Mislead perhaps

kwaddell — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:29:26 +0000

A number of columnists are misleading the public. It may be that they simply don’t know history. Hopefully it isn’t because they are malicious.
The deception is about the need for a strong military in Canada. The latest criticism is about our country’s need to defend our borders and air space. It was announced that a couple of Canadian air force planes intercepted a couple of Russian planes in the high Arctic. Some would argue that there was some political expediency about announcing that event while our Prime Minister Harper was on an arctic visit. Fair comment. But the columnists who seem to love criticizing anything that remotely resembles defending our borders want us to believe that all things military are a waste of time and money. They are so wrong.
These people simply don’t know their history. If they don’t believe that Russia and China would love to have control of Canadian resources, they are deceived. Of course they would and the aggression exhibited by both those countries within the last 60-70 years evidences that position.
Even if Canada wasn’t vulnerable, we need to maintain the integrity of our borders. And it isn’t that Canada’s borders haven’t been threatened in the past. During WWII, the west coast of Vancouver Island was actually shelled by a Japanese submarine. As implausible as an actual invasion might have seemed, it was scarily obvious that enemy ships could and did penetrate well into Canadian waters. The sub in question was only 400 yards off the shore and didn’t inflict damage with several shells simply because they couldn’t get the range accurately. Several shells fell near a village and lighthouse. During the same time frame, my uncle, while serving with the Royal Canadian Navy, claimed he saw a German U-boat in Halifax harbour. Reading accounts of the time, he may well have and the only reason the U-boats didn’t attack is that they wanted to get home alive with accurate intelligence about the eastern seaboard of Canada.
Some will say, that WWII was then and this is now. The old enemies, Japan and Germany, are now allies. Russia used to be a threat but it is no longer. We should all be friends. That kind of thinking just about lost Britain to Germany and Hawaii to Japan. Any country can be threat to another it makes that decision. In smaller skirmishes around the world, borders are continuously shifting because of conflicts.
Admittedly, one of Canada’s strengths is that it is huge and its borders are somewhat distant from potential enemies. An actual invasion of Canada from the sea would be unlikely. Unlikely that is, if you don’t count terrorists, if you don’t count infiltrators, if you don’t count spies posing as students and business people.
Those who want to ground our planes, dock our ships and send our troops on permanent leave don’t understand history, they don’t understand nationalist aggression on the part of ill-intentioned countries. They certainly don’t understand religious based terrorism.
Our planes need to keep flying, our ships need to keep patrolling and our troops need to continue training. The cost is great but the consequences of not investing in military strength is far greater.
Again referencing my uncle, his first trips out onto the North Atlantic in WWII were with ships with wooden dummy artillery guns to fool the enemy into thinking there was some strength there. Subsequent trips had sailors holding wooden training rifles for a show of strength and later when real guns were actually available, no bullets were issued. Had Nazi Germany known how weak we actually were, they could have torpedoed and shelled Canada at their will and pleasure.
A country must ever be ready to defend itself, Canada certainly wasn’t ready in 1939-40. Any move to make it less ready in 2010 is absolutely foolish.

Lessons from the woodlands

kwaddell — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 19:44:48 +0000

The town of Pine Falls received bad but not unexpected news this week. Their Tembec paper plant will not likely find a buyer and about 300 people will not be going back to work. The plant is over 80 years old and apparently is in need of huge upgrades. It makes newsprint and it seems there’s an over supply of newsprint in North America.
If the plant is outdated then there has not been the necessary upgrades. A few years back a bunch of money was put into de-inking ONP (old newspaper) in an attempt to bolster re-cycling and save trees. That didn’t work out as processing new or virgin wood was cheaper. That’s not surprising but it is disappointing. The newspaper industry would like to see a strong market for ONP as every household and every business has some to feed into the system. Recycling is a good concept, it just didn’t seem to work out at Tembec.
I have no way of knowing whether the Pine Falls plant could have been made viable. I do know that Neepawa’s Springhill Hog Plant is only about 20 years old and has undergone some upgrades in it’s relatively short lifetime. Then when Hytek bought it a couple of years ago, they proceeded to marshall $69 million into it in improvements. No where near that kind of money has been put into Tembec and apparently it shows. Tembec has placed their resources elsewhere and is poised to sell off it’s equipment. They can’t be blamed for that, it’s their money and they need to place it elsewhere. It’s been reported that just to heat the buildings cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Some blame can be placed with the NDP Selinger government though. If what local MLA Gerald Haraniuk says is true, and Haraniuk is a pretty straight shooter, the government took three months to even visit the place after the closure was announced last year. They also recently paid Tembec $2 million dollars in compensation to not cut timber in provincial parks but didn’t attach any conditions to that grant that would have secured jobs. Neither of those moves seems very bright but then governments aren’t noted for business skills anyway.
At least the NDP government through Labour minister Jennifer Howard have acknowledged that there are still large timber resources that could be utilized in some way. If they are hoping to attract other users they may have a bit of a struggle as there is considered to be an oversupply of lumber in the system now. If they are looking for a pulp user, this particular patch of bush may find itself too far from a plant to transport the wood for processing. Someone, someday, will want to sustainably harvest the eastern Manitoba timber and use it for lumber or pulp or whatever but it may take a long time.
So, what in the long run is a government to do. The answer quite simply is “less”. If governments, at all levels, were to seriously look at where they put our money there could be huge savings. There could, in turn, be reduced taxes across the provincial and federal spectrum. Taxes could be reduced for citizens and corporations. Government involvement in business should be minimal. Food inspection, health and safety regulations are areas that need to be under government. Granting money to industry, or to farmers for that matter, isn’t what governments should be about. However, we are so ensnared in a government network direct government employment and of grants, loans, incentives and even insurance that the economy has become very heavily dependent on government.
The net result is that our levels of unnecessary regulations and over-taxation has burdened us down so badly that more businesses may not survive. Even worse, fewer industries will come here, it’s just too much hassle to meet all the government regulations. For example, Manitoba is faced with a housing crisis but government regulations for solid existing buildings “being brought up to code” is a major hindrance to investment.
Manitoba has always been an economy based on renewable resources. For all of it’s history, the abundance of resources has been Manitoba’s reason to be. From the buffalo harvest to the canola harvest, Manitobans have utilized resources to advantage. It will always be that way but it might be less of a struggle if governments were not so intertwined into the economy.

