Doxa - September 2023

DOXA

Dear readers,

To the folks in their first year: what is this collection of paper decorating tables across CMU campus, or slapped in front of you while studying at Marpeck, you may ask? The Doxa is a student-run magazine that collects creative works, frustrated commentaries, or fanciful exposes and places them into a collection. The work is curated by two editors (which is a nice way of saying we bug people until they make something for us), printed, and distributed across campus. Whether you are a one-time submitter, a regular creator, or just take the time to peruse the magazine to look busy before your next class, the engagement is appreciated.

To everyone else: A true sign of a good friend is listening to them explain their past summer plans as you interact with different groups of people. A sign of a great friend is when they fake their reaction to your stories as though this is the first (and not the fifth) time they are hearing about your hike. A sign of a close friend is when they are visibly zoning out during your storytelling. They know your story by heart, and you don’t feel the need for them to listen. However, the next time you are trying to tell someone about your summer plans together, I would suggest swapping stories to see how well you have really been paying attention.

If you are like me and had a mediocre summer (Note from Mike: this is a sentiment held only by half of us editors. My summer was truly delightful) but feel as though your stories are lacking in comparison, I’d like to take this opportunity to give yourself permission to embellish your stories. Chances are your friend was not there and cannot fact check. Each time you tell the story, add some extra details that will keep your friends interested all the way into mid-terms! If your conversations are lacking, the Doxa is great a place to find conversation starters and explore new stories. May the year ahead be filled with flowing words and patient profs.

Good luck and happy reading,

Katie Wilson (she/her) and Mike Thiessen (he/him)

The September 2019-November 2021 CMU Resident Campus Hermit’s Guide to Not Becoming the Next CMU Resident Campus Hermit and Proper Shower

Curtain Usage: A Love Letter to My First Few Years in Residence

by Jenica Sul

Look, by the title of this article you already know that I have been here for a while. Those who have been living on campus for a similar length of time as me may be surprised to find out that I have, in fact, lived here for the entire duration of my degree. Those who have been living on campus only this and/or last year may be surprised that that fact could be seen as surprising. To clear up any and all confusion, let me make this extremely clear:

Yes, I have lived on campus since my first year. I simply spent a lot of time in those first few years in my room.

In those first years of my degree, I was a severely socially anxious extrovert who didn’t know how to socialize all that well. I often had to give myself a pep talk to go down to lunch because I knew that I would have to talk to people I didn’t know very well there. Safe to say, I was not having the best time. While my reclusiveness was probably my biggest problem when I was a relatively new student, I know that it is far from the only thing that people struggle with as they enter into university. If you’re anything like me, you will likely find the first section of this article helpful, and if you’re anything like half of the people I’ve shared bathrooms with over the years, you will definitely find the second section helpful.

Advice to prospective hermits:

If spontaneous, unstructured socialization is intimidating to you, I cannot blame you. Luckily for you, there are constantly student-centred events happening on campus, and even some recurring things you can choose to take part in! Student leaders, both residents and commuters, plan many events throughout the school year. Typically, there will be multiple opportunities to leave your room and see people who are outside of your usual social bubble every month.

A good way to dip your toes in the social waters gently is by quickly grabbing free food if a longer event is not within your realm of abilities. When you get more comfortable, consider attending a coffee house, chapel, or a forum. Events like these are an excellent gateway into becoming acclimated to being seen in a public space for more than 5 minutes at a time without any guaranteed conversation. When simply sitting through a forum becomes easy, try to ask a question during the Q&A period. Maybe strike up a conversation after an event with someone you’ve eaten lunch with before. It is okay, and even encouraged, to take these sorts of things slowly if diving right in feels overwhelming. If it feels like an accomplishment to get free ice cream and simply give a quick nod to the person handing it out, then it’s important to recognize that that’s something to be proud of. Any step in the right direction is important, even if it feels small.

If something with more active participation that is still structured feels more like your speed, consider joining a small group or club. Whether it’s playing Dungeons & Dragons once a week, a group to discuss your faith with, a student council board, or a craft club, there is surely something going on around campus that will be of interest to you. Keep an eye out on the student hub or on various bulletin boards and doors for notices of things you can participate in. Not counting certain very specific outliers, most of these types of groups will happily welcome new members throughout the entire year, so you need not worry that you’re somehow too late to join. If you still feel uncomfortable, you can always send an email to whoever is running the group and the worst thing that will happen is that you will receive a disappointing response. I promise it is worth the effort of writing that email even the outcome is not what you were hoping for.

