys, known as a Likert scale. There is also an option to indicate no opinion. The survey of opinions about body cameras begins with five basic profile questions followed by 18 Likert scale statements and concludes with a short space for additional comments.

From a research standpoint, there are fundamental flaws with the survey that make it incapable of producing meaningful results that would inform a body camera pilot in Winnipeg.