Heading in the right direction

kwaddell — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:34:53 +0000

One advantage of running a weekly newspaper is that you get to practice your trade every day and in a weekly cycle. When you are successful, you can build quickly on that success by making more improvements the very next week. If you make a mistake, you can adjust the following week. There’s a pattern, a cycle in the weekly newspaper business that, if handled properly, allows a paper to advance in manageable increments. All changes that are made hopefully make for a better, more efficient product for our readers and advertisers.
Because of the news gathering and advertising experience that we have in the weekly newspaper business, we are in an ideal position to adopt and adapt the internet (web) to give more back to our readers and advertisers. Many readers may have already checked out our double duty website, myWestman.ca where we feature news and advertising from the wider area. It has links to The Neepawa Banner, the Rivers Banner and links to several businesses and organizations. In the coming weeks and months, we plan to add in more advertisers. Why would we do that? The answer is quite simple, it will provide better service for our advertisers. It’s cheap for our advertisers and it makes revenue for the papers. If we didn’t make money, we and all our employees wouldn’t be here.
People read newspapers and people read the internet. The key word is “read” and for a website to be readable, it has to have news, pictures and ads. Just like a newspaper. So we have all three on our website and as an added bonus we have our You-Tube channel which is shared with The Neepawa Banner, the Rivers Banner and Neepawa’s NAC-TV local access channel.
Our myWestman.ca hasn’t just happened overnight. It’s been slowly developing for a few years now. We’ve had some challenges but we think we have it figured out now. With over 180,000 hits in a recent month, we know it’s being read. Our combined circulation of the Rivers Banner and The Neepawa Banner is 10,000 papers. That’s about 40,000 per month. If each of our papers gets read twice that means 80,000 “hits” as they say in the website lingo. Our web site has more than twice the hits of our newspaper so we are thrilled with that growth
A few years back, a few naysayers proclaimed that newspapers would die in the onslaught from the web. We old newspaper guys put on our thinking caps and soon figured out that we had heard all this before. Radio was supposed to kill newspapers. TV was supposed to kill newspapers. Well, some us aren’t quite that old, we had actually read about it somewhere, likely in a newspaper. Radio and TV didn’t kill newspapers and the web won’t either. It will change newspapers no doubt, but it will make the good ones better. We think that our papers are good ones and that they are getting better, enhanced by the internet
And that brings us to where we are at with The Neepawa Banner and Rivers Banner. We are gradually building our web presence so you can access us from anywhere in the world at any time of the day or night and any time of the week. If you just can’t wait for the latest news, then you can click on our web site. More and more western Manitoba stuff will be there all the time if our plans all work out, more news, more ads too. And I can promise you that, as of now, there is no way I want to have those annoying pop-up or overlay ads. They are as annoying as having your little brother purposely stand in front of the TV just to bug you.
We feel The Banner is heading in the right direction. You can be a casual news reader on our websites. You can get all of either Rivers or Neepawa electronically by subscribing on-line. You can subscribe and get a hard copy in the mail. If you are in our paper coverage area you receive it in your mail box for free and you can also go on-line as many times as you like at myWestman.ca, for free of course.
The Banner wasn’t built in a day and neither has our website been done overnight either. Both are a work in progress and that’s a good thing. We are adaptable. As always, we appreciate our readers and our advertisers. If you need a newspaper ad you can phone us at 476-3401 or 328-7494. If you want to contact us by email you can use ads@neepawabanner.com or info@riversbanner.com.
If you want us to build you a website, we can do that too. We’d be happy to direct you to some we have built.
And you can always get hold of me personally by dropping in to the Neepawa Banner office at 243 Hamilton Street in downtown Neepawa or by phoning either phone number above and leaving a message. I can also be reached by email at kwaddell@neepawbanner.com.
I have been receiving suggestions about the newspaper business for over 20 years, so please don’t stop now. We have lots more growth to achieve together in the years to come.

Haunting words

kwaddell — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:34:10 +0000

The upset mother exclaimed, “I can spend $10,000 on vet bills for my dog but in Manitoba I can’t spend $10,000 on my daughter’s health.” The words spurted out with a mixture of anger, irony and black humour.
What the lady said is absolutely true. It doesn’t matter how much money you have or how badly you might want to spend it, you can’t pay for most health care procedures or surgeries in Manitoba no matter how much it might improve a person’s health. At the same time you can spend thousands on the health of your dog or cat.
Why is it that you can’t spend your own money on improving your own or your child’s health? The answer is quite simple and it’s buried deeply in the NDP party doctrine. Just ask former health minister Dave Chomiak, the old Gary Doer foot soldier. Chomiak will tell you that if you “allow” people to spend their own money on health care you will set up a two tier system and all the “good” doctors will quit working for the government and go and work in the private sector.
There’s bad news for Mr. Chomiak. Millions of dollars of good Manitoba money is being exported out of Canada for health care being purchased by Manitobans in other countries. People are not dumb nor are they unresourceful. If they have a health condition and if they want to try and fix it, they simply go on the internet and find a place that will give them what they want. It could be in Bottineau, Minot or Fargo, North Dakota. It could be in Rochester, Minnesota. It could be in India or Puerto Rico. It’s even got a name. It’s called “medical tourism”.
In the meantime, those same millions of dollars could be spent or invested in Manitoba. More research could be done, more jobs created and, lo and behold, new cures and procedures developed and promoted. It could be that the people who couldn’t afford to go to Puerto Rico or North Dakota might actually gain some benefit from the extra research, training and development.
Manitoba has a fine health care system as far as it goes. Unfortunately, how far it goes is heavily regulated and heavily restricted. You can do this but you can’t do that. You can have this test but not that one. You can go here, but not there.
In the bluntest of terms, it’s a screwy system.
We have accepted a heavily unionized, heavily regulated, entirely top-down run system and every day another batch of people suffer. Frequently, perhaps daily, a person dies because they can’t get better care. Our family has experienced it first hand.
If you are going to be sick, be sure you have an advocate near by, especially if you are old. The health care system is so over-burdened and underfunded that neglect in our hospitals is rampant. It isn’t malicious neglect, it’s just plain, old under-staffed, over administered and under-funded neglect.
The government has taken us down the wrong path for too many years. Here are some solutions:
1. Set up a system where capital investments can be brought in from the private side. If a new hospital is needed then let the private market build it on a long term lease basis. If a private firm builds a hospital care home to a certain set of agreed upon specs, you can guarantee it will be built cheaper and faster. It’s called on-time and on budget because they are looking to make buck on their investment.
2. Open up the health care system so that people can purchase procedures. If a certain procedure has a long waiting list, then hire more staff and pay them with the collected fees. Get rid of the waiting lists.
3. Have elected hospital and care home boards. Have the chairs of each local board in a region form the RHA boards.
4. Prioritize all government services and drop the lowest priority. Privatize the next priority. Keep the highest priority, the essential levels of service.
These are fundamental changes that need to happen in Manitoba. We are being taxed to death and getting little to show for it. Health care is devouring all our tax resources while roads and infrastructure are failing at a remarkable rate.
The current process is simply not sustainable. Taken to its logical conclusion we will either be spending all our tax dollars on health care or we will be getting poorer and poorer health care. Until the majority of the voters in Winnipeg see the light, we will continue on this road to disaster.
Ed. Note: The Winnipeg Free Press reported on Wednesday that a mobile clinic is to be located across the Manitoba-U.S. border in Pembina, North Dakota. Clinic owner Randy Spielvogel said he anticipates the clinic will be flooded by eager Manitobans. He said he’s received hundreds of calls from desperate Manitobans frustrated by the province’s wait-and-see approach regarding MS sufferers wanting a new test on their veins to detect a possible blood flow restriction. Spielvogel, a nuclear medicine technologist and former Winnipegger, said he wants to give patients the chance to know whether narrowed veins could be a factor in their MS symptoms and he expects it will cost between $300 and $500 for the test.

