Holes abound
After the tour of (Saskatchewan) premier (Lorne) Calvert through part of Saskatchewan, there appears a cartoon by Schneider depicting the bus carrying the premier and his party. The premier is saying that “this highway is actually quite smooth,” and the reply is that the bus is detouring through Alberta.
I would like to suggest that Schneider try Highway 619 in Alberta, although, after these many years, it could possibly have been repaired in the last few months.
One might take 619 from south of Lloydminster to travel west or from Viking to travel east and think what a nice paved highway it is, until they hit the section from south of Vermilion to south of Kitscoty.
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What a mess. Holes the size of ice cream pails, and worse, cover the entire surface. How the people of the area haul grain or livestock or drive a car on that road is a skill they didn’t want to acquire.
Some Alberta friends forgot my warning and came that way hauling a horse and could hardly believe the condition of the road. They thought perhaps the people in that area “don’t vote Ralph.”
I have to take another route to visit one of my sisters west of Viking and it puts over half an hour on my trip.
So, Alberta cannot always have a holier-than-thou attitude because in places they are just as hole-y as Saskatchewan.
Where I live, however, we have terrible roads pounded out by the oil industry, and at times we live in choking dust. Because the oil business is to some people a sacred cow, we seem expected to put up and shut up, but I recently learned that the government of Saskatchewan took in $100 million dollars last year in oil royalties from the rural municipality in which I live and I’m sure at least the same amount went in from the adjoining municipalities.
We who have lived here for generations would be pleased to see some of that money used to pave our roads, but then, we have a university professor in Saskatchewan preaching that the government should not use money to prop up towns and rural areas but should put all available money into the cities in the province.
I would like to invite him to spend a week living here, to see what we are expected to put up with in order that his “support your local city” plan be carried out. Spare us this type of urban thinking.
– C. Pike,
Waseca, Sask.
Facts are in
Recent statistics released by the Saskatchewan government give the number of traffic fatalities in the past five-month period to be 44 (i.e. nine deaths per month).
This is terrible. Compare this figure of traffic deaths to the number of firearm fatalities in Saskatchewan, namely 32 deaths in a 12-month period in 2005.
To any rational being, the conclusion is irrefutable: Cars kill more people than guns.
This shows that the national firearm registry is working.
The next logical step is to legislate a national automobile registry. Do not let any university professors tell us otherwise and ignore the howl of car owners.
Even if the national car registry” saves one life, it is worth it.
– Michael Mowchenko,
Saskatoon, Sask.
New scheme
In many newspapers in Western Canada, Mr. David Anderson (MP Cypress Hills-Grasslands) is at it again, trying to convince farmers they would be better off marketing their wheat, barley and durum themselves and not use the marketing powers of the Canadian Wheat Board.
It is a new scheme this time, hoping legislation can be changed allowing farmers to market direct to processors. Processors always want to buy the products they need at the lowest possible price. It’s a rule of business.
So, the question is, would farmers realize a higher return for their wheat, barley and durum from processors if they could only bypass the CWB?
Hardly. It’s a sure bet if processors are expected to pay higher prices to farmers than the CWB is paying, they would just buy what they need from the board. Or is Mr. Anderson implying processors are not all that smart?
A word of caution about Mr. Anderson. He has a deep seated hate for CWB marketing. The CWB puts $2 million a day into farmers’ pockets. Any person trying to take that away is not the farmers’ friend….
Farmers would be well advised to make a thorough search for the real intent in this latest scheme before it is too late. Once the board powers are fractured, it will be too late.
In closing, I see in the newspapers that the National Farmers Union is challenging Mr. Anderson to a public debate in his home constituency about the advantages of the CWB. Here is a real chance for Mr. Anderson to put up or shut up. I’m betting Mr. Anderson will be a no show.
– Henry Neufeld,
Waldeck, Sask.
Slapped around
As I endured the slapping around that Bevra Fee administered to me in his/her letter in the July 20 issue, regarding my opinion piece on OlyWest in the June 15 issue, I felt as if I was back in my childhood, out in a prairie dust storm. Lots of wind, air full of flying nasties, and a great deal of obscurity.
Fee’s attack on me followed a classic pattern. Fudge the facts and mount a personal attack. Use misrepresentation bordering on falsehood and wax lyrical over the monetary benefits of your position. For instance, nowhere did I say I hated pigs. That is a figment of Fee’s fevered imagination.
Nor did I suggest that OlyWest should not build a plant. What I did suggest was that with the extreme increase in world meat consumption, we should be considering whether cities are the best places to locate these plants.
Fee makes the incredible statement, based on a test he claims was done by the University of Saskatchewan, that the air, 600 metres from hog barns had no bad odour. In the first place, that information is irrelevant. I wasn’t talking about barns. In the second place, was the lagoon emptied when they tested the air?
Fee goes on to talk about the money the pig industry is making in Manitoba. Odd, but several times over the last few months, I have heard complaints about the low profitability of pig farming.
Fee then caps the argument by telling us what the average income is in Red Deer. What in the world is that supposed to prove? The letter ends with a paean of praise for the altruistic mindset of OlyWest, for doing the citizens of Winnipeg the inestimable favour of building a pig killing plant in our city.
Again, pig-processing plants are inevitable. But unless pigs are going to be delivered to the plant in dirigibles, and dropped down a chute into the plant, the delivery alone is going to be air-polluting, without any other source.
Is there not a better way? Not if people like Bevra Fee can help it.
– John Beckham,
Winnipeg, Man.
Lake danger
I used to believe and hope that Lake Winnipeg, the 10th largest freshwater lake in the world, would have a half-decent chance of recovery and eventual survival, if people, organizations, businesses, industry and corporations alike co-operated with the water stewardship minister and his mandate to stop the terrible pollution of phosphorus that is turning the lake into a sewage lagoon.
Now I know that this is not possible, not as long as organizations such as Keystone Agriculture Producers, intensive livestock operations and the Manitoba Pork Council consistently refuse to co-operate with water stewardship.
And it will also not be possible for Lake Winnipeg to recover and survive as long as politics keeps playing its role of constipating the efforts of its recovery.
Manitoba Tories have only recently elected a new 39-year-old leader. As a candidate for the leadership, he was reported as saying, in his policy, “remove the water regulations” (Brandon Sun) 28). …
Lake Winnipeg and all the waters of our great province are doomed if politics continue to impede and dominate water issues. The threat is real. When the lake collapses and dies, the people of Winnipeg, all the fishers of the lake, the several thousand cottagers and all who enjoyed the lake will ask, “why didn’t our governments do something?”
Your governments were doing something. They were politicking and securing votes.
For this, the lake was sacrificed and the stain of this treachery will serve as its monument. It could not endure the … disrespect that comes from the enemy among us.
– John Fefchak,
Virden, Man.
