RE: Make School Day Work Smarter, Not Longer — December 17, 2012

99.5% of the time I agree with the Frontier's views but on this one I have to provide a different  viewpoint. The existing school system at the elementary level is modeled on the same system that existed in the 60's, 50's, 40's, etc. Children are present in school from 9:00am to 3:30pm. Let's take the average family of the 21st century whereby both Mom and Dad are both present in the workforce (unlike the 60's, 50's, etc. where Mom's were "stay at home"). The standard workday is 8:00 to 4:00 or 9:00 to 5:00. Either parent is now forced to either rearrange their work schedule in order to pick up their child(ren) or find suitable after school daycare (for children under the age of 12).

Now take this situation one step further and apply it to a single parent family that is living at or below a middle income level. The parent gets two weeks vacation per year. The average number of Professional Development days teachers receive are a minimum of 1 per month not including early dismissals. The single parent must arrange and pay for an after school sitter or daycare when their child is released from school at 3:30pm. The cost of this to the parent is significant in terms of percentage of their annualized income. Factor in that the parent must arrange for a sitter 10 days a year not including the two weeks at Xmas and the summer and one can see the system is fine if we were living in 1952 but doesn not work for 2012.

I would argue that the average school day should not only coincide with the average work day but should be 8:30 to 5:30 to allow parents to fullfill their career/job obligations and help contribute to our economy by allowing for more work time and more disposable income directed to things the family needs vs going to after school daycare.

Email - Winnipeg, Mb

RE: Quebec Shouldn’t be Given its Gun Registry Data — September 21, 2012

This column was an eye-opener. Not so much for Navarro-Genie's gun registry argument, but for the examples he gave of the intrusion of the Quebec government in people's lives.

I was aware of the requirement of women to maintain their maiden names upon marriage, but had forgotten, or was un-aware that, among other restrictions, all housing leases must expire at the same time, and that state permission must be sought in naming a child, or to send one to a non-French school. Top it off with the edict that all outdoor commercial signs must be exclusively in French and you have, I believe, the most totalitarian, intrusive regime in Canada.

As with all of their entrenched information-gathering systems already in place, the gun registry in-formation is merely another nail in the coffin for individual freedom in that sad imitation of a democracy.

Eric Hindson, Calgary

RE: Quebec Shouldn’t be Given its Gun Registry Data — September 21, 2012

Question:   Why do you care if Quebec keeps registering long guns, you are in Calgary, does it really affect you?  The majority of Canadian's wanted to keep the registry.

Honestly, I'd be perfectly content if Alberta was the one to leave the country.  You can take Stephen Hitler with you, and continue to ruin your local environment with all the tar sands production and those ugly tailing ponds.  Email from William Groombridge

RE: Unravelling Child Poverty — December 4, 2003
Kudos for taking on the poverty industry on this issue. Keep up the good work. - Email from Winnipeg

RE: Artificially Cheap Hydro Power — June 7, 2012

In a well-meaning gesture towards national unity and equality, the good people and generous industries of Ontario have allowed themselves to be robbed blind by this Equalization Program, since its inception. Money which should have been invested in Ontario was instead sent to Ottawa where it was handed over to other provinces, so the people there would not have to work hard to create the same standard of living as Ontario, nor live within their means, nor move to find opportunity. In return, the rest of the country whines, complains, and sends hatred and ill-will to Ontario, especially its capital, Toronto, which is where most of the wealth in the country has traditionally been generated, then taxed away and sent to these ingrates. It has been a grand vote-buying scheme which has gone wrong. Now that Ontario can no longer afford to sacrifice itself in order to buy off the rest of the country, it is the target of ridicule and even more hatred, not sympathy. Yet due to the institutionalized insanity of the program, it continues to pay into it even though now considered a 'have-not', it receives a token amount back. Time for the program to end. Comment from zerozero

RE: Let's Have Real Elections at the Assembly of First Nations — May 25, 2009
I read your article in the National Post entitled "This isn't democracy". Very interesting indeed. I have been talking for years about how the Assembly is governed and you are right it is totally undemocratic.It must change and for the life of me I don't know how to approach the situation. I have stated my views to many people near my home who are aboriginal, I have tried to organize off reserve natives to try and come together and form some sort of group that address some of the issues facing first nations. The problem I see is that the best interests of the "little guy" are not being served. Fontaine and company are so preoccupied with their own nest that things will never change. I find it extremely hard to get involved at any level because the the status quo is much more attractive to the chiefs than the alternative. I personally am a status Indian. I am from Killarney Ontario. You being from Sudbury probably know where that is and the close proximity to Wikewemikong. I live in Richmond B.C. now and have for some twenty years. However I still vote by mail for Chief and council and still try to keep abreast of the happenings back in Ontario. It's time aboriginals adopted a one person one vote for the assembly of first nations. Only then will it be truly representative of all. Your statement "The AFN speaks for the institutional interests of chiefs--not for ordinary band members" jumped right off the page at me and I thought, finally somebody had the guts to say that in print. Good Article. -- E-mail from Dean Beauvais, Richmond B.C.

RE: Drug Dealers and Global Warming - Parallel Parables? — September 30, 2007
Continue with your campaign of attacking anyone and everyone who is concerned or wants action on global warming. Continue with your campaign of attacking science and scientists who want nothing more than their governments to STOP spending money to study the issue and start funding measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Continue with these things, if you have no attachment to truth and honesty and God. - E-mail from Sean Morrisy, Winnipeg

RE: Diversity in Healthcare — January 30, 2011

What health-care system? We do not even have a sickness-care system, as such a device would be patient centred. Instead we have a medical system which is a hierarchy that emphasizes research, bureaucracy, real estate, pay and benefits for insiders. Promotion of health and prevention of illness seem to be half hearted gestures to hold costs from rising too rapidly.

Every public discussion follows the same pattern: power groups manage the language, ideas, and evidence to suit themselves. They want to debate poverty, pollution, crime, sickness, education then pay themselves more for what is essentially failure by design. The insiders have usurped our institutions!

What is the big idea? "Process is all"?  - Comment Winnipeg Free Press

RE: Manitoba Debt Free? — July 20, 2004
Very true. - E-mail from Winnipeg

Private Water Management Helps The Poor
The vast majority of the management of the world’s waterworks are in government hands, where political decisions are made to ignore necessary infrastructure upgrades. The result is that health, and especially the health of the poor, suffers. Government ownership is most often the problem, not the solution, on water quality issues.

Healthcare Problems We Share
If Canadian hospitals and doctors faced market pressure, and if Canadian patients had viable alternatives, the overall cost of health care might decrease sharply while clinical outcomes improve.

First Nations Need Independent NGOs
Native people will need to fill the vacuum that will be created when the Indian Act comes tumbling down.. If anything, it will take more autonomy than what the government wants to give, and it’s more than what our leaders are capable of. Lately the cry has been “down with the Indian Act,” but it will take more than a political voice to replace it. It will take a great effort, and it will have to start with grassroots community efforts. All great movements start this way.

Inconvenient Indoctrination
In his ruling, Judge Burton identified nine scientific errors in the movie that were serious enough to warrant correction. Among other things, Judge Burton found that some claims in the movie, such as the contention that sea levels could increase by as much as 20 feet in the near future, were exaggerated by several orders of magnitude, while other claims, namely that disasters such as Hurricane Katrina are occurring because of human-caused global warming, are simply not supported by the evidence.

The Biggest Carbon Bomb is Disinformation
Disinformation and public myth-making has left people believing that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant,” yet, nothing could be further from the truth. Or that CO2 exists in overwhelming volume in the air. CO2 is a trace gas in the air – an essential one for all of life at that.

New Grand Chief Should Lead Reform
It’s essential to know how the candidates or the eventual winner would react to changes to the Indian Act, not bravado. Last year, AFN National Chief Shawn Atleo said he wants to replace the Indian Act and recently, he said he wants the Aboriginal Affairs bureaucracy dismantled. If serious movement on this comes, how would the grand chief for Manitoba lead? Would he lead boldly and make hard decisions or retreat to the status quo?

An Open Letter To Robert Kennedy, Jr.
This area had been logged out in the 1940’s but had rebounded to its present mature state, just like the boreal forest has done since time immemorial. And that was before the days of modern forestry and environmental practices. Manitoba’s logging industry mimics the fires that have always been a part of the boreal forest ecosystem.

Christmas Comes Early for Winnipeg Taxi License Owners
Plotting a line-of-best-fit across the resale values of full shares in Winnipeg Taxi licenses shows that the value of a license has increased by a trend average of $43.89 per day for the past 10 ½ years.

London Transport's Nick Newton
Well certainly the overheads in terms of operating garages fell. Again, traditionally the public sector provider had very large, very expensive architecturally-designed garages. What the private sector operator realized was that this wasn't necessary to run the service. The vehicles should have been out on the road providing service most of the day - you didn't need to keep them in comfort. They actually utilized existing supermarket car parks and that sort of thing and only had covered accommodation to maintain the vehicles -- some of which are contracted out anyway.