G20 protestors perhaps protest too much

kwaddell — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 14:23:01 +0000

It would seem that world leaders need to gather together occasionally. Being very public figures there’s obviously going to be lots of pomp, ceremony, photographs. And, oh yes, money spent. The president of the United States had over 850 people come with him.
Apparently there must also be protests.
The most ironic of all protests are the ones complaining about carbon emissions and carbon footprint. Not sure how all those protestors got there from all over the world without burning jet fuel. Perhaps they magically just appeared on the streets of Toronto. Individually, they could have done more for the environment by staying home.
Much has been made of the cost of the G20 and G8 conference. Reported at a billion dollars, it seems excessive to say the least. Not sure why the summit cost that much money. President Sarkozy of France says his G20 will only cost a tenth of that, that is to say $100 million. But then Sarkozy presides over a country where “demonstrators” burn hundreds of cars a month on average. Guess it depends who you want to cover the cost for the pleasure of having demonstrations, the government, the insurance company or the car owners. Last count was 1,200 burned cars in France in just a few months. In Manitoba, bad little boys learn to go out and steal cars. I guess in France bad little boys learn to go out and burn cars.
As stated, meetings of world leaders are a necessity it seems. It certainly beats a having a world war. World leaders have been having little chats for time immemorial. And they have always cost money, perhaps just not this much. No one person has the answer to this whole mess. It probably cost too much money. Thankfully we won’t have to pay for it again for a long time. Hopefully, some productive decisions came out of the summit.
The aftermath and the ensuing discussion seems to center around how the police treated demonstrators. Many people are protesting how the police treated the crowds. Let’s not be too quick to criticize the police. A large crowd was conducting a peaceful demonstration. As it proceeded along the street, certain men donned black masks and broke away from the group. They started breaking windows, burning police cars and generally causing all kinds of havoc. Police ended up arresting several people over the course of the weekend, about 600. Perhaps some shouldn’t have been arrested, but it seemed that as soon as someone was arrested, the police were swarmed by people protesting the arrest. It was made worse in one case by a journalist who said he hid his credentials so he “could get in closer and undetected” with the window smashers and car burners. He got arrested. Not much sympathy there.
Certain “prominent” journalists were arrested or roughed up by police. In a crowd of window smashers and car burners, your prominence fades. “Be careful what company you keep” applies to journalists and to protestors alike. In a crowd gone stupid, you will be lumped in with all the rest. Remember the saying “Don’t be surprised when you fly with the turkeys that you get your tail feathers shot off.” From my computer screen perspective, and as a sometimes photographer, it looked like a great opportunity to stand well back and use the telephoto lens. One journalist was very upset that as he was being arrested he wasn’t allowed to interview the arresting officer in the middle of it all. If that lad’s momma was teaching him anything, he sure wasn’t listening.
Another interesting thing about the protest was the variety of issues. Poverty, housing, pro-Israel, anti-Israel, pro-Palestine, environment, banking issues and dozens more. If the people who were protesting really believed in what they were doing it might be suggested that they stay home and actually do something for other people. Isn’t it strange that protestors at these kinds of events only show up the day before and beat it back home before the leaders even get on the plane for home. Perhaps they all have jobs to go back to on Monday morning. Now that would be a refreshing thought.
If 600 were arrested, how many protestors were actually there? And what did they accomplish? The whole protest thing, in many cases, is a waste of time, money and jet fuel. Shakespeare said something about protesting too much and in this case there was indeed too much protesting.
Festivals and fairs
If you want summer food, parades, music and lots of other fun things to do you are in the right place at the right time. This week is the Minnedosa Fair and Summer Fun Fest and you can read all about it in The Neepawa Banner, The rivers Bane and my Westman.ca.

Same for the Rivers Fair, it’s 100th next Wednesday and the Neepawa Lily Festtival is coning up on July 23-25 and the Harvest Sun Music Festival on August 13 and 14 in Kelwood.

Lots of news this week about high school grads and the Rapid City fair which was very successful.

A special one time event you won’t want to miss out on is the unveiling of a special Canada Post stamp to highlight roadside attractions including Gladstone’s very own Happy Rock. That event happens at 1 p.m. Monday.

For more information on these headlines, visit mywestman.ca. Complete pages with pictures and advertisements can be viewed when you subscribe to Neepawa or Rivers Banners: neepawabanner.com or riversbanner.com. The advantage to a paid subscription is searchable pdf files and access to archives.

We average 3,000 daily hits! Interested in advertising on this popular mywestman.ca site? You can run an ad there for less than $1 a day! Reply to this e-mail and I’ll be happy to provide you all the details.