For those of you who find that all of these organized events sound like a bit much, consider going to a lounge on campus and just… existing. This one might be the most intimidating sounding one if you’re anything like me because you might be wondering “well what do people do in the lounge? What’s expected of me socially in that space? Are there unspoken rules to how I’m supposed to situate myself? Do I need an invitation to hang out in a lounge or can I just go? What if I walk in and there’s a group of pre-existing friends that just want to do their own thing and want nothing to do with me?” If you are thinking all of those things, take a moment to breathe and I’ll walk you through it.

You do not need an invitation to be in a lounge. Even if there is a pre-existing group of friends in there, they are most likely there with the full understanding that other people are going to show up and they’ll probably happily welcome you into whatever they’re doing. If you are slowly becoming more accustomed to social spaces, feel free to wander in and sit in a corner with headphones until you have observed the room enough to feel comfortable engaging more. People do things like that all the time, you won’t look weird. I promise.

If you’re the kind of person who is intimidated by groups but is okay interacting with one or two people at a time, reach out to your RA or student navigator. I know, I know, it feels awkward to have the first person you’re making friends with be the person who has been hired to be nice to you, but I promise they aren’t just nice because they’ve been hired to be. These folks are naturally nice people, and that’s why they have these jobs. If nothing else, talking to your RA or student navigator might connect you to another cool person, and you can work from there.

Trust me, I know that all of this can sound intimidating, but it is so worth it to make friends and not feel like you are alone in this whole big scary university thing. In my first year, I dreamed of writing for the Doxa and never thought I would get there, but now here I am. I assure you that you can get where you want to go. It might be hard, but it is not impossible.

Advice on shower curtains:

Now, I don’t have a nice transition for this next part, but I think I’ve given as much functional advice as I have on how to be a social creature at CMU, so now it’s time to learn how to shower in

a way that doesn’t flood your whole bathroom. Most people have a basic understanding of shower curtains; they know that they’re meant to go inside of the bottom edge of the shower, and they know that they’re supposed to be closed while you’re showering, but that’s where they stop, and that’s where problems start. To get the most out of your shower curtain experience, there are a couple more things that you can, and should, be doing.

First things first, if all you’re doing is simply closing the shower curtain, there are very likely still wide gaps on either side of the shower that water can escape from, and that simply will not do. What you need to do is, once both the walls of the shower and your hands have become adequately moisturized, press either edge of the shower curtain against the wall, making sure you get plenty of the water on there to create a seal. You may have to go over it a couple of times, but ideally that should be enough to keep the water inside of the shower and off of the floor. What I do, personally, for a bit of extra security is place my shampoo and conditioner bottles on the bottom corners of the shower curtain as well which just makes it less likely that the edges will become unsealed throughout my shower. This also fights the ballooning inwards of the shower curtain that happens as air temperatures change.

Of course, if you are one of the sad souls in Concord whose shower curtain does not reach the edges of your shower, I offer you my condolences. Know that you are allowed to purchase your own shower curtain and no one will try to stop you.

I’ll be honest, there is not nearly as much advice that I can give on this topic, but it seems to be of equal importance considering how many lakes I have waded through in Poettcker bathrooms.

It is my hope that, through these two user guides, I have either improved the lives of new(/ish) students, or at least provided them with some amusement. If the challenges discussed in this article don’t apply to you, congratulations. If they do, you are not alone. Finding your way in the world is not an easy feat, but sealing your shower curtain is. Either way, you’ll get the hang of whatever you’re struggling with soon enough.

Bride of Christ

by Alisia Maendel

“I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting, and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security [...] More than my fear of going astray, my hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures that give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits that make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us: ‘Give [me] something to eat!’”

- Pope Francis

While on my journey to find my Mother, I walked along dark streets calling and shaking awake the huddled throngs of homeless, lost, beggars, and saints.

I saw one such figure curled against the night, drew near to quivering shoulders and touch the mound below the rags. It stirred, and turned, and I drew back with surprise, as facing me rising slowly on unsteady body was the gaunt and bent form of an ancient Cathedral. Clinging to her cane, covered in ash and dust, her rising face a mesh interconnected cracks and crevasses with skin sagging on limp bones, and eyes clouded with oozing puss and cataracts.

