Skip to main content

All-hallowed consultants

Some headlines just make a person groan and reading the article makes it worse instead of better. That's how I felt after reading this article. So I wrote a letter to my politicians to let them know. 

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2024/09/04/province-eyes-gps-tracking-of-garbage-trucks

There's several indications in the article that a fair bit of tracking is already happening. It wasn't lack of knowledge but lack of will that put such a long delay on searching the landfill.

And how tragic that we should be concerned this situation might be repeated and our only steps are to make it easier to "catch the guy"! What kind of steps might be taken instead to help women avoid ending up in such vulnerable and dangerous positions in the first place? How about building a society where anyone who treats vulnerable women like garbage is made clearly aware that is not acceptable?

And then there's the price tag: $200,000 just to engage a consultant to look at a system, before implementation? Purse strings are wide open for monstrously expensive consultant's fees just to look into a system?!? (Something a university class could be asked to do for free as a real-life-application assignment.)

Funny, $200,000 sounds like a familiar amount: isn't that's about what the city and province aren't willing to pay to keep a public bathroom open? A public bathroom that includes community supports. A public bathroom that could reduce overdose deaths, provide a connection point to social services, provide basic primary health care that can avoid more expensive tertiary interventions later on. And restore a tiny measure of dignity with a private, clean and safe place to go.

It's disgusting how generous governments are regarding consulting fees in light of how parsimonious they are toward basic community services that address human dignity.

I beg of you, if you must go through with this "closing the barn door after the horse has left" supposed "deterrence" waste tracking project, could you at least do the research for a more reasonable price and divert all the money saved to community programs that service social needs?

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Living stones in the holy land

I met Jesus in Israel-Palestine a few years ago. I found him not in the rocky, desert ground he trod, nor in the ancient stones of the towns and cities he visited; not in the subterranean grotto in the Church of the Nativity, nor in the mammoth Church of the Holy Sepulchre, encompassing the traditional site of his death and resurrection. No, I met him in the lives of Palestinians who incarnate his spirit, in humble, passionate people who are convinced that love is the only way. I met Jesus in people who spoke like this: “We need to be soaked in the love of Christ. Love is not a hug and a kiss. Love is to seek the life of the other that the cost of one’s own.” --Labib Madanat, coordinator of the Palestinian and Israeli Bible Societies “Love is not an opportunity to overlook justice. Love is an opportunity to pursue justice…. [But] we want to resist any form of evil with the heart and mind of Jesus Christ.… There is no love without justice. And there is no true justice without lov...
2 comments
Read more

Broken people...

After reflecting with one coworker on how often churches in all their forms really mess up and hurt a whole bunch of people in the process -- and how "we gotta do better" -- I stumbled into another conversation with a coworker which highlighted our brokenness, and I suddenly realized what was wrong with my take in the first. I wanted the church to be better at fixing our mistakes, or better yet, at not making them in the first place. But maybe this "fix-it" attitude is partly the reason we keep blowing it again and again! My friend recollected an experience when a church community was in a terrible place: compounded mistakes, hurts, and frustrations had blown up, spewing pain all over all parties. (I'm sure anyone with a long history in the church can think of one, if not several, such occasions in their past.) A new Christian who observed all these goings on responded in an unexpected way. Instead of "you people are a bunch of screw-ups! How could this pos...
5 comments
Read more

Stand up for Canadian Health Care (such as it is)

Canadian health care is far from perfect — it has never achieved all Tommy Douglas dreamed for it: from tip to toe (teeth are still missing, as are a lot of drugs) — but unleashing unfettered two-tier is the opposite of fixing it.  So I joined with the Canadian Medical Association in pleading for the Canadian government to grow a spine and stop unhinged Smith's attempt to violate our own rules within her province.  As someone on Bluesky observed, if Stephen Harper tried to do this, we'd be at the gate with pitchforks. Where is the outrage. Daddy Warbucks Carney’s latest just-barely satisfactory performance in trade negotiations should not blind us to his failure to prevent this from happening.  The letter to the health minister, CC my MP and the shadow ministers: The Canadian Medical Association says the Canadian government must stand up for Albertans and all Canadians to ensure Alberta's new legislation doesn’t create a new normal of health care haves and have-no...
Post a Comment
Read more