About this feature

Email roastandtoast@ lethbridgeherald.com or send to The Herald, 504 7 St. S., Lethbridge, T1J 2H1. Submissions will be edited for length. Comments are the opinion of the readers, not the Lethbridge Herald and not all will be published, particularly if they are of similar content, no longer timely, in poor taste, potentially libelous, contain accusations, target specific persons or businesses or where facts cannot be verified. This feature appears each Tuesday in The Lethbridge Herald. ROAST: Paid parking at the Enmax Centre and a third bin. Is this what we elected city council to do, make things worse? Maybe another KPMG report needs to be done on their performance. Where’s Joe Mauro when we need him? TOAST: To Rajko Dodic for bringing a sense of reason to city council. ROAST: To those who think $5 isn’t a big thing for parking this isn’t Calgary or Edmonton with a million people. But if you’re going to charge for the Enmax Centre, charge for Casa and the Galt Museum, too. See how that flies. ROAST: To The City for advocating that people adopt animals since the shelters and rescues are all full, and then basically shuts down Last Chance Cat Ranch. Looks like you are going to have to find the money to take over caring for all these cats now! ROAST: To the person at City Hall who bought the new downtown garbages. They are broken into every day. What a waste of taxpayer money and what a mess. The amount of money spent on clean up should be used to buy durable garbages. TOAST: To the amazing musicians at the Lethbridge Symphony and Vox Musica, and their stunning performance of Brahms’ Requiem last Monday evening. We are incredibly fortunate to have such a high caliber of talent in Lethbridge! ROAST: To KPMG for wasting our taxpayer money for a report that is, once again, flawed. The Hurricanes are right when they note other cities our size have moved away from paid parking at their facilities. Other municipalities have gone after KPMG for their terrible reports and here we are continuing to make decisions on information that has been proven over and over to be inaccurate. ROAST: To city council for continuing to allow that, and for accepting that millions of dollars was wasted with that contract. ROAST: To churches who do not see they need to change after COVID! That your people leave is not because of masks, but you have no true message. ROAST: Justin Trudeau refers to “the right of women to choose what she wishes to do with her own body”. I agree 100 per cent to that statement. Justin does not. He does not agree that they have the right to decide what is injected into their bodies i.e. vaccines. He has the right to decide. PUBLISHERS NOTE: No one is forced to have an abortion or to vaccinate. Everyone has a choice and the consequences of their decision. Whether you agree or disagree with their decision is up to you. ROAST: Bylaws are created by us to provide guidelines for citizens to follow. Recently there is a new one in debate, I think, about arguing in public; how about for a neighbour who loves to spy on her neighbours through CCTV and called in police and bylaw officers on ‘normal’ neighbours about any little things? Like parking facing the wrong way temporarily? For this neighbour, how about call once it’s ok but called twice and thrice? She should pay the fees for the officers to show up. Funny thing is, when actual ‘crimes’ happened to the neighbours, no officers’ show up? Like people jumped over the neighbour’s fence across her house and things were stolen from the neighbour’s front yard; where was she? ROAST: It really says something when I’m happier with the provincial PC party and my local representation than I am with the federal CPC representative. What happened? Somebody is giving her really bad advice locally. Lucky for her none of the alternatives look any better. ROAST: To the city for having a third garbage at this time when many of the residents do not want it or can afford it. ROAST: To the cable TV providers, enough already. Everybody is going to just drop cable. There is roughly 20 minutes of advertising an hour and now they are putting split screen ads to boot. They are chasing away their customers. ROAST: To Nathan Neudorf and company decision to stop funding diabetic pumps. Can your government stoop any lower? ROAST: It’s a good thing I have an iPad to keep up with NHL (Canada’s game)! Next to nothing about it in the Herald every day! TOAST: To everyone who scampered to get the COVID-19 Antigen rapid test kits using them to help identify whether or not they were infected with the virus. Double toast to those who unfolded and read thoroughly the large sheet of information enclosed, which under limitations of the test item #9 said “this assay is not intended for home testing (or self-testing).” Further along one learned the COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Test Device, had been evaluated and