Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - August 7, 2024, Winnipeg, Manitoba Lack of support Re: NDP not getting to root cause of rising ER times (Aug. 5) In describing the main cause of ER wait-times, Tom Brodbeck correctly points to the scarcity of hospital beds, a lack of overall hospital capacity he blames on a shortage of experienced health- care professionals. What rarely, if ever, gets mentioned is the number of hospital beds tied up by patients who are ready to be discharged, but can’t be because necessary supports (eg. home care, personal care home spaces) in the community aren’t in place. That is a statistic that should be relatively easily gathered, providing insight into what addition- al investments might free up critically needed hospital beds. A number of years ago, my aging father spent many more days in hospital than necessary, having been cleared medically to be discharged, but waiting for home care supports to be reinstat- ed, after having been paused during his hospital stay. I remember his surgeon’s frustration, as his scheduled surgeries were being held up by the delay in my father’s discharge. It seems to me that solutions to the pressure on ER wait-times can’t focus solely on the entry-point of the hospital experience, but must also look to ongoing investment in community resources, resulting in a shortened hospital stay for many. GARETH NEUFELD Winnipeg Fed up on health care Re: End of honeymoon for NDP government fast approaching (Aug. 6) Last October, many of us looked forward to a new era, and to improvements in areas such as health care. Dan Lett has pointed to some of the areas where the Kinew government has been an epic failure. He refers to mental health and addictions. I would add health care in general, not just that particular area. Not only has the NDP failed to improve it, they have made it worse. We no longer have access to the length of time one has to wait for certain surgeries. We have a family physician shortage, with many people having no family physician and the ones we do have being overworked. Premier Wab Kinew has talked about giving us our ERs back, but so far, nothing has materialized. There is a nursing shortage. We hear the province has fixed this shortage with a float pool with a plethora of nurses lining up to join. In the same newscast we hear that there is a state of emergency declared in a First Nations community due to a lack of nurses. So where are these float pool nurses? Not in the plac- es they are needed. I am sure the NDP will say it is not their ju- risdiction. We are still waiting for the promised improvements in health care the NDP ran their election campaign on. Patience is wearing thin for many of us. If there was a report card on their progress thus far, I would fail them. I agree with Dan Lett. The honeymoon will soon be over. ARIEL LEE Winnipeg Safety first Re: More bike lanes make for a better city (Aug. 4) While I agree with Brent Bellamy that improv- ing bike safety comes with the built environment (bike lanes, reduced speed, etc), the city fails to fully support the safety of cyclists by not addressing the problem of reckless, irresponsible and vulnerable bike riders. There are safety campaigns to educate and target careless and irresponsible drivers about the serious and life threatening consequences of distracted driving, road rage, seatbelt use, speed- ing and impaired driving. There are also fines and penalties to reduce dangerous driving. We need safety campaigns to educate and target careless and irresponsible cyclists on the serious and life threatening consequences of not following the rules of the road, not wearing helmets, not wearing reflective clothing or using bike lights at night, and wearing earbuds in traffic. We could start with a graphic campaign on blowing through traffic lights or stop signs and providing safety gear to those in need. We could even have a shared campaign for drivers and cyclists on increasing the use of turn signals and decreasing the use of the middle finger! Winnipeg needs to prioritize bike safety with stronger and more visible ads to protect its citi- zens and save lives. CAROL DROSDOWECH Winnipeg Thank you Brent Bellamy for your column on safer bike infrastructure. I am a recreational cyclist and also own and drive a car. I appreciate riding on a safe trail. There are times where I have used the sidewalk because of busy traffic. Yesterday, my husband and I were riding east bound on Mountain Avenue when a van passed me so close that I could have touched it. Had I slipped, it would have hit me. The city could do a better job by connecting bike paths. Some end abruptly, then you’re forced to the street. More bike paths would be safer for both bikes and cars. LEANNE HANUSCHUK Winnipeg Unimpressed by MPs Re: Mother blasts MPs on House committee for ‘disgusting’ treatment of her daughter (Aug. 2) It is pretty sad when the only time all our political parties are in unison is to devastate an innocent domestic violence survivor! What does this say about the “leaders” of this country? Very hard to decide who is the lesser of evils to vote for. BRENDA BOSS Winnipeg Shameful sentence Re: Changing drunk-driving laws (Editorial, Aug. 3) As the editorial correctly points out, the 35-month sentence delivered to a repeat drunk driver was wholly inappropriate, especially given the life-changing circumstances for the victim. The editorial did not include that this offender will be eligible for day parole in six months and full parole in less than a year. Justice denied. ROBERT MARSHALL Winnipeg Serendipity strikes Re: Art deco civic building bears signs of the times (Aug. 3) Thursday, I went downtown to attend the pop- up art show at the Fortune Building and, due to extremely good bus connections, arrived very early. Since everything in the neighbourhood was closed, I found myself sitting in the shade and contemplating the surroundings. The most strik- ing subject I could see was an old Art Deco build- ing at Main and Water that I have often admired as I passed by on my travels. Then, on Saturday morning, I opened my Free Press and found a write-up about the same build- ing, answering many of the questions that