I ask uncertainly if she is the right one: Pray, what is your name? Why child, I am Mother Church, was the whispered reply. And I observed just then a whispered pride: a glint behind discolored eyes, titanium in flaccid bones, steadiness in slumped brow.

You cower from me, she observes. Is it my ugliness? Is it my age? She cackles at my unmeeting gaze. Oh foolish child, what

Did you expect the bride of him in virginal white? Did you think that I would remain unsoiled and unmarred?

That as I wrestled daily with this world, help the dead and dying, take beatings for the oppressed, lose sleep for the ill, burn and pine, mourn and play and labour in preparation for Him I would remain cleanoh, there look! She says, cut off at the wordSee my bridegroom comes!

And she crouches over staff, with gnarled fingers picks up her small flame and hobbles to meet the coming figure through the dark.

Her crooked, toothless smile greets Man as broken and ugly as she: With no beauty or majesty

Nothing in appearance

To make Desirable and appeal. Yet she reaches out with oil lamp and the flame illuminates kind eyes, and the aching desire in her haggard and hacking voice is unmistakable in her intimate call

My Least of These. You come at last.

And he reaches out cracked hands, with fingers not fully opening in their arthritic pain of scarred tissue surrounding wounds in his hands through which I see the light of the lamp and he reaches, gently caresses her marred face, eyes shining with delight into hers, and her light illuminates

Him who sees her whole as he exclaims in warm ecstasy:

My beloved.

Yard Sale by

Sophia Nast-Kolb

A brown sweater hangs on a rack, warm in the sunlight. I pick it up.

“$2,” says the old man, “my wife’s.” A tear glistens on his wrinkled cheek. I place a toonie in his hand, tug the sweater on. I’m wrapped in a grandmother’s hug. The old man smiles.

Reflections of a Summer in the Canadian Rockies

by Tai Linklater

Good visibility

The mountains appear stoic today

Happy to watch the river flow in the valley beneath them

Pleased by the birds soaring above

Not overly giddy, just content

Satisfied to simply be, and witness

A violent beauty

As I embrace the beauty of the mountains caused by the violent collision of two tectonic plates

I am taught that change can take a long time

And often must involve some sort of breakdown – erosion

But this change

With all of its violence

Produces such beauty

And I can’t help but fall to my knees and weep

Dinosaurs aren’t extinct?

Driving through the prairies of Alberta

You can see the foothills rolling on the horizon

In the middle of a field

Is a small pack of what appears to be dinosaurs

Grey silhouettes that resemble the lanky bodies of Gallimimus – chicken mimic

After a moment of confusion and excitement

The small pack of dinosaurs

Is nothing more than

A small patch of Deciduous

Would you believe me?

Would you believe me if I told you that a landscape holds more wisdom than humankind? Or that a mountain has moods?

Would you believe me if I told you that water is a therapist and a healer? Or that trees grieve the loss of their sibling?

What if I told you that rocks can cry? Or that rivers flow through the sky?

Step off your pedestal so that you can see, life is much grander than you or me.

Lamenting the end

The changing colours of the flora that embellish this mountainous terrain

While very beautiful

Are yet another reminder that this is not an endless summer

But as the clouds hug me in a comforting mist

And the sun breaks through to kiss my cheek

A tender love is ignited in my soul telling me that this isn’t the end

And that I must

Someday

Return.

Medians: Running Over James Magnus Johnston

by John George

(Note to Editor: If you can think of a better subtitle, please change it to that. Running Over James Magnus Johnston is about as “clickbaity” as it is. James is in this story, but as you will see he never does get run over. In reality, I believe his appearance made me realize that those hundred or two hundred (maybe more) people you see commuting are individual people who are entirely different from each other, not just one crowd of people. Anyways, it’s not non-fiction so I don’t really have to worry about anything, well, except for the fact that this is not fiction either.)

I’m sober, which is nice for 12:30 on a Sunday. I used to come here and drink two Coors Original and bake in the sun before the nausea would come with the thick dregs of warm beer. The guy behind me, though, is decently buzzed and embarrassing his friend next to him with, “I could play better. I should get on the field and do them a favour,” the smell from his tall Heineken can rolling to my feet. I tune him out and look at the pitch, 21 players clustered in a corner kick as the sun beats down on them. When the ball hits the mesh of our goalkeeper’s net a collective groan comes from the stand.

The announcer, coming from huge rust-stained speakers above, almost regrettably, announces that the Away team has scored in the 63rd minute. One of their men falls on the pitch and the stands yell in frustration at him for wasting time, furthering hatred for the team that is not “us”. He could feel absolute pain, the machinery of his leg could be what some medical professionals consider “absolutely fucked” but in four minutes he is running fast and dribbling with efficiency.