You can read my column below or online at mywestman.ca or kenwaddell.ca

Ken Waddell, publisher of myWestman.ca, The Neepawa Banner and Rivers Banner

G20 protestors perhaps protest too much
It would seem that world leaders need to gather together occasionally. Being very public figures there’s obviously going to be lots of pomp, ceremony, photographs. And, oh yes, money spent. The president of the United States had over 850 people come with him.
Apparently there must also be protests.
The most ironic of all protests are the ones complaining about carbon emissions and carbon footprint. Not sure how all those protestors got there from all over the world without burning jet fuel. Perhaps they magically just appeared on the streets of Toronto. Individually, they could have done more for the environment by staying home.
Much has been made of the cost of the G20 and G8 conference. Reported at a billion dollars, it seems excessive to say the least. Not sure why the summit cost that much money. President Sarkozy of France says his G20 will only cost a tenth of that, that is to say $100 million. But then Sarkozy presides over a country where “demonstrators” burn hundreds of cars a month on average. Guess it depends who you want to cover the cost for the pleasure of having demonstrations, the government, the insurance company or the car owners. Last count was 1,200 burned cars in France in just a few months. In Manitoba, bad little boys learn to go out and steal cars. I guess in France bad little boys learn to go out and burn cars.
As stated, meetings of world leaders are a necessity it seems. It certainly beats a having a world war. World leaders have been having little chats for time immemorial. And they have always cost money, perhaps just not this much. No one person has the answer to this whole mess. It probably cost too much money. Thankfully we won’t have to pay for it again for a long time. Hopefully, some productive decisions came out of the summit.
The aftermath and the ensuing discussion seems to center around how the police treated demonstrators. Many people are protesting how the police treated the crowds. Let’s not be too quick to criticize the police. A large crowd was conducting a peaceful demonstration. As it proceeded along the street, certain men donned black masks and broke away from the group. They started breaking windows, burning police cars and generally causing all kinds of havoc. Police ended up arresting several people over the course of the weekend, about 600. Perhaps some shouldn’t have been arrested, but it seemed that as soon as someone was arrested, the police were swarmed by people protesting the arrest. It was made worse in one case by a journalist who said he hid his credentials so he “could get in closer and undetected” with the window smashers and car burners. He got arrested. Not much sympathy there.
Certain “prominent” journalists were arrested or roughed up by police. In a crowd of window smashers and car burners, your prominence fades. “Be careful what company you keep” applies to journalists and to protestors alike. In a crowd gone stupid, you will be lumped in with all the rest. Remember the saying “Don’t be surprised when you fly with the turkeys that you get your tail feathers shot off.” From my computer screen perspective, and as a sometimes photographer, it looked like a great opportunity to stand well back and use the telephoto lens. One journalist was very upset that as he was being arrested he wasn’t allowed to interview the arresting officer in the middle of it all. If that lad’s momma was teaching him anything, he sure wasn’t listening.
Another interesting thing about the protest was the variety of issues. Poverty, housing, pro-Israel, anti-Israel, pro-Palestine, environment, banking issues and dozens more. If the people who were protesting really believed in what they were doing it might be suggested that they stay home and actually do something for other people. Isn’t it strange that protestors at these kinds of events only show up the day before and beat it back home before the leaders even get on the plane for home. Perhaps they all have jobs to go back to on Monday morning. Now that would be a refreshing thought.
If 600 were arrested, how many protestors were actually there? And what did they accomplish? The whole protest thing, in many cases, is a waste of time, money and jet fuel. Shakespeare said something about protesting too much and in this case there was indeed too much protesting.
G20 protestors perhaps protest too much
It would seem that world leaders need to gather together occasionally. Being very public figures there’s obviously going to be lots of pomp, ceremony, photographs. And, oh yes, money spent. The president of the United States had over 850 people come with him.
Apparently there must also be protests.
The most ironic of all protests are the ones complaining about carbon emissions and carbon footprint. Not sure how all those protestors got there from all over the world without burning jet fuel. Perhaps they magically just appeared on the streets of Toronto. Individually, they could have done more for the environment by staying home.
Much has been made of the cost of the G20 and G8 conference. Reported at a billion dollars, it seems excessive to say the least. Not sure why the summit cost that much money. President Sarkozy of France says his G20 will only cost a tenth of that, that is to say $100 million. But then Sarkozy presides over a country where “demonstrators” burn hundreds of cars a month on average. Guess it depends who you want to cover the cost for the pleasure of having demonstrations, the government, the insurance company or the car owners. Last count was 1,200 burned cars in France in just a few months. In Manitoba, bad little boys learn to go out and steal cars. I guess in France bad little boys learn to go out and burn cars.
As stated, meetings of world leaders are a necessity it seems. It certainly beats a having a world war. World leaders have been having little chats for time immemorial. And they have always cost money, perhaps just not this much. No one person has the answer to this whole mess. It probably cost too much money. Thankfully we won’t have to pay for it again for a long time. Hopefully, some productive decisions came out of the summit.
The aftermath and the ensuing discussion seems to center around how the police treated demonstrators. Many people are protesting how the police treated the crowds. Let’s not be too quick to criticize the police. A large crowd was conducting a peaceful demonstration. As it proceeded along the street, certain men donned black masks and broke away from the group. They started breaking windows, burning police cars and generally causing all kinds of havoc. Police ended up arresting several people over the course of the weekend, about 600. Perhaps some shouldn’t have been arrested, but it seemed that as soon as someone was arrested, the police were swarmed by people protesting the arrest. It was made worse in one case by a journalist who said he hid his credentials so he “could get in closer and undetected” with the window smashers and car burners. He got arrested. Not much sympathy there.
Certain “prominent” journalists were arrested or roughed up by police. In a crowd of window smashers and car burners, your prominence fades. “Be careful what company you keep” applies to journalists and to protestors alike. In a crowd gone stupid, you will be lumped in with all the rest. Remember the saying “Don’t be surprised when you fly with the turkeys that you get your tail feathers shot off.” From my computer screen perspective, and as a sometimes photographer, it looked like a great opportunity to stand well back and use the telephoto lens. One journalist was very upset that as he was being arrested he wasn’t allowed to interview the arresting officer in the middle of it all. If that lad’s momma was teaching him anything, he sure wasn’t listening.
Another interesting thing about the protest was the variety of issues. Poverty, housing, pro-Israel, anti-Israel, pro-Palestine, environment, banking issues and dozens more. If the people who were protesting really believed in what they were doing it might be suggested that they stay home and actually do something for other people. Isn’t it strange that protestors at these kinds of events only show up the day before and beat it back home before the leaders even get on the plane for home. Perhaps they all have jobs to go back to on Monday morning. Now that would be a refreshing thought.
If 600 were arrested, how many protestors were actually there? And what did they accomplish? The whole protest thing, in many cases, is a waste of time, money and jet fuel. Shakespeare said something about protesting too much and in this case there was indeed too much protesting.

It’s matter of vision

kwaddell — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 05:03:39 +0000

Each year at this time I linger a bit longer as I view the pages of the many community papers we receive. It’s grad season and it’s fascinating to view the grad photos, both individual and group shots. Grad is a sad but wonderful time of year for students and for their families. In south-western Manitoba, many of the grad classes are still getting smaller. Some towns only have a handful of grads. Whether the group is large or small, the optimism, the anticipation and the sense of accomplishment can be seen in the young people’s faces.
Over the 20 plus years of publishing and reading grad editions, it’s interesting to note how some things have changed. We sense that the classes of 2010 seem a bit more serious, conservative even. The hair styles seem more traditional, the facial expressions a bit more mature. There’s still lots of fun and spark noted there but there seems to have been a change.
Some things don’t change though. Our brightest and best are graduating. Many are leaving our communities. Families have invested huge amounts of time, love and money into each graduate. The government (taxpayers) has invested about $100,000 into each student. Now they are heading off into an adult world with ambitions and dreams for their future. It could be sports, education, arts or business but all have plans to pursue. Our communities are torn about how to view this process. While we hate to see them leave, we know they must launch out, whether it’s far from home or close by.
As a community, we can only hope that many will return, that some will stay and that we will have enough vibrancy or viability in our community to attract some new people to come to our respective areas. We need skilled employees, dedicated business people, talented artists. We have to hope that our community planning is strong enough to both retain and attract.
Unfortunately, much of our community planning has been by default and not by design. There are really only two choices, design or default. Over the decades, most communities have assumed that they have resources (land, water and people) so what more could one ask for. That may have been all that was needed to attract settlers but it certainly doesn’t meet the test of 2010. People want services, they want good jobs, very nice housing and cultural events in abundance. The “rural” experience is only satisfactory to a very few. We are becoming more urban in our tastes and consequently, our needs.
In times gone by, Grandpa could go the woods with his axe over one shoulder and a gun over the other and come back later in the day with everything that was necessary to keep hearth and home satisfied. Not so today.
Today we need a broader vision and that vision has to be cast boldly by our leaders. In most cases, that’s not happening and perhaps that’s why some of our grads look so serious. Grads may be asking if our leaders really know what they are doing and where we are being lead. Or are we just waiting for the next government grant, the next handout, so we can struggle on for a few more years? Many of our rural centres are in decline. Some are holding their own and a few are thriving. It could be argued that none are thriving the way the could be or should be and I personally hold that belief.
What is needed is a clear vision and a clear plan. The towns that didn’t have a clear vision and a clear plan are no longer there. In the Banner readership area there are 20-30 towns or villages that simply no longer exist. Not all the factors of decline were in their own hands, but many were. Just as an example, our major export, grain, was allowed to slip out of local control and into the control of conglomerates. The same holds true for food processing and transport. Only recently is food processing and transport starting to come back to its base.
If we are to survive as communities, and in fact grow as communities, then we must have vision and a plan to carry out that vision. If we do, then our grads will have even more reason to smile as the years roll by. If we don’t we simply won’t have any grads.

