Letters, Dec. 15

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/12/2022 (644 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Searching for answers

Re: No simple solution (Letters, Dec. 13)

In regard to Barry Elkin’s comment, if I am to assume his last sentence, “If there is a will, there is a way,” refers to how the ease with which Robert Pictons’s pig farm was excavated and forensically examined should encourage the same to happen at the landfill sites in and around Winnipeg, I feel there may be a massive discrepancy to consider.

Robert Picton’s pig farm was full of shallow, hastily dug graves. And that investigation cost nearly $70 million in 2001 to easily exhume, test and identify remains.

The landfill sites in question here are the total opposite. Multiple layers of compacted garbage under multiple layers of soil, clay and more compacted garbage do not compare to the relative ease of search at the pig farm.

In these multiple layers there will be many contaminating factors of pet remains and other sources of human DNA, such as human feces (disposable diapers). Almost every bone, many from our kitchen garbages, would have to be questioned and examined as they will already be in some stage of decomposition and not readily identifiable.

These layers have been heated by the sun, moistened by rain and further compacted. A perfect breeding ground for bacteria and the formation of dangerous gases.

I am in no way saying we should not excavate in search of our missing women. What I am saying is I agree it will be an enormous, and potentially dangerous, task.

And from what I understand, such a search is far beyond the scope of our police department. I respect their admission. The manpower and cost involved would be immense.

My question is whether it is safe or even feasible to excavate and, if so, who should then carry out this massive task and bear this cost?

Karen Zurba

Winnipeg

Re: Police chief will meet, will not quit and Timeline of slayings, investigations (Dec. 10)

There is no question the Prairie Green landfill must be searched for the bodies of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran.

If the timeline of events published in the Free Press is accurate and it was as early as May 16 that the bodies of the two women were believed to be disposed of in Prairie Green landfill, then it is plainly logical that had the landfill been secured at that time, thousands of tonnes of material would not have been subsequently dumped and compacted under thousands of tonnes of construction clay 12 metres deep.

By not searching the landfill in May or June, when they first suspected or believed the bodies of Harris and Myran to be there, decision-makers have allowed the search task to become monumentally more difficult. By waiting to search they have not avoided doing so, because search they must.

Rather, they have made their responsibility to search for the victims at the landfill absolutely unavoidable, now that it is obvious they could have done so many months ago and did not. Decency demands it.

Christina López

Winnipeg

It is heartbreaking to think of anyone having a landfill as their final resting place. How could this happen to these women — mothers, daughter, sisters, friends?

It only makes it worse that there is all this anger and division over what is to be done next.

With no disrespect intended, it is, sadly, too late for these four women now. Digging up the landfill cannot bring them back. The task of searching for any remnant amidst the garbage is a gruesome one… with no guarantee anything will be found that might help families find closure. It might be even more upsetting.

It seems to me the money that would be spent on searching the landfill would be far better spent on anything that will help protect other Indigenous women. I think the best way we can show our respect to these women and all the other murdered and missing people is to work to prevent this from happening again… and again.

On the news I saw a picture of Morgan’s daughter protesting as a young girl, 10 years ago. Since then, we have had a national MMIWG inquiry, but the only thing that has changed is that now her own mother is dead.

Now it is time to turn the tide. Use this horrible situation as an opportunity to make things better. Create a task force here in Manitoba. Include these eloquent, caring young women, the chief from Long Plain and other community members and the Winnipeg Police Service to move forward and create positive changes instead of going through old garbage. Work together to give women and all people lives that are worth living, and stop the evil that wants to take those lives away from us.

Let us put all the resources we can into making this a new reality, and hopefully these four women may rest in peace.

Leslie Kirby

Winnipeg

Safe presumption site

Re: Manitoba minister caught injecting a fib (Dec. 10)

It blows my mind that Manitoba’s Community Wellness Minister Sarah Guillemard would choose to reject the offer of an organized tour “with some of the foremost experts on drug policy in North America” of a centre that supports young people with mental-health and substance-use issues and a Rapid Access Additions Clinic at St. Paul’s Hospital. Instead, she goes on a walking tour “around Vancouver’s downtown eastside with her Alberta colleagues independently of the formally organized FPT (federal, provincial and territorial) tours.”

She knew what she would find on her walking tour was that “Everywhere we walked, people were consuming drugs. Many were in catatonic states or passed out.” All she was doing was reinforcing her Manitoba government’s flawed argument that the only way to solve the world’s sad drug-use problems are to stamp them out with law-enforcement tactics and to preach abstinence. She did not have to go to Vancouver to see the horrific effects of drug use. She could have seen that in the streets of Winnipeg.

What she missed by not going on the FPT tour was a chance to see some alternative, humane attempts to address the harms resulting from substance use. Instead, she falsely claimed to have visited safe-consumption facilities in Vancouver without setting foot in them and claimed what she saw reinforced her governments views on solving our drug-use problems. Making false claims seems to be endemic within Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative government.

Ken Sigurdson

Winnipeg

The article on Community Wellness Minister Sarah Guillemard’s walking tour of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside serves to remind Manitobans that the provincial government’s opposition to supervised injection sites is based on beliefs and not on information.

The stance of the government may reflect political calculations or moral/ideological positions. The harm-reduction approach, including supervised injections sites, is met with resolute, “principled” refusal.

The “gotcha” of the minister claiming to have visited supervised consumption sites while not actually having set foot inside the sites misses the point. The point is that this government is opposed to supervised injection sites and that Manitobans who are addicted to and using injectable streets drugs are dying in the only province west of the Atlantic region without such sites.

Perhaps the government sees an advantage in this political and “moral” stance. Dead addicts do not vote.

Michael Eleff, MD

Winnipeg