I look at the row of people in front of me for the sake of looking around and see a side profile that seems completely familiar. Nicely groomed and cut beard, light circular sunglasses--possibly prescription, a familiar crossbody bag. I’ve seen these all from my POLS class I dropped three nights ago. There’s an angle that I want to immediately say hi and talk about this and that, but there’s the realization that I am directly behind his head and that it is a Sunday with 32 minutes left of the game--and not a happy game. His friends are next to him as well, so I relax in my seat looking to the blue sky thinking, “It is a beautiful Sunday.”

***

I left the pitch and jaywalked to the median with the goose shit of the U of M campus around me. I crossed the first street with a young girl, her arm raised to hold her older brother or young father’s hand. She’s the size of a girl that a Mother Against Drunk Driving would imagine getting pulled and rolled under a white truck going 55km/h. We stood waiting for the next car to pass. This wasn’t a crosswalk, and we knew it, but any sense of guilt had left us. At the end of these games at IG Field cars lose their right of way--the pedestrians are the ones in charge. In the eyes of the law, this is obviously incorrect but a large mob leaving the stadium causes all sense of mutiny and MPI chaos. These roads function in anarchy, laws and cars be damned.

I got in the car and followed a route that seemed to get me out the lot faster. However, I had little direction on how to get back to my side of the city. I drove down the street I had just walked across and tried to get to speed to enforce that I had the right of way, the law was working with me now. A strange confidence comes from behind that wheel. A group started crossing to the median as I got to 50 to make them fear I would commit vehicle manslaughter, but they called my bluff, and I yielded as two-thirds of the group ran in front of my slowing car and towards the car lot. And then again, I saw the trimmed beard, sunglasses and cross-body standing on the median letting me go past. I waved, with sunglasses on and a car to disguise me, and drove away in some direction I believed was homeward.

Days in the Underworld

by Derek Thiessen

In the morning I awoke and felt the dread of life-end upon me. My bed, which the night before had been feather pillowed with large blankets, now burned my skin with vicious intent. My once sturdy room seemed to have collapsed into a rubble that was endlessly writhing and contorting, sucking my body deep into it. All around me, the pleasant sounds of silence which I had become accustomed to throughout the night were replaced by a dreadful shrieking, at once at a farther distance than I could hear and deep within my mind. I forced myself to rise from the fiery bed to a standing position on the floor. My body felt crushed by the simple weight of gravity, and I struggled to keep my balance. Making my way through the remnants of the room, I finally reached the window. Looking through it, I immediately recognized my location. Black fires burned through the otherwise pale and death-coloured landscape. Corpses and demons alike moved through the scene, their longtime home now mine: Hell.

The shock of my realization overcame me, the weight of gravity burdened upon my shoulders finally overtook me, and I collapsed to the ground. From my place on the rugged and broken floor, I saw a sign standing outside the window of my room. Undoubtedly this was marking my location within the depths of Hell, in which I would spend the rest of eternity, tortured by demons and regret. The signpost jutted out from the ground like a colossal spear, upon which was impaled an imitation sun that shone violently into the room. Beneath it, in cryptic and misshapen letters, was marked the awful name of my circle in Hell. The epithet, a mockery to life and painful reminder of presence on earth, bore into my eyes and brain. In a hot, blinding white beneath the sphere of fire, glared the name “Days Inn,” a crass remnant of melancholic existence.

I do not know how long I stayed lying on the floor, unable to raise myself. The rocks that made up the ground of the room where I resided became hot, burning my skin and sapping any energy I had acquired from the night’s sleep. With dreadful effort, I began to move myself. My muscles were weak, and the buckled floor became more precarious with every move I made. The sphere of fire raged through the window, causing my eyesight to wane. Finally, I managed to lift myself to my knees, then to a standing position. For the first time, I surveyed the entirety of the room in which I awoke.

It was a small abode, and it reeked of death. There were no life-giving appliances, merely a devil’s ridicule of human needs. The bed, as discovered, was glassy and white-hot, and the walls and floor crumbled and closed in upon me. The door, on the opposite side of the room as I was, stood forebodingly, as if with its own murderous intentions, a portal to torture. My body began to move, uninhibited by my better judgment. The trek towards the exit of the room seemed to take decades. Every step I made, my legs screamed with pain, and my inevitable torture moved closer.