Pension money going to the wrong place

kwaddell — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 21:13:28 +0000

CTV News reported on Monday night that, “The Conservative government will table legislation on Tuesday to scrap old-age pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement payments to inmates aged 65 and older. It’s believed the changes would affect 400 inmates in federal prisons and 600 more in provincial institutions.” If the legislation passes, Conservatives say it would save $10 million each year.
To most Canadians it came as a surprise when the Canadian Taxpayers Federation revealed that the government indeed pays old-age pensions to prisoners. That simply doesn’t make sense. Like where are they going to spend it? As to what they might do when they ever get out of prison, the government isn’t saying, but presumably they can resume their pension benefits upon release. Also, there will likely be a hue and cry about the pension income being cut off will hurt spouses who may need that money to survive. No matter how the legislation looks, (it was scheduled to be introduced June 1, 2010) there will likely be court challenges. In a country like Canada we could never pass common sense legislation without court challenges.
There’s another way the government could save some money in the prisons and that is to stop holding election votes in the penitentiaries. In Canada prisoners have been granted the vote. That’s ridiculous. It didn’t used to be that way and it shouldn’t be that way now. When a person is imprisoned, the right to vote should be taken away. Running an election is expensive enough without having to pay all the extra costs of running a ballot in prisons. The extra security and extra elections staff costs a small fortune.
Aside from the cost and the absurdity of granting prisoners a vote, how do you suppose they will vote? Just imagine the conversations in prison. Prisoner A says, “ Hey Jack, how are you going to vote?” I doubt that Jack will say, “I’m going to vote for the MP that will take a tough stance on crime, keep marijuana illegal and clean up all the gangs.” The scenario is laughable. There’s no way on earth that prisoners should be allowed to vote. Removing their right to vote and saving the election costs is the right thing to do
Another way to save money in prisons would be to segregate the violent criminals from the white collar criminals. I doubt that the commercial fraud and corporate fraud artists are much of threat to the physical well being of the general public. If in fact they should be in prison at all, white collar criminals should be in a separate facility. If there was ever a case that could be made for tracking devices or ankle bracelets for law breakers it could be best made for white collar criminals. Just keep them away from the cash register. Save the high security cells for murderers and pedophiles.
Governments need to be always on the lookout for how to save money. These instances, once stated, are very obvious and the cost-saving measures should be implemented immediately.

Why a person should want to become Premier– part 5

kwaddell — Thu, 20 May 2010 19:57:56 +0000

Manitoba is lacking in leadership! Manitoba is like just about every community group. A new project or program comes up and most agree that it’s a good idea. Then they all look around the room wondering who is going to take the lead. Eventually someone pipes up with “Well, I’ll help but I sure don’t want to be in charge.” That opens the door for the possibility that someone with wrong motives and lesser abilities can just step in and take over. With our last two premiers, that would appear to be the case. Instead of men with vision and foresight, we got Gary Doer and Greg Selinger. If history ever shows these men in the same light as Campbell, Filmon, Roblin or Schreyer it will be a huge surprise.
Many people should want to be premier of Manitoba. In a multi-week series of articles I have explained my reasons. Those columns covered health care, education, justice and agriculture. This week I want to take a brief look at environment, recycling and taxation.

Environment
Every environmental challenge needs to be seen as an oportunity. Hog manure isn’t a problem, it’s an asset if used properly. You don’t ban hog barns, you encourage proper construction and placement. Utilization of the manure for energy and fertilizer should be researched and encouraged. Human waste isn’t a problem, it’s a resource that can also be converted to fertilizer or energy. Garbage isn’t a problem, it’s a resource than can be utilized as a source of energy or recycled.

Recycling
We have it mostly wrong in Manitiba. We don’t recycle nearly enough and there’s no incentive to recycle other than guilt. Recycling needs to be set up on an economic basis. If material is truly not recyclable, perhaps small local incineration for energy projects could be set up. There are systems where garbage can be incinerated very cleanly in small to large operations and converted to energy.
If we truly want to recycle, then the person who bends over to pick up the pop bottle or cardboard or whatever, needs to be compensated for doing so. The rebate for containers and products needs to go to that person directly. It used to work for pop bottles. Private recycling works well in many countries. There’s simply no incentive, except guilt, to recycle in Manitoba. The money goes to the municipalities and nobody ever sees it again. A pro-active program, where the person doing the recycling is directly rewarded, needs to be implemented if we truly believe in recycling. Otherwise, just build larger landfills. But nobody really wants that.

Taxation
We need to set long term taxation goals that will signal individuals and corporations that we are open for fair, clean, sustainable and morally defensible businesses in Manitoba.
These long term (10-15 year) goals need to include:
1. Elimination of the payroll tax
2. Elimination of education taxes on residential, farm and commercial property
3. Reduction and elimination of the PST
4. A flattening of income tax
5. Removal of income tax for people living below stated minimum (poverty) income levels
These and all the other suggestions from the past few weeks require leadership and foresight, instead of politicians cowering in back rooms wondering what people “might” vote for they should come out strong and be leaders. It would be a refreshing and welcome change.

Why a person should want to be premier of Manitoba- Part 4

kwaddell — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:47:14 +0000

Part four in this series will deal with agriculture. Inspiration for the question about being premier of Manitoba came, as weekly readers might remember, from Premier Douglas Campbell. He asked me when I as a little boy If I wanted to be premier of Manitoba some day. Here’s what the internet version of the Canadian Encyclopedia says about D.L. Campbell.
“Douglas Lloyd Campbell, politician, premier of Manitoba 1948-58 (b at Portage la Prairie, Man 27 May 1895). D.L. Campbell won election to the Manitoba legislature in 1922 as a Farmers’ candidate in Lakeside riding, which he represented for 47 years. In 1936 he was appointed minister of agriculture in the Liberal Progressive government of John Bracken, and in November 1948 he replaced Bracken’s successor, Stuart GARSON, as premier.”
So Campbell was a farmer at heart and in fact. It would appear that he was the last farmer we had as premier of Manitoba. In the intervening years we have assigned that role to business people, lawyers and as of late, career politicians. Agriculture used to be king, now it’s pretty much only a visitor in the outer court.
The Manitoba agricultural industry is crippled by a number of factors, much of it at the hands of government. The beef industry, just for an example, could still recover if government would pass enabling legislation that would facilitate federally inspected slaughter plants across Manitoba. The historic strength of the farming was always locally grown, locally processed food. After local needs were looked after, then the food could be exported. It’s a time honoured tradition, first the farmer feeds himself and then he feeds the world. Local food processing plants cooperating in their export efforts is the wiser way of creating a food producing and exporting power house in Manitoba. Farmers can produce enough food to make Manitoba’s economy a tower of strength. Government can enable but government can’t do it. Nothing good to eat grows in government offices. Food grows in the fields and pastures and barns of Manitoba and we need to enable and encourage a sustainable growing agriculture industry in Manitoba. We could and should grow more of our own food and we should export much more finished product.
Just as farmers have little hope of ever electing another farmer as premier of Manitoba, there is little hope for Manitoba agriculture meeting its potential under the current government policies. Ironically, our most important industry, food production, has been largely ignored by government over the decades and now is being actively thwarted by the current government. Farming has become the whipping boy for every real and imagined environmental issue in Manitoba. Small hog operations are about to be wiped out by regulation and large ones are mostly forbidden from very necessary upgrades.
We need a comprehensive farming, food production and processing policy in Manitoba. It’s not likely to come from business people, lawyers and career politicians, at least not until they are about to starve to death.