studied between October 2020 and Dec 2020 “by point of care operators with no laboratory experience.” Could those who read these things been the “anti’s” so vilified by the “experts” and in the media? TOAST: To Alberta’s Court of Appeal which released a historic decision to strike down the Trudeau government’s NoMore-Pipelines law (Bill C-69). In its 4-1 majority decision, the Court said that the law “constitutes a profound invasion into provincial legislative jurisdiction and provincial propriety rights. The unavoidable effect of the (No-More-Pipelines law) would be the centralization of the governance of Canada to the point that this country would no longer be recognized as a real federation,” wrote the four judges on Alberta’s highest Court. They went on to say that the federal government does not have “the constitutional right to appropriate the birthright and economic future of the citizens of a province.” Possibly our democracy still has a chance! TOAST: To David Carpenter for his insightful letter on MLA Madu. Point made that investigating this matter might prevent others from trying similar tactics. Our MLA’s should be honest and honourable in their actions. ROAST: To all those who believe a doctrine is equal to truth. Doctrines are your interpretation of truth! ROAST: To U of L profs! Enough with trashing senior admin! Keeping the U of L afloat during a pandemic and huge budget cuts has (no doubt) been hugely challenging. Just get back to work - and hope that you have not damaged the U of L’s reputation so severely that students stay away in droves. TOAST: To U of L admin who have “kept the boat afloat.” ROAST: To every politician on our dime. You mean to tell me it took this long for one of you to figure out that grocers have been bleeding us to death? Obviously we are paying you too much so you don’t shop and cook your own food. Trust me we know we are being gouged. ROAST: To the black pickup truck driving around with a symbol that supports the killing of federal Liberals. The sticker uses the clearly understood font with the capital L that the Liberals use, and over that they print the crosshairs of the scope of a rifle. Get within three metres of the back window of the truck and it is a clear message. TOAST: To those who continue masking. COVID has not gone away and cases are rising, and even though this variant is mild even vaccinated people get sick for a few days. Children under five cannot get vaccinated yet, and although they are rarely sick, they spread it quickly. As for me I got my fourth shot: the 4th is with me and I am with the 4th. TOAST: To the plan to have Moderna build a vaccine facility in Canada for both research and production. And a ROAST to the government for having a great idea... four years too late. Thank you to Brian Mulroney for cancelling the manufacturing of vaccines in Canada when he was Prime Minister. ROAST: To the Liberals and the entrenched risk averse bureaucracy that forced 800 or more Afghans who helped the Canadian military to hide in safe houses, waiting for the Taliban to find them and torture them. A government with will and creativity would find ways to smuggle them out, and then make arrangements with either Pakistan or Turkey to allow them to quickly leave on Canadian Forces planes. TOAST: A big shout-out to Will Thompson, store leader at the 26 Avenue Mr. Lube, for going above and beyond to address an issue. Given the measures Will undertook, I am a very happy customer who is now willing to drive from Paradise Canyon to the south side to support this business. Rarely have I experienced such attention and dedication to customer satisfaction. Thanks very much Will! TOAST: To Joe Mauro. It is regrettable that you chose not to run anymore for a City of Lethbridge city council seat, and I know that many others feel the same way as time and time again you were elected with more votes than any other member. Missing from the council will be credibility and the courageous fights and struggles despite the hostility you faced unafraid to voice your dissent of what you felt was wrong. I join with a huge crowd of well-deserved applause. Well done Joe, you never gave up, receiving no help from fellow councillors. ROAST: Many years ago Medicine Hat voters voted in a far-sighted city council who purchased a natural gas field so its people can get cheap gas to heat their homes. Roughly at the same time Lethbridge’s myopic council shut down and dismantled an electricity producing generator at the river bottom beside the Whoop-Up Bridge arguing electricity can be purchased cheaply from what then was Calgary power. Every time I open my Enmax power bill (owned by Calgary city council) I still remember what once was and now no more affordable natural gas. ROAST: To our voted-in city leaders. It’s not a request but a demand. Please put user fees back on our black, blue and green bins. The more we use the more we pay. Listen