had crossed my mind. I will have to try to visit the building and have a look at the insides now. I look forward to more articles in Alison Gillmor’s Landmarks series. DANIEL ROSCOE Winnipeg Waste can’t stay where it is Re: Is Manitoba willing to accept nuclear waste risk? (Think Tank, Aug. 2) Before asking about accepting the risks of tak- ing nuclear waste, we need to ask what the waste is and where it is now. Nuclear fuel bundles are; “Plates welded to the end of the elements holding them together; spacers brazed to the sheaths keep the desired separations. The bundle is approximately 50 cm long and 10 cm in diameter and weigh 50lbs.” (Canadian Power Reactor Fuel, R.D. Page) The bundles, over 400,000 at Pickering (according to the Ontario Clean Air Alliance), are stored in two fuel pools 112’x56’x28’. Wet storage is designated as temporary. In the case of Pickering wet storage is tem- porary because of the risk of a magnitude 7-8 earthquake caused by the Clarendon- Lindon fault running under Lake Ontario. The second is a design error in the Pickering plant. The fuel storage bays are built over the “cool- ing water outflow” channel. If, for any reason the pool structure fails, ie. earthquake, terrorism, 400,000-plus bundles of spent fuel will end up in Lake Ontario. No one wants spent nuclear fuel in their back- yard, but the problem is; it can’t stay where it is, and it has to go somewhere; and that means, if we can’t come up with a better solution, it’s going to end up in someone’s backyard. MIKE CLARKE Winnipeg LETTERS TO THE EDITOR WHAT’S YOUR TAKE? THE FREE PRESS WANTS TO HEAR FROM YOU. The Free Press is committed to publishing a diverse selection of letters from a broad cross-section of our audience. The Free Press will also consider longer submissions for inclu- sion on our Think Tank page, which is a platform mandated to present a wide range of perspectives on issues of current interest. We welcome our readers’ feedback on articles and letters on these pages and in other sections of the Free Press ● Email: Letters: letters@winnipegfreepress.com Think Tank submissions: opinion@winnipegfreepress.com ● Post: Letters to the Editor, 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, R2X 3B6 Please include your name, address and daytime phone number. ● Follow us on Twitter @WFPEditorials OUR VIEW YOUR SAY COMMENT EDITOR: RUSSELL WANGERSKY 204-697-7269 ● RUSSELL.WANGERSKY@WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM A6 WEDNESDAY AUGUST 7, 2024 A legal defeat for a tech giant I T was big news on Google, in more ways than one. If you typed the word “Google antitrust” into the predominant internet search engine yester- day, you would have come up with story after story about Google having been found to have violated U.S. antitrust legislation. Now, it’s interesting to point out that none of those news stories was actually produced by Google itself, but Google did make advertising dollars off of all of the content it merely indexed. (Almost hilariously, the main Associated Press story on the case was topped by an advertisement for Google services.) So strangely, even bad news about Google is good news for its bottom line. And this editorial — if anyone finds it online using the search engine — will do the same. Sigh. But back to the main point: antitrust legislation in the U.S. is designed to address what the U.S. Justice Department describes as “unfair business practices that could harm consumers.” In this long-running case, which was launched in the U.S., a judge found that Google doesn’t just have a lock on the internet search business, but that it abused its monopoly position to keep other players out of the market. Its massive share of the search business — more than 89 per cent of all internet searches are done on Google — meant that it was able to artificially inflate the prices it charges advertisers, while also not having to improve the service it offers customers. For both advertisers and customers, it meant they were offered a “take it or leave it” deal, with no other real options if the choice was made to leave the Google universe. A key part of the judge’s findings centred around the huge amounts of money Google was paying to ensure that smartphones and other devices came equipped from start-up with Goo- gle’s search engine as a preset default setting. In all, Google paid more than US$23 billion in 2021 (US$20 billion to Apple alone in 2022) to make sure that new tech buyers saw, and used, Google first. In its defence, Google argued that it was simply the best search engine — and that, if there was a better choice, customers would choose the better search engine. That may be true — if the custom- er actually got to see the new search engine. And perhaps that’s why the judge in the case focused particularly on the payments to tech producers to make sure that Google was the first and most obvious choice. The logic is pretty clear: if you’re paying retail- ers to exclusively carry your particular mouse- trap, it’s pretty hard for a new mousetrap-maker to get their product to customers, even if it does a better job of catching mice. The bright spot? Perhaps the fact that, as U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland put it in a statement, “No company — no matter how large or influential — is above the law.” The less-bright-spot? How regularly it seems that as companies get bigger and bigger, they seem to need to find ways to gain competitive ad- vantage by methods that go far beyond constantly improving the efficacy of their products. What’s next? Well, appeals, legal foot-dragging, and per- haps, some five years or so into the future, legal remedies that Google either divest of some of its assets, pay fines, or stop making payments to be a default search engine — or maybe a combination of all of those and any other possible penalties that the judge may apply. And when and how will we find out about those penalties? If you’re searching online instead of reading the paper first, you’ll probably still find out about it … through a search on Google. EDITORIAL Published since 1872 on Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Métis FILE Google has hit rough legal waters. ;