Why a person should want to be premier of Manitoba (Part 3)

kwaddell — Thu, 06 May 2010 14:39:35 +0000

The title above now appears for the third time over this column. Given the low regard for politicians that many people have, it’s a valid statement. It used to be that many young people would aspire to be politicians and some still do. In spite of what politicians have done to tarnish the image, being a politician can be and should be a good thing. It’s through democratic politics that we govern ourselves and bring about change. That’s why people should, with pride, aspire to elected office.
In Manitoba we have been lulled into a strange kind of complacency. With a dull government, and with ineffective opposition, Manitoba has stumbled along, never taking large risks, but being so cautious as to never make much progress either. As Curtis Brown recently said, Manitoba politicians aren’t about to produce “transformative change”.
In the two earlier columns, I outlined the need for transformative change in health care and education. This column deals with an area that needs transformative change in the worst way and that’s criminal justice. Manitobans are being held hostage by criminals at all levels, from the petty to the murderous. The criminal element is being aided by the “hug-a-thug” mentality that has permeated our our social system. We need transformative change and we need it now before more damage is done to property, life and limb
In it’s simplest form, as an example, car thieves sitting in jail can’t steal cars. At the outset, or at the immediate time of the crime, it doesn’t matter why they stole the car. It could be because they were rich and bored, because they were poor, because they were drugged up or drunk. It might be because they were psychotic or simply spoiled rotten. It doesn’t matter why they stole the car, get them off the streets and then deal with the issue. Sure, they may need drug rehab or they may only need a stern talking to or they may need food in their belly. Whatever the issue, we certainly aren’t going to solve their problem back in the community the day after they’ve stolen a car and wrecked it or worse yet killed someone. Get them off the street and then deal with the problem. Any person, young or old who steals a car has problem and their past years in their current environment hasn’t solved it yet. Don’t expect a ride in a cruiser car to see the judge for 15 minute is going to solve it now.
The same is true for any other crime. Criminal activity comes into a person’s life over a period of time. Putting that person back into the same environment isn’t likely to produce different results. Sad to say, perhaps we need more jail cells. We definitely need more drug and alcohol treatment facilities. Most of all we need to wake up and realize why we have crime. Crime is not new but it seems to be increasing and it can’t all be blamed on poverty. Some crime is happening among the quite well-to-do segments of our society.
More jail cells, yes, more treatment, yes, harsher penalties definitely. But what about the seedbed of crime, the human heart? Nearly every segment of our society has overlooked a major premise of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Man is not basically good as modern thinkers would have us believe. Mankind is capable of great wickedness. Left without good teaching, without rules, without restraints, anyone is capable of dreadful things. As unpopular as it is to say so today, God’s rules, the Ten Commandments, are the only real answer to our problem of behaviour. One can ignore all the theological teachings about heaven and hell, they can scorn the idea of Jesus and salvation. All that can be tossed in the intellectual trash bin if you so desire, but there’s no escaping the Ten Commandments. All evil known to mankind, past and present, comes down to one or more of those commandments having been broken.
That’s a hard message to get into the forefront today. Crime is blamed on poverty or residential schools or inadequate parenting. Some will blame television or the internet or the lack of proper housing. To contrast that line of thought, there are many children living today, smiling and thankful, on the edges of garbage dumps in Mexico and some turn to a life of crime but most don’t. They just try to survive and be happy. What’s the point? Poverty and bad circumstances don’t necessarily result in a person becoming a criminal. Great circumstances don’t guarantee a life of proper behaviour. Someone choosing to take the wrong path leads them and the ones they have influence upon into crime.
As a society we need to do much more to prevent and punish crime. More importantly we need to teach, admire and uphold the Ten Commandments in our homes, our schools and in our churches and synagogues. If a person is never taught right from wrong, how will they ever know?

Reasons why a person should want to be Premier of Manitoba (Part 2)

kwaddell — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:59:01 +0000

In last week’s column it was suggested that many Manitobans should want to be premier. It should be the most important job in the whole province. It should be a good thing to aspire to, to lead the province, especially a province that has as much potential as Manitoba.
The seeds of political activism were planted early in my life by meeting politicians at various stages of my early life. Out of a life-long interest in politics and how the political system works, I see a need for substantive change in Manitoba. Last week we looked at health care and what needs to be done? This week I’d like to take brief look at education and education funding reform.
In the early 1900s, schools began “consolidating”, resulting in the closure of many one room schools. The consolidating centred around several towns as the closest one room schools closed down. That process slowly evolved but didn’t change a whole lot until 1966 when the large school divisions we have today came into effect. The larger divisions not only closed more of the one room schools but effectively shut down many small multi-room schools. That process continues today.
•Last week I suggested re-establishing local boards for health care. The same structure needs to adopted for education. Each school should have a board of no more than five to seven people elected locally. The larger school division boards, if in fact they are needed at all, should be populated by the local school board chairs. Education funding needs to be done on a per student basis, one envelope funding so to speak, no more project and program-by-program funding. Simply stated, funding needs to be done on a per capita basis.
•Funding education from property taxes is the wrong method. Property taxes for education made some sense when every quarter section farm homestead sent kids to school and when many businesses had owner apartments upstairs. The system makes no sense now and in fact is unfair. Education is a service to all people and so should be borne by a broader tax base than just property owners. Owning property doesn’t mean you can afford school taxes. Manitoba needs a long term plan to get education funding off property, and especially off residential property. Politicians, instead of giving lip service to the process, should establish a 10 year plan to achieve this goal
•A huge segment of Manitoba youth are subjected to sub-standard education. That segment is largely made up of First Nations students. Manitoba needs to enter into immediate negotiations with the federal government and First Nations people to take over the education on all First Nations communities. The federal government has underfunded and neglected First Nations education for 100 years and we are betraying our First Nations’ people by allowing sub-standard education to take place.
•As unpopular as standardized school testing is with many Manitoba teachers it needs to be re-implemented and the results posted. Students (and parents) need to know how students are doing in school relative to other students and to other schools.
•Universities need to run entrance exams. The only criteria to get into many university courses is to simply show up. That’s neither wise nor acceptable. It’s not fair to the university, to the student, or to the public who actually foots the bill for a huge percentage of university education costs. University entrance exams are essential for the benefit of everyone.
One of the main problems with education today is that the major decisions have been largely handed over to the Manitoba Teachers Society and a bloated provincial government bureaucracy. Real decisions were long ago taken out of the parents’ hands. It may take a long time to move decision making back to where it should be but for the sake of everyone, and especially for students, decision making must be moved back into parent’s hands.

