Julia-Simone Rutgers’ excellent July 11 article “Gone with the Wind!” raises the very pressing urgency of developing Manitoba’s future green energy requirements. This in spite of the strong oil and gas cartel’s promotion of “energy” as only oil and gas and pipelines. To explain this more clearly, a historical review of Manitoba’s green energy past is helpful.

I joined Manitoba Hydro’s planning department as a young electrical engineer in the early 1970s. Since the Second World War, the demand for electrical energy in Manitoba had been growing at seven per cent per annum, or doubling every 10 years. This was mostly met with hydroelectric generation, with exceptions in Brandon, Selkirk and downtown Winnipeg.

Back then, Manitoba Hydro estimated that all the hydroelectric generation in the province would be used up by the end of the 1990s.

So, planning at Manitoba Hydro began to develop nuclear power generators out near Lac Du Bonnet.

Given the abundant community input in the Free Press Letters to the Editor section and Think Tank articles regarding the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present exhibition, I have been disinclined to add my own. My thoughts and feelings have been well-represented in these submissions.

A visit with a recent refugee from Palestine prompted me to reconsider. We did not meet to talk about the Palestinian-Israeli war. We met because our two families have had the pleasure of each other’s company and want to continue developing this new friendship.

I knew that this man had attended a meeting with an interfaith group in Winnipeg working to promote peace and justice in the Middle East while building bridges of solidarity and friendship between Jews, Palestinians and their allies here in Winnipeg. So, I asked him about his experience at the meeting.

This is what he said:

A reality check for civic leaders

Re: What happened to public service? (Think Tank, July 17)

Erna Buffie’s recent commentary was a breath of fresh air and a much-needed reality check for our city’s leadership. I strongly support her assertion that true public service requires prioritizing people, communities and the environment over an outdated, debt-fuelled model of endless expansion. Cities of the future should be planning for sustainable projects that benefit everyone, rather than catering to developers at the expense of our existing neighbourhoods.

It is incredibly frustrating to see our leaders push for outrageous projects like the Chief Peguis and Kenaston expansions. Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on more roads will do little to reduce congestion — thanks to the well-documented reality of induced demand — while simultaneously piling onto Winnipeg’s generational debt.

The shuttering of Winnipeg’s Free Press Community Review means 200,000 households will no longer get the benefit of a free community newspaper delivered to their doors. It also means that more than 800 people who deliver the paper and their families will be affected.

This is an unforced error that never should have happened.

How did we get here? The answer is complex.

First, there is a high degree of concentration in the flyer printing market in Canada. Montreal-based TC Transcontinental enjoys the dominant position in the marketplace thanks, in part, to a 2012 Competition Bureau-approved asset swap.