I arrived at the door and moved myself through it. Beyond it was not the fiery, chaos-ridden field that I had expected, but rather a near infinite hallway, with multitudes of doors on both sides. These doors, they instilled an unease in me greater than anything I had seen thus far. Above all else, these doors were unnatural. Behind them, I expect, lay others about to awake and discover themselves in Hell. I did not dare to peer in to observe the horrible revelation, so I moved along. I ventured farther and found a flight of stairs. The motions placed upon me descended, and I came upon a large, empty room.

At the forefront of the room was a demon who seemed to have taken the form of a man. He was placed behind an immense slab of rock, which he sat at like a desk. Reluctantly, I made my way towards his seating place. I knew that my new existence in this place would never relent, never rest in my torture, but my apprehension yet overcame me. If I could have, I would have never approached him. But the movements of Hell itself are not to be stopped by desires. I found myself before the demon.

My mind raced with fear and theories for escape. The demon was seated before me, not three feet away, yet he had not by this time noticed my presence. I did not know the full aspects of my state in Hell, but I so greatly desired escape from this place I could not keep my thoughts from wandering. I wished

with all the humanity left in me that I could move from my spot, but my feet remained solidly in their positions, as if they were cemented into the floor itself. The demon lifted his face and looked into my eyes.

His face became larger and larger, until the visage of the being before me entirely filled my field of vision. The monstrous facade continued to grow until it had completely engulfed my being. His eyes, placed at this point behind me, glared through my head and read my thoughts. My fear—he saw every imperceptible unsettling of the mind that I had contained in me and armed himself with it. His giant mouth sat in front of my eyes, seemingly ready at any point to lift the maw agape and swallow me whole. Instead, the dreadful lips wrenched themselves into a sinister grin, slowly opening to reveal jet-black teeth and a horrid, bloodstained tongue. And horror upon horrors, he sucked in a breath that removed my entire body of its warmth—and spoke.

“Good morning, sir. How may I help you today?”

The evil rasp of the creature’s voice reduced my thoughts to ashes. Any genuine hope that I had had of escaping his wrath became like a fantasy. I felt as if my skin were evaporating under the glare of the eyes behind my head and the stench of death emanating from the mouth in front of my face. My body overcame me. Again, as I had in the morning, I fell to the floor, writhing in pain from the mere voice the demon had produced. Every horrid sense I had ever felt while alive came upon me, and was increased tenfold, I expect a mere fraction of the demon’s capabilities. The skin on my body felt as if it were being torn off, and salt was being poured on my raw flesh. I felt like there was no air in my lungs at all, yet I produced the most horrid scream I possibly could have. Every second felt like a million deaths.

My reaction pleased the demon, and his face receded from its complete envelopment of my being. Though in more pain still than I had ever been, the absence came as a relief to me. Now emerging from behind the stone slab, the demon stood over me. He had contorted his ghastly face to one of false concern, an obvious mockery to my pain. The demon kneeled above my wretched and destroyed form, and quietly whispered his next threat:

“Sir, are you okay? Do you need me to call an ambulance?”

Here I became livid; how dare he prolong my suffering? What would become of me he knew in the depths of his mind, yet he allowed me to stew in the pain he had already inflicted upon me and the dread of torture. In my anger I regained my autonomy, and with all the strength I could muster, reached out towards the demon. My fingers grabbed hold of the creature’s face and would not let go. The nails dug into his flesh, his ink-coloured blood mixing with my red, all at once running down my arms. At the tips of my fingers I felt contact with the demon’s skull, and I gripped with every ounce of strength in an attempt to crush it. Here the face of the demon became as fire, and my flesh was blackened and burned away. The pain was unbearable but the thought of victory over him allowed me to continue my efforts. My hands had been reduced to their bones, but the demon screeched with the same pain that he had inflicted upon me. I fell away, and my consciousness left.

Once again I awoke in a place unfamiliar to me. I feared the worst, that I had returned to my sitting place in Hell, but as soon as I allowed my eyes to open, my fears were relieved. I lay, this time on a cool mattress with silky covers, in a white expanse. This was no Hell. In rising from the bed, I found my strength was more than enough to stand, and that I had been rejuvenated by the bout of sleep. Expanse, but nothing. A soft existence. This was purgatory.

I heard a quiet noise, and turned to see a door begin to open and a presence enter the space. I moved to greet the visitor, but discovered I had been attached to the bed by a thin chain. A being in white drapes emerged, and spoke to me.