Reasons why a person should want to be Premier of Manitoba-Part 1

kwaddell — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:44:58 +0000

When I was six or seven years old I was at an event in my home town of Holland, Manitoba attended by Premier Douglas Campbell. I met him and he asked the not so unusual question that a premier might ask a young boy. “Do you want to be premier some day?” Naturally I answered yes and to to this day I’d still like to be premier of Manitoba. Many people ask why on earth would you want to be a politician? Many Manitobans should want to be premier. It should be the most important job in the whole province. It should be a good thing to aspire to, to lead the province, especially a province that has as much potential as Manitoba.
Here’s why a person should like to be premier.
Manitoba has huge potential, largely unmet to date. We have developed a system of government that tells us that in order for anything to happen, the government has to do it. It’s a pervasive and convincing system. It deadens our economy, dulls our minds and devastates our spirit
Manitoba needs strong leadership. We have had just that for the past ten years. We have had very strong, top down leadership but it’s been entirely in the wrong direction. Socialism is a system of government that states that government does everything for everybody. It’s the “womb to tomb” or “cradle to grave” mentality that has been foisted upon us by successive governments.
In the past ten years or so no provincial opposition party has come forward with a policy to lead Manitoba to greatness. For ten years, we have seen political parties do little more than trot along behind the NDP with opposition parties grasping the little crumbs that fall off the government gravy train. There opposition amounts to little more than “me, too!” or “I can do that better!” The “Me too!’ attitude simply doesn’t cut it. Not in reality and not in perception. We don’t need more of the same approach, we need an entirely different approach.
Manitoba needs a major shift in how we do things so that our great resources of people, minerals, farming, manufacturing and research can be developed . It’s not just for our own selfish needs that development must be encouraged. We have a huge world out there waiting for us to feed them, to lead them and to encourage them.
Manitoba is underdeveloped, under-populated and lacking in vision.
We need substantive change and it has to come soon.
What needs to be done?
This column is the first in a series of columns on various issues. This week’s issue is health care.
We have crippled our health care system completely with a “let’s pretend” government-only model of health care provision. We need to gradually and carefully open up health care to new innovation and new funding. The demand for health care and life style improvement is huge and we need to let the demand for it be met by sources other than government.
To disband the RHAs would be too disruptive and expensive at this point but some controls need to be put in place. First and foremost they need a salary cap on admin positions in the RHA. That any official in an RHA is paid more than the minister of health is ridiculous. If the “top” people flee from that kind of salary cap then let them go. However it’s a travesty that we have so much money being spent in the “corner offices” of the RHA system leaving so little to be spent in the hallways and wards.
The RHAs need to be re-adjusted. Local health care facilities need their own boards or in small towns the local care home and hospitals need their own combined board. Those boards need to be elected or at least appointed by the RM and town councils. The chairs of the local boards need to be the ones sitting on the RHA boards. The minister of health should appoint the chairman and that’s it, no other ministerial appointments. With a return to local control, health care might have chance to catch up in this province.
Next week-Education and education funding reform

What did you learn from this?

kwaddell — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:00:29 +0000

The penetrating question in the headline above is asked by Earl Woods, Tiger Wood’s father. The original question was posed several years ago in an interview with Woods Sr. and is replayed in a Nike commercial that has just been recently aired. What did you learn from this?
That’s a question that Tiger Woods obviously needs to answer, but it’s a fair question that can be posed to us all. When bad or negative things happen, it’s a question that we all need to answer.
Let’s get one thing straight. There are times when very bad things happen to people and it’s absolutely no fault of their own. Cancer can strike without warning, accidents happen. Death and injury occur every day somewhere in our country. Against such happenings we have little control.
However, when any bad incident happens, we need to examine how could it have been avoided. If, in a person’s life, or in a family’s life bad things keep on happening then there needs to be a timeout. A time of reflection when events and issues are evaluated. What happened anyway and why did it happen? If there’s no apparent cause then you simply move on. As the Alcoholics Anonymous group teaches, there are only some things you can control and AAs ask for the wisdom to know the difference between what can be controlled and what can’t.
Some will say life is a gamble but that’s only partly true. We can control our own destiny to some extent.
If a farmer seeds oats he will harvest oats. If he seeds nothing, he will harvest nothing. So it is in life overall.
We must examine what it is we are seeding? Many evil and negative things happen in the swirling world of alcohol for example. It’s well known that the weekend workload of the RCMP largely centres around our bars.
Does anyone ever ask what good comes out of a bar? Not much. Or to put a finer point on it, what good ever comes out of a bar after midnight? To press the point further, what good ever comes out of any social event involving booze after midnight?
Another example. Nobody seriously condones the drug scene except for a few diehards who insist that marijuana is actually good for you. (Ed. note: possible medical applications excepted.) Given that the negative side of the drug trade is in fact so negative and considering how much education has gone into illustrating that point, why do people even consider getting involved in drugs? A minimum wage job is a lot safer than drug dealing, but that wisdom is apparently lost on hundreds, if not thousands, of people.
The news media is partly to blame on this point. Stories about down and out young women, for example, will parrot the idea that they have to turn to prostitution to make a living. That’s an outright lie. Anyone who needs help can get temporary help in this country, be it from the government, a church, a shelter or many other sources. Once that temporary help is in place, a person can get a job, which at minimum wage now pays $9 per hour and soon will be $9.50. Prostitution isn’t needed to make a living, it may be needed to live beyond their means or to support a drug habit but it’s not needed to make a living. Then the media will tell you that you can’t have houses or an apartment or a car on minimum wage. That’s true, but that’s not even realistic. You can get a room or share an apartment and get food on minimum wage. But you can’t have a room and food and expect to support a booze or drug habit along with it.
Mistakes, negative events, really bad stuff, these aren’t things to dwell upon. They are events or happenings that need to be evaluated. Then Earl Woods’ question, “What have you learned from this?”, can be immensely helpful to us all. If we ignore the signs on the road of life, we shouldn’t be surprised if we go into the ditch.

What’s so good about Good Friday?

kwaddell — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 20:03:53 +0000

Today (April 2) is Good Friday, an oddly named holiday. Perhaps the most oddly named holiday known to the English language. Why would anyone call a day “good” when it marks the death of the leader and founder of Christianity. How can a Friday be good when its purpose is to mark the death of Jesus Christ?
Christmas is good, that marks when Jesus was born. New Year’s is good, the actual day shifts depending on which calendar one uses but it should be a happy day as it marks the beginning of a new year, a fresh start, even if only symbolically. Easter is good, as it marks the rising or resurrection of Christ from the tomb. That should catch peoples’ attention and for many it does. For many others, Easter is hidden behind the folklore of Easter bunnies and easter eggs and chocolate, chocolate, chocolate!
How can Good Friday be good? It’s a tough sell. It comes just five days after Palm Sunday. That was a day when Jesus came into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, feted by huge crowds who shouted “Hosanna.” They laid cloaks on the road in his path and palm branches. He was a hero. Problem was, the Jews were expecting a different kind of hero, a worldy king with the charisma and leadership to overthrow the Roman domination of their lives and land. They expected a king to come triumphant into Jerusalem, not on a donkey, but possibly on a large horse. Maybe even a white horse and ready to lead an uprising against the Romans. Didn’t happen!
Instead, the adoring hundreds (or perhaps thousands) faded away as Jesus was put on trial and executed on a cross. That’s some way to treat a king. It wasn’t a “good Friday.” It was a disastrous Friday and all of Jesus’ terribly disheartened followers knew it and grieved together about his death.
So Saturday followed Friday and still no relief from grief. Jesus was dead. Their friend, their leader, their hope, dead in a cold rocky tomb; a borrowed tomb at that. The Romans even put guards at the entrance of the tomb to make sure he stayed put, stayed dead.
So Christianity seemingly died that day, even before it was born. Jesus was dead, just as today we can say Buddha is dead, the 13 previous Dalai Lamas have all died, Mohammed is dead, all the titular heads of Japanese Shintoism are dead. Moving on down the line into lesser mortals, Mao is dead, Trotsky is dead, Lenin is dead, Marx is dead.
Even further down the line, Lennon is dead, Elvis is dead; the list goes on.
But it is indeed a Good Friday because Jesus is alive. Jesus rose on Easter Sunday, conquered death and walked the earth again and then returned to Heaven from where He had come. Jesus is alive, it is indeed a Good Friday.
“To God be the glory, great things He has done;
So loved He the world that He gave us His Son,
Who yielded His life an atonement for sin,
And opened the life gate that all may go in.”
Fanny Crosby 1820 – 1915

“Up from the grave he arose;
with a mighty triumph o’er his foes;
he arose a victor from the dark domain,
and he lives forever, with his saints to reign.
He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!”

