I just think we’ve spent too many years praying at the idiot altar of trickle down economics. Tax the living hell out of the fucking billionaires already and redistribute the giant piles of gold those asshole dragons are sitting on with public housing and public funded works projects.

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m enjoying the hell out of the schadenfreude of watching some rich entitled twerps reaching the “find out” stage.

But the other part of me sees this and just thinks, can we maybe work on fixing our criminal justice system so that it doesn’t take a half million dollars of bail and constant harassment by police to continue living one’s life BEFORE A CONVICTION happens? Sure, in this case, it sounds pretty cut-and-dried and seriously fuck this dude.

But there are so many people languishing in lockup because they lack the resources for bail in a justice system that presumes guilt for anyone arrested while technically claiming to presume innocence. Waiting in lockup for a year and a half while the courts creep along is grotesque and horrifying.

Again, laughing at these rich assholes, but still feeling like maybe our entire bail system is kinda fucked up.

It’s not about having an agreement with you. It’s about the company and the union having an agreement with each other and the company just trying to discard it to undercut workers’ rights to collectively bargain. The government is just stepping in to force companies to negotiate in good faith rather than exploit workers’ desperation.

I can guarantee you that there are companies that want to hire you for $2 per hour with no overtime and a minimum required schedule of 80 hours per week. The government is “stopping you from working” for them too.

I am a proponent of MAID, but I find it extremely disturbing that we’re opening up MAID to conditions that aren’t even covered under our social health system. We are openly saying that we consider mental health issues too expensive to treat and would prefer that people with these conditions just die already. Social supports for people with disabilities and expanding health care to include mental health coverage should absolutely be part of this, or we’re just being murderous ghouls as a society.

I don’t dispute any of this. However, the reality is that the province isn’t proposing to spend that money on anything. They just said “it’s too expensive, please go away” to people with a very legitimate complaint and a long history of being ignored or outright oppressed by that same government.

If the government had approached them and said, “It would cost $200 million and be extremely dangerous to the searchers and the environment. What if we did X, Y, and Z with $200 million instead and named X a memorial to the missing victims?” then this would be a different conversation.

I agree the money could be put to better use, but it’s not even being proposed. The money is just being used as an excuse to swat down people that have been swatted down their entire lives.

I’m not a fan of going ahead with the search. The risks to the searchers and the environment (risk of toxic leaching, etc) is too great in my opinion.

However, my opinion here can’t matter. This has to come down to the families and advocates. And the government has made NO overtures to them beyond, “gee, that must suck, sorry.” So failing a better offer, I don’t blame them for continuing to hammer the only point they have available to them.

I have so many conflicting thoughts about this whole mess…

• Conducting the search seems dangerous and wildly impractical.
• Maybe it wouldn’t have become so dangerous and impractical if we had taken action on this much earlier. The delays have made it worse and each continued delay makes it even moreso I expect.
• MMIWG has been an openly ignored problem for so damn long, maybe dangerous and wildly impractical is justified to make a statement about taking it seriously.
• I cannot and will not judge the activists and families for pushing for the search. I have no way to comprehend how their loss compounds with the systemic discrimination they’ve faced their entire lives and how all of that is exacerbated by the accumulated generational trauma they share. They get to be as mad as they want.
• I do not know what the solution here is, and I’m very glad I’m not in any position of power where I’d be expected to make this decision
• This whole situation makes me sad for the families and angry at the police and government, but that’s a pretty standard position for me.

Was medium active there but recently deleted all my comment and post history then deleted my account. Still head back to lurk occasionally to see if I’m missing anything important in Winnipeg while this community slowly builds momentum. I’m very much hoping that we can get going here enough that I lose the FOMO about reddit.

To be clear, I love this thing and would love to have one if this city had a) infrastructure that could support it and b) enough of a social support system that the constant bike theft wasn’t just a daily part of life here.

“Gone in 60 Seconds” An electric bakfiets story in Winnipeg.