to your people and stop coming up with stupid ways to spend our tax dollars. Hire your/our own lawyers, real estate and adjusters and appraisers to do our city needs and works. Stop using outside people to do what we voted you in for to do. You can be replaced and the voters should monitor you and not vote you in again because of your repeated names and such. We get what we vote for shame on all of us. ROAST: To Shannon Phillips for her ridiculous comments respecting the increase in ICU capacity. Only the NDP would criticize this initiative. She would likely be critical of the UCP if they funded AHS to cure cancer as that would put cancer doctors out of work. She is totally out of touch with reality on this issue. ROAST: To Shannon Phillips for once again complaining when the UCP government announces improvements and additions to our health care system. Maybe if your NDP never let our health care system deteriorate so much between 2015-2019 when you were in power there would not be so much catching up to do. The promised 50 ICU beds by September also includes Lethbridge and is not just furniture as the nurses’ union (UNA) says but includes fully staffed new rooms. I sure wonder if you and the union bosses are capable of doing useful things for Albertans. TOAST: To the City’s foresight in keeping the property tax increase at zero per cent this year. Hopefully, we won’t pay the price next year for the previous council’s decision. TOAST: To city council for voting not to spend $80,000 on a consultant. Glad to see we have city leaders who actually think about the taxpayers. But about that Enmax Centre parking…. ROAST: To dog walkers who put poop in bags and leave it along the edge of trails. It won’t walk to the garbage container. TOAST: To the person for the letter about the Ukraine war. Inflation, higher taxes, the national debt hurts us. Zelenskyy boasts “with big weapons and a long battle, we’ll win.” Win what? A world record for killing and maiming? For the most homeless people? Most destroyed businesses and industry? Most insults and hatred? The writer declares Zelenskyy must give up East Ukraine to end the battle. The people there voted to join the Russian Federation. For them, freedom means getting free from mistreatment of Russianspeaking citizens. ROAST: To anyone still whining about the LCCR. Get the facts straight. They were operating in violation of city bylaws, they were given a year to relocate not be shut down. Any other business or tenant would get 90 days, they got a year. No one shut them down or forced them to close. Open your ears instead of your mouth and you’d be amazed by the facts. TOAST: To speaker Ron Hammerstedt at the Galt Museum on “The Forest and the Trees” on May 11. Very instructive on understanding the current climate and environment and concerns about carbon and the whole cycle of carbon capture by our forests by someone with practical experience. If you’re confused by all the rhetoric, this is the information you need. Hopefully he will do a repeat session. ROAST: To the letter writer who said Zelensky must give up something. Even if they were accepted and had joined NATO, we’d be in the throes of World War Three by now. We may eventually go there shortly regardless of what we do Ukraine had nothing to give up except more of her people. They didn’t start this mess or even provoke it, either. They are innocent and because of an evil empire, they are paying with their blood. Ukraine and the world need divine intervention. ROAST: The movement in the USA in the 1960s of “make love, not war” was a protest against the nation’s costly war in Vietnam. The motives of the architects of the movement are less clear. Though Jack Kerouac’s novel “On the Road” was hailed as the bible of the beat generation, the characters in the novel lead tormented, aimless lives leading them nowhere. What messages were Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix sending to their drug-deed fans in Woodstock? They lived very short lives. Finally long before Scott McKenzie’s song came to an end, they stopped wearing flowers in their hair in San Francisco. With the movement not gaining any traction, the players walked off into the sunset and oblivious, leaving no legacy. TOAST: To a Battle of Alberta in the NHL playoffs. No matter who wins or loses there will be a Canadian team in the final 4. ROAST: To CBC for not airing the Flames game 7. You could have just replayed the previous ten years of Junos on any other night; same artists, performers and results year after year. Telling us the host is a star? Never heard of him and neither had anyone I know. Did the guy from the Beachcombers win an actor award again? Did Tommy Hunter win best vocal again? The time to defund is long overdue. TOAST: To the musicians at Austrian Jose’s music recital at The Gate on Saturday. They were outstanding. Our world is in good hands with these dedicated young people.