Robert Lowry 1826-1899

Embracing the future

kwaddell — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:50:30 +0000

The Town of Rivers and its neighbouring municipality, the RM of Daly, is facing a problem that is common to many towns and RMs. The difference is that Rivers is more than facing their problem, they are actually doing something about it. Rivers needs a new skating rink. Riverdale Community Gardens and the curling rink are 60 years old. The largest hall in town, the Legion, seats about 225 to 240. It’s capacity appeared to be stretched to 400 as Rivers residents gathered to hear the Town of Rivers council’s approach to a new facility. Judging by the line-up at the door (a block long) and judging by the tension in the room, the council could have been in for a very rough ride. As the meeting unfolded, it was apparent that most people in the area recognize the need for a new rec facility. Most want to see one built. Some don’t like the proposed downtown location. Some don’t like the fact that council has decided to partially fund the construction with a $345 per property levy. Many speakers voiced those concerns. A few simply said they can’t afford to pay the levy, although ironically, one opposing speaker inadvertently admitted that his hard-to-hear speaking voice was a result of being a heavy smoker. At a cost of over $3,000 a year for a pack-a-day smoker, $345 for a rec. facility seems a paltry amount.
The debate was orderly, long and vigorous with many good suggestions coming forward. The rink is 62 years old. A “plan” to build a new one has been in the works, in one form or another, for 10 years. Since the last “plan” was brought forward, the cost has doubled to $6.5 million dollars. As one speaker said, “Procrastination has cost us over $3 million dollars.”
The council did their job, they did what they were elected to do. They made a decision. To their credit they have several reserve funds to cushion some of the needed expenses. Nobody wants to pay more taxes. There may in fact be people who can’t afford to pay the levy, it will be a hardship for some.
As Monday night’s meeting wore on (it was over three hours of intense exchanging of ideas) it became evident that the majority of those in attendance wanted to go ahead. A few speakers actually congratulated council on their work. The mayor and council of the Town of Rivers have recognized a problem, turned it into an opportunity and are suggesting the town go forward. One speaker pointed out the alternative by reminding the audience that Moline, Harding and Bradwardine all used to be service centres with rec. facilities. Now, those communities are without services and are almost non-existent.
There really is no option. Rivers must move ahead. It’s a growing town, young families are choosing Rivers as the place to raise their families.
What can other councils learn from the Rivers experience? There are several lessons. Rec. facilities have a life span of about 40 years but get stretched to 50 or 60. Newer facilities might last longer as they tend to be steel, not wood, and are better engineered. A town has to have rec. facilities and in western Canada that usually means hockey, figure skating, curling and some other ice sports.
The Rivers council, in hindsight, could have communicated more information and communicated this project’s details more clearly. For example, the new facility will contain an “NHL size” ice surface. That irked some folks and was seen as excessive. Truth be known, most skating ice surfaces are “NHL size”, or very close to it, and the extra few feet doesn’t make much difference to the cost. Another example was the new facility contains a “Smart Room”. One speaker asked the obvious question, “What the heck is a Smart Room?” It’s simply a small meeting room where, as a councillor explained, you “can hook up your computer”. Even that wasn’t a real good explanation as a Smart Room should be a space you can connect your computer to the internet and do video conferencing and thereby have a face-to-face meeting with people anywhere in the world in real time and without the cost of traveling. A Smart Room somewhere in a community is really good idea but it was wasn’t well communicated.
The Town of Rivers council, and at least two previous councils, need to be commended for taking action. Council has done a good job. If any criticism can be leveled, it might be that they could have said more and acted faster. The citizens are, for the most part, behind council.
Editor’s note: In the interests of full disclosure, Rivers Banner owners, Ken and Christine Waddell are property owners in the Town of Rivers as they own the Rivers Banner building.

Building a better buggy

kwaddell — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:54:08 +0000

Taking part in a Canadian Community Newspapers seminar a couple of weeks ago set me to re-thinking some things. The seminar was by conference call, not even a video conference. Certainly conference calls have been around for a long time. They save a lot of time and jet fuel (money). We had participants from all across Canada and we discussed a topic that has become near and dear to newspaper publishers. The topic– “How to stretch newsroom resources”.
Newspapers have evolved. There’s no question that changes have been huge in the last 10 years especially but it’s actually just change speeding up. It used to be that even a small community newspaper had two or three reporters. Slightly larger papers would have several with each one specializing in a field, politics, sports, community news.
But time and technology, combined with the competitive edge, have changed all that. Competition comes to the newspapers from other newspapers but also from many other sources. The classified pages get competition from the community bulletin board. Bulletin boards are free, newspaper classifieds aren’t. Internet classified sites are often free. Then there’s radio classifieds programs. Newspapers compete with radio, TV and of course with the ever-present internet.
No other institution can gather news, edit news and distribute news quiet like a newspaper can. It’s a complete package, news, photos, advertising. It stays around, you can always find it on the coffee table or the kitchen table. A newspaper has many advantages over internet, radio, TV and even bulletin boards.
How does a newspaper stretch it’s newsroom resources? Basically the same way community newspapers have always stretched. We accept submissions. While we are often flooded with submissions, many of them aren’t local. We need, and we invite, local input.
So what format do we need? It used to be that any old way would do. Handwritten, no matter how poorly, might be accepted. Now we prefer it typed up and emailed. A newspaper can still type up submitted news material but it has a much better chance of being used if it’s well written and submitted by email. Similarly, pictures can be submitted and we welcome them. They can be emailed or brought in on disc, either CD or a camera disc. We can usually download right off a camera if the camera cord comes with it.
The secret of stretching a newsroom’s resources is for a newspaper to invite the community to be the newsroom. A newspaper will still go out and cover stories but many times the community can do a great job. Many times when we show up with a camera at an event we have to get in line with the private citizens who are also snapping photos. Nowadays many private citizens have way better digital cameras than we can afford.
In today’s business climate everybody has to do more with less so there won’t be as many news reporters and photographers around as there used to be, but that doesn’t mean newspapers can’t have as much or more news content as they have had in the past.
The internet, rather than being the enemy of newspapers, has become our best friend. That’s how we view it.
This newspaper long ago learned the buggy maker’s lesson. The buggy makers that realized they weren’t buggy makers but transportation providers survived and became car makers. The ones who insisted on being buggy makers disappeared. The newspapers that realize that they aren’t just newspapers but are news providers will survive and thrive. They’ll use every tool available. That’s why the Neepawa Banner and the Rivers Banner have web sites that are hooked into our myWestman.ca site, which is also owned by my wife and myself.
Unlike the buggy making industry of a 100 years ago, the public can take a strong role. Ordinary people couldn’t help build cars but ordinary people can and do help build newspapers by contributing parts to the assembly line. Those submitted parts are greatly appreciated. So send in your stories and photos. Oh, and by the way, send in those ads too. They are greatly appreciated too.

It takes more than time

kwaddell — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:07:17 +0000

When we are unsure about the future consequences of a certain action or inaction we resort to the old saying, “Time will tell.” Actually time doesