Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - February 1, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba Correction Due to an editing error, the Think Tank piece headlined “Fixing health care requires more nurses” (Jan. 31) failed to include the byline of its joint author, Diane Frolick, who is a registered nurse with a BA in economics and 37 years of nursing experience, including eight years in ERs. Canada must lead As Canada readies itself to host the G7 meet- ing and with a federal election looming, the 2025 budget offers our country the chance to take the lead on important global issues. These problems, together with climate change and a few other really big global issues, aren’t going away. They’re getting worse, and they’re sending poverty soaring in places all around the world. More than half of the sustainable develop- ment goals that we have committed to by the year 2030 are now considered by most observers to be off track. Now is not the time to retreat. We can back vital efforts like worldwide immunization, edu- cation in emergencies, and nutrition programs — efforts that go straight to the heart of the crisis facing the world’s most vulnerable people — by raising the international assistance envelope to the level it really needs: $650 million more each year. Those investments do more than just stave off an immediate disaster; they help build a future in which our international partners are better equipped to look after themselves. For a long time, Canada has been at the fore- front of international development. Budget 2025 must reflect that. The time is now to budget for leadership. DANIEL YAZIE Winnipeg Alternate staffing plan Re: Tory MLA blames NDP for empty care home beds (Jan. 29) Can we think outside the box? Stop trying to recruit staff to live in our rural remote communities; they do not want to live there. Create teams that live in Winnipeg (or Brandon) and they can go to these remote communities to work; one week on and one week off; or two weeks on and one week off; mining industries do this up north, as do nursing stations up north. They know they cannot have workers live there year-round. Rural communities can provide the housing so staff can share the homes and enjoy local enter- tainment and amenities. This would be a win-win: communities get the health-care workers they need and the health-care workers continue to live in the communities of their choice. ANNI MARKMANN Ste. Anne Reductions for professionals Re: Federal committee urges end to religious tax deductions (Jan. 25) There is another “perk” that the finance committee should review and that is the clergy residence deduction, which reduces the taxable income of clergy of any faith. The principle that needs to be examined is whether it is appropriate to provide an income tax benefit to individuals solely on the basis of their professional status. According to the Canada Revenue Agency, the clergy person’s annual rent, or the fair rental market value if the individual owns the home, is used in a calculation that reduces the taxable income amount. Is there any compelling argument to support this taxable benefit for clergy? If taxation policy is to be used to support charitable and/or reli- gious organizations because they contribute to the common good, I would argue that the policies should be set up to benefit the organizations providing the services, and not to individuals in their employ. As someone who has served on personnel com- mittees in my denomination, elimination of the clergy resident deduction would simplify pastoral salary administration. Specifically, the pastor’s salary could be determined without having to factor in the impact of the clergy residence deduction. Also, if the government continues with an income tax break for a specific profession, in this case clergy, one can argue that the same break could be extended to other professionals. For example, it is difficult to recruit and retain phy- sicians, nurses and other health professionals to establish their careers in rural and remote com- munities. These professionals are already fairly well-paid so that large gross salaries may not be persuasive in encouraging them to move to rural or remote communities. What would benefit them more than a huge gross salary is a tax break that increases their after-tax income. Providing the equivalent of the clergy res- idence deduction to encourage professionals, such as medical personnel, to take up careers in underserved communities would be a relatively inexpensive way of subsidizing their decision. ED UNRAU Winnipeg Planning for an electric future Very recently Manitoba Hydro set a peak record in hydro electricity consumption. This electrical usage record was reached even when fossil fuel powered vehicles greatly outnumber electrical vehicles. What will happen when the majority of vehicles are EVs and their electrical demand dramatically increases, putting huge pressure on Manitoba Hydro to meet that need? Blackouts? Manitoba could benefit by planning now and constructing more hydro-electric dams and power lines to meet this huge, future electrical demand. ROBERT J. MOSKAL Winnipeg No apology necessary Re: What it takes to apologize (Think Tank, Jan. 30) While I found Mac Horsburgh’s article an interesting read, in the end I am uncertain as to whether he believes that Bishop Mariann Budde should apologize to Trump as the “better person.” In my view, it is not a high threshold to be con- sidered a better person than Donald Trump, but it’s safe to assume that the bishop likely falls into that category. How is asking the “king” for mercy an insult? It acknowledges the king’s power to grant the mer- cy or not. Hardly “nasty” as indicated by Trump. If Mr. Horsburgh believes there will ever be “an exchange of apologies” from Trump, he lives in a different world than mine, but, like him, we can all dream of such a world. Meanwhile, we can wait to see Trump’s apology for his comment that Democrats and diversity were to blame for the fatal air collision near Ron- ald Reagan National Airport. Do not hold your breath. Just to be clear, in my view, Bishop Budde does not owe Trump an apology. JIM SMITH Winnipeg Taking a stand in the grocery aisle A banana is a banana, until it comes from the United States. All by way of saying, my husband and I will no longer buy produce from the U.S. When grocery shopping the other day I passed by a couple who rejected buying a carton of soup that was produced by a well-known American company. Obviously having a mutual intent to ex- press our disgust at the current political state of the U.S., we affirmed our pride in being Canadian and continued our shopping. Because of that interaction, I decided to talk at random to other shoppers and encourage them to “buy Canadian.” To a person, everyone I talked to was already shopping with deliberateness to make what stand they could against being bullied and threatened by Donald Trump. This may seem like a small retaliation on our part, but eventually the point can be made when 10 and then 100 and then 1,000 people take a stand, and refusing to buy U.S. Truly, the best part of this grocery project was the continuing affirmation of our mutual pride in being Canadian. MARY-JANE ROBINSON 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. OUR VIEW YOUR SAY COMMENT EDITOR: RUSSELL WANGERSKY 204-697-7269 ● RUSSELL.WANGERSKY@WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM A8 SATURDAY FEBRUARY 1, 2025 Finding new markets and mitigating U.S. tariffs C ANADA’S premiers and the federal govern- ment can be forgiven for trying — and at the moment, most likely failing — to stop U.S. President Donald Trump’s 25 per cent tariffs on exports from Canada to the U.S. It was never about border security. Nor, really, about trade deficits. It might well be about the windfall Trump ex- pects to get from levying what could effectively be called a tariff sales tax on American consum- ers so that he can deliver promised income-tax cuts to his supporters. Trump’s love for a fractured economic theory that manufacturers, not consumers, end up pay- ing for the cost of import tariffs, and his belief that tariff is “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” was always going to rule the day. It will be interesting to see what happens to Midwestern farmers who need potash-based fer- tilizers — 46 per cent of Canada’s potash exports go to the U.S. But that’s only half the story — the other half is that the U.S. gets 87 per cent of its potash from Canada. And agriculture trade publications have already predicted that the cost of a 25 per cent tariff will wind up with fertilizer users, not with Canadian companies that produce the potash. And the growing season didn’t have to be up- ended by Trumpian executive orders. We already have signed trade deals with the United States, deals that were in fact signed while Trump was last president. (In case he doesn’t re- member, he himself lauded them as “the fairest, most balanced, and beneficial trade agreement we have ever signed into law.”) Clearly, they’re not worth the paper they are printed on — and we have to expect that anything Trump says now is just as transitional into what- ever else he decides to do at any time. There is no longer a separation of powers in the United States, there are legitimate doubts about the independence of its judiciary, and there is no guardrail in the legislative branch. Trump’s own business record gives no comfort, either. The current commander-in-chief, unfortunate- ly, has a long record as a commander of cheat. There are scores of businesses that have come forward with their stories about having signed contracts for work with Trump businesses who end up being paid a fraction of what they’re owed, and having to eat their losses, sometimes at the cost of their own companies. Paying pennies on the dollar has been a Trump corporate trade- mark. And that’s not likely to change. Some may see that as a shrewd business tactic: truth is, it’s both cheating and lying. We should expect nothing different in the future. Canada’s goal now should be to make the most of a horrible situation — dealing with a trade war we didn’t start, with a neighbour with great powers, is a daunting situation. We will most likely answer with tariffs, while businesses on both sides of the border clamour for the kind of stability and order they need to make business and investment decisions. But most importantly, we have to diversify our markets as quickly as possible, so that we no lon- ger find ourselves in this situation again — even after Trump moves on. Take potash: it’s a product needed in China and India, and also Brazil. Let’s sell it somewhere else. Think about this: even if the federal govern- ment and the provinces find a way to avoid the new tariffs or get them removed, while in the short term we might be in a better position, we will not be in a safer one. Because what President Donald Trump com- mitted to yesterday has absolutely no connection to what he will do tomorrow. And when you make a deal to pay a blackmail- er, unfortunately, you’ll find out that you’ll being paying for your entire life. EDITORIAL Published since 1872 on Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Métis MARK SCHIEFELBEIN / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS U.S. President Donald Trump ;