Letters, Oct. 19

Alberta can thrive within Canada

Alberta’s independence debate deserves a sober examination of the risks of national division.

Ukraine offers an important cautionary example of how separatist movements can be exploited by foreign powers to advance their own strategic interests. Russia’s intervention in eastern Ukraine in 2014 transformed separatist unrest into a prolonged armed conflict, causing civilian deaths, economic disruption and instability.

Alberta’s circumstances are very different, but the broader lesson is that separatism can create vulnerabilities to foreign interference.

Alberta remains economically strong within Confederation. Statistics Canada reported that average weekly earnings in Alberta exceeded the national average in late 2025. The province also has no provincial sales tax and introduced a lower personal income-tax rate in 2025. Meanwhile, Alberta’s oil production continued to grow in both 2024 and 2025, demonstrating the strength of its energy sector within Canada.

Frustration with Ottawa is understandable. Federal environmental policies under former Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault raised concerns among Albertans who believed they constrained resource development and deepened Western alienation. However, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s elimination of the federal consumer carbon price in April 2025 demonstrated that federal policies can change through democratic pressure.

Rather than pursuing separation, Albertans can demand policies that better reflect provincial priorities through stronger federal-provincial negotiations and effective political representation.

A prosperous Alberta and a united Canada need not be competing ambitions. Alberta can strengthen its economic future while remaining an influential part of a united country.

Denys Volkov

Winnipeg

City money matters

Re: Can’t cut your way to being a better city (Think Tank, Oct. 9)

I agree entirely with this assessment of the services provided in this city. Winnipeg works off slim budgets and it is readily apparent that it tends to do things on the cheap, but maybe it is forced to.

On the infrastructure front, multiple street-repair projects are worked on concurrently and seem to be interminable — because of multi-project bidding protocols used to save money. And there never seems to be enough funding to repair potholes each year in any reasonable timeframe — or ever — in some older areas of the city, where driving on streets and back lanes can be like travelling through a war zone.

Services of all kinds are curtailed for the same reason. Money has always been tight and with the city’s population burgeoning immensely over the past decade, Winnipeg has faced mounting pressure to meet services requirements of all kinds. Emerging social problems (e.g., drugs, homelessness, violence) have added to the problem, making it increasingly difficult for the city to make ends meet.

It’s almost laughable that we have mayoral and councillor candidates promising a variety of service solutions when, as pointed out in Ms. McCracken’s article, Winnipeg’s low mill-rate increases put it far behind other major centres in funding per capita.

A fact that escapes notice in this whole discussion is that from 1998 to 2011 (14 years) successive mayors offered zero mill-rate increases (to) taxpayers. The voting masses enthusiastically embraced this short-sighted, self-serving tactic, leaving future administrations with a depressed tax base to work with. If latter administrations ever tried to regain reasonable ground with ensuing rate increases, they would have been run out of town on a rail.

So here we are. Many people in this city continue to clamour for tax restraint and scream loudly at the notion of an impactful mill-rate increase. It would not surprise me that the same people jump forward and decry the service the city is providing for needs that they hold important.

And the beat goes on…

Jack Goodman

Winnipeg

One step at a time

Re: Capital punishment as macabre theatre (Editorial, Oct. 16)

Kudos to the Free Press for its incisive treatment of the issues raised by the recently publicized botched execution in the U.S.A.

The response of “Wow” to the quote by the U.S. secretary of defence about his appreciation of the “kind of mentality we had (then)” is spot on.

It suggests that humanity’s understanding and practice of justice is moving away from “an eye for an eye” towards recognition that the ultimate outcome of that view is widespread blindness. Indeed, half of the world’s population lives in the 72 per cent of countries that have eliminated capital punishment.

The high number of botched executions does give one pause. However, those data do not deal with fundamental ethical and moral issues related to killing our fellow human beings. It’s a dynamic similar to the recognition that it’s “just not right” to put a man in jail for stealing a loaf of bread. (Read Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.)

I have come to believe that humanity is evolving from what might be called tribal and egocentric notions of justice towards a stronger intuition that we all tend to project our own shadow selves onto others.

In other words, we are being challenged to become more compassionate and — yes — more forgiving. Such progress is often of the “three steps forward and two back” kind, yet that one step remains and the general forward movement continues.

Let she/he who is innocent cast the first stone.

Edwin Buettner

Winnipeg

Drone management

Re: Reversing Manitoba’s moose decline (Think Tank, Oct. 16)

Manitoba should consider using drones to get a more accurate picture of the moose populations in the province. I’m sure using helicopters is expensive and limited in scope, (while) doing it on foot will give even less of an accurate count.

Ukraine has drones that fly hundreds of miles, can be relaunched quickly and can be guided by satellite to run search grid patterns and can be equipped with excellent cameras with thermal vision to see through the vegetation. They can even use AI to sort through what type of animals the drone sees (and) the video can be recorded so that humans can make the final decisions.

With all the hostility and fears about declining populations, getting a more accurate count would go a long way to determining the proper course of action needed.

Jason Sudyn

Winnipeg

Time for a rebuild?

Re: “Where’s the vision?” (Letters, Oct. 14)

Richard Dyrkacz asks the question on every Winnipegger’s mind: “Who is Winnipeg’s great visionary leader?”

Imagine the mayor the quarterback of the City of Winnipeg team. As in football, a good quarterback without a good team is destined for failure.

Why aren’t there any visionary candidates in the mayoral race? Because anyone who knows Winnipeg civic politics knows that they would be saddled with a losing team.

Incompetent management (think transit planning), poor execution (think season-long potholes and littered streets), an effective firewall from the public (think 311) and a multi-layered bureaucracy make the City of Winnipeg the municipal version of the current Ottawa Redblacks (no wins and a whole lot of losses).

Winnipeg could elect a top-notch visionary leader (none currently available) and the City of Winnipeg would still be a dismal team.

Unfortunately, visionary leaders are in short supply and mediocre players are aplenty.

Wally Barton

Winnipeg