“Good morning, I have your medication and your breakfast, which would you like first?”

Conversation with Wab Kinew

words

In mid-August, a representative from the Manitoba NDP reached out to me asking if we at the Doxa had any interest in sitting down for an interview with Wab Kinew. A month later, I was sitting across from the leader of the official opposition in folio café, chatting about his party’s platforms, positions, and plans, and why he thinks it’s important for students to vote. This interview has been edited for clarity.

Mike Thiessen: Very briefly, as briefly as you can manage, what are the NDP’s hopes and plans for the province if elected?

Wab Kinew: We want to fix the healthcare system and to lower the costs for the average person in Manitoba.

MT: I wonder if you could quickly run through some of your healthcare promises, as well as your plans to make healthcare easier to access for international students.

WK: We know that one of the things that the [Progressive Conservatives] did was cut health coverage for international students, so international students now need to purchase it

in a private market. What we’re proposing to do is to cover health insurance for international students through the public systems – so basically give health coverage to international students here in Manitoba. The reasons we want to do this are that it makes sense from the perspective of the international student, and it sends a message to those folks that we value you as Manitobans, we hope you stay here long term, and we’re going to include you in that very

and photo by Mike Thiessen

Manitoban, very Canadian thing of having access to healthcare. I also think it gives our post-secondary institutions a competitive advantage, relative to other provinces who are also looking to recruit international students. So if you’re looking at CMU versus Royal Roads University [in BC], or Red River versus SAIT [in Alberta], and these ones offer health coverage, all of a sudden CMU or Red River looks more attractive. Whether you look at it from a human rights perspective, an economic perspective, or just a recruitment strategy, I think it’s a good move.

MT: So other provinces also don’t have international students’ health coverage enacted at this time?

WK: That’s right. On the healthcare picture more generally, we’ve got a comprehensive plan to help make Manitoba’s healthcare system what it needs to be for the future. I really hope the vision for healthcare is exciting for people who are in university and college today, and I hope it motivates them to want to become a nurse, or a physician, or a healthcare aide, or an x-ray tech. Basically, it starts with the staffing. There have been a lot of issues with burnout and frustration on the front lines. We know we need to repair that. We need to retain the people that we have – to plug the hole in the bottom of the boat, so to speak – and make sure we keep the good people working on the front lines. Then we’ve got to bring in the reinforcements – that’s education, with recruitment internationally and from other provinces.

Then we need to build up the healthcare system into what it needs to be for the future. So, in this part of Winnipeg, building a new emergency room at the Victoria Hospital is an important step. You have about a quarter of a million people in south Winnipeg and surrounding communities like Oak Bluff, even all the way down to Niverville, who don’t have ready access to a state of the art ER, so we want to provide that. We want to make other investments in building up primary care teams so people who don’t have access to a family doctor can get in to see one. We want to build local neighbourhood clinics that are run the way you run your life, meaning if you need an appointment, you can just book on your phone, get in to see a physician, and be back in your vehicle within fifteen minutes.

There’s a lot of modernization in building the health system into what it could be for the future that we really want to implement, but it starts with the people. It starts with treating healthcare staff better, and putting in place the incentives so that people work in the areas we need them, including in rural Manitoba, but right here in Winnipeg, too.

MT: Could you talk a little bit about your party’s environmental initiatives, and, more specifically, why someone with quite strong environmental convictions should vote NDP over Green?

WK: I think our approach is what people have been talking about when they speak of a just transition, which means doing the climate-facing work that we know needs to get done, but making sure that the working class, the blue-collar, the middleclass person comes along with us for that journey. We’ve got a great opportunity here in Manitoba to decarbonize, we have a low carbon electricity grid, we need to do work to address the past and ongoing effects on Indigenous communities here in the province, but we have a real capability to use that to now electrify transportation, to develop hydrogen as another energy source for both transportation and industry, and also to do some very good work helping peoples’ homes become more energy efficient. That’s an initiative I’m very excited about – we’re bringing forward a plan that would help Manitobans who are unemployed to join the workforce, either through social enterprise, small businesses, or to help install more energy-efficient heating systems in homes. That would not only create those good jobs, but it would save people money on their monthly hydro bill, and also free up electricity for these other purposes we’re talking about like electrification or exporting low carbon electricity to other jurisdictions.

When you look at that combined with some of our other initiatives, like doing a temporary cut to the gas tax and a one year freeze to hydro rates, in totality it is about the just transition. We’re going to be flexible with the affordability measures, so we can bring the working person, the middle class person who’s feeling stressed about inflation along with us, and take those steps to incentivize people to electrify transportation by offering a rebate for electric and hybrid vehicle

purchases. It’s really laying out a whole suite of steps together that will allow the province to make good on the potential to become a role model for other provinces. We’ve got the electricity grid to do it, we just need to take the transportation and home heating steps to make the rest of the equation come together.

MT: Does the NDP have plans for issues surrounding harm reduction and decriminalization, similarly to what BC has been experimenting with recently?

WK: Yeah, I think for us, it’s a suite of policy options. There seem to be arbitrary or ideological decisions made right now in the province with the current government [when it comes to] pursuing all those approaches. So for us, we really do think it’s important to listen to the experts, and what the experts are saying is that a supervised consumption site would actually help, so we’ll use that. They’re saying that finding ways to meet people where they’re at as a first step, whether it’s through needle exchange, overdose prevention sites, or testing supply, things like that

they’re important. So we want to use that as a way to keep people alive. I think everyone in the province has been affected by addictions in some way or another, whether it’s opioids or alcohol or what have you, and we all know the very real toll it can take on people. We want people to be well, and we want people to be healthy, and some folks are suffering to the extent that the first step is to just keep them alive so that they can then get the mental health and addictions services to be able to turn things around and hopefully make that recovery that we’re all hoping for. For us, harm reduction and that suite of policy options is important, but really it starts with listening to the experts, I think.

MT: As per a report from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation earlier this year, the average cost of rent in Winnipeg is already somewhat higher than the national average, and it continues to rise. As students contend with increasing costs of living across the board, what is the NDP going to do to ensure that young people have access to affordable housing, both while in school and coming out of school, entering the working world?

WK: Super important topic. We’ve committed to a $700 renter’s tax credit, so I think that

would be a big help on the affordability side. We also know that right now, even though we’re supposed to have rent control, it exists in name only. We’ve seen rents go up for some renters 10%, 20% a year, so we really need to bring more of a balance to that system. We need landlords to keep investing and improving the housing stock, making sure the places that they own are decent apartments, good units, and stuff like that. They have to be able to make those investments, but still, at the same time, it shouldn’t always go 100% in the landlord’s favour – there should presumably be consideration for the tenant and what they can afford as well. So we want to bring some balance into the rent control system. I think that those are some of the steps we can take, in addition to what I mentioned around freezing hydro rates and some of the other affordability measures that I think could help people.

I think for students, to ensure that on the tuition side, we’re helping in a targeted way with more funding for scholarships and bursaries. I used to work in the postsecondary world prior to politics, and I know that cost can be a huge barrier. We used to hear some students in great need say things along the lines of, “If you’re gonna raise tuition by $1,000, you might as well raise it by $10,000,” because it’s the same insurmountable barrier. So let’s get in there with the scholarships and bursaries, and wraparound programs like [AccessManitoba] that allow people to get financial help as well as tutoring.

I’d love to see us be able to collaborate with post-secondaries on more student housing options that meet the needs of students where they’re at. One thing I think we’ve seen with post-secondaries is that there are more mature students at universities today; students who have gone out and worked, and started families, in some cases, so we need more student housing, and it would be great to have some student housing that has two- or three-bedroom units as well, for students who have already started families. There’s a whole spectrum of tools on the table there, but I think first and foremost, right away, $700 renter’s tax credit and some direct affordability help, and then hopefully we can make some of these longer term investments to move the needle as well.

MT: You write in your memoir The Reason You Walk that after you graduated from the University of Manitoba in 2003, you had this assumption that having a bachelor’s degree would mean that jobs would start coming your way, which you quickly discovered was not actually the case. Several pages later, you say that good jobs in general were quite hard to come by for young people. When you reflect on the job market that you and your peers were experiencing in the early 2000s and compare that with today, twenty years later, what sort of thoughts come to mind, and what will your party to do make sure there are good jobs available to young people, especially coming out of coming out of programs like CMU, a mainly liberal arts university?

WK: We need to ensure that there is a strong economy, good jobs out there for people to work in. Some of our commitments on healthcare not only create jobs for people to work in the healthcare field, but they’re also going to create construction jobs, they’re going to create the design and engineering opportunities to stand up those facilities as well. Basically, we’ve laid out a plan that will create 10,000 more jobs than what the current government is proposing, and I think that will be a big benefit for the economy. I think that some of the moves I’ve talked about around climate-friendly future and decarbonization are going to create a lot of economic activity and work opportunities for people in terms of installing electrified transportation and installing more energy-efficient home heating. There are also the spinoff benefits, because there’s a ton of activity in the climate space with local food initiatives, and people who do a lot of the science and research on climate. I think that there’s tons of opportunity that will be created there.

I think the other area that I’d like to work on with the post-secondaries, CMU included, is to put more into research –Research Manitoba in particular, but more research opportunities generally. We see what’s happening with AI in our society, we see what’s happening with tech right now … what’s going to be the in demand skill ten years from now, twenty years from now? ChatGPT can write code, and some other algorithm can do some financial and potentially even health or legal task, so what

is going to be the skill set that’s in demand? A lot of people are arguing that liberal arts grads are actually going to be well-positioned, because they’ll have the ability to think critically, have the ability to collaborate, and those sort of human skills, critical thinking skills, are going to be very in demand in the future.

I think in the short and medium term, we need to be creating immediate job opportunities in the fields I’m talking about around healthcare, decarbonizing our economy, and construction. In the longer term, though, we need to be working with the post-secondaries to be putting the right bets on our future so that we’re meeting where our society is going in a very techinfluenced future, but also bearing in mind that sometimes research positions that face different [fields of work] are actually going to be the ones that are quite in demand in the future.

MT: To kind of take everything that we’ve just talked about and look at it from a slightly different angle, if the PCs are to be elected, what will that mean for students and young people over the course of the next four years?

WK: Well, I don’t think we can bear that, because it’s going to mean four more years of chaos in the healthcare system, which is already very bad. It’s going to mean four more years of inaction on climate change, and if you believe like I believe, that we need to take urgent action to address global warming, then we can’t afford to spare four more years. That’s why our message is that your vote is very important this year. As a young person and as a Manitoban from any walk of life, your vote is so important because it has the power to change government this year, and I think we do need a change of government. We’re asking for your support because I think we have the approach that’s needed, not just for the next four years, but also to set up the future that we want for Manitoba.

You have the chance to change the government this year. That chance doesn’t come up every day, and this is a really historic moment for Manitoba, for the communities that we call home, and so I hope young voters generally and post-secondary students in particular take advantage of the chance to vote this year, because your vote is going to

count for a lot.

MT: Like any election, there will be a number of young people across the province for whom this will be their first time voting. What do you think is the best way for new voters to make their own informed decisions on October 3?

WK: I would encourage people to take a look at not just the policy proposals, but also to look at the team of candidates – your local candidate matters. Then, just look at the bigger picture. What is the approach that you want for the future of Manitoba? What I mean by that is that I think we’ve had a lot of division these past few years, especially during the pandemic. Many things have divided Manitobans. Now I think it’s time for us to get back to building a common society, common province, common future, and that’s really what our campaign is all about. Our campaign slogan is “Make Life

Better, Together,” because we want to draw people in, and we know that the things we’re proposing are big ideas and big challenges: fixing healthcare, doing right by the climate, dealing with the inflation that’s going on right now. The only way we’re going to tackle those things is if we do it together, united as one province.

I’d encourage people to look at the issues that matter to them, but also at the bigger picture – which approach do you want for the future of Manitoba? Do you want us to continue to fracture off into subsections of the population, or do you believe that we can do big things together, that we can still come together as one people, and do something positive for the future? The latter is what I believe in, it’s what I want to be able to say that I tried to do, and hopefully we can be a part of that together.

We at the Doxa believe that it’s important for CMU students to vote in this upcoming election. As young people, we will be the ones most affected by the decisions of the government in future years, so it’s crucial to make your voice and values heard. The Manitoba provincial election will be held on October 3, and advance polling runs from September 23-30 (this is particularly helpful if you’re registered to vote in a division outside of the city). If you’re registered to vote in Tuxedo, the elections offices are located right here on North campus. We encourage you, the reader, to read up on the platforms and candidates of the various parties and to exercise your right to vote.

Prof Quotes

“I expect I will disappoint everyone today in some way or another.”

Paul Doerken

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“November is the time where it all culminates, like driving a car into a brick wall.”

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Kenton Lobe

“You know it’s not going to be a good day when you have to bring an extension cord to work.”

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Karl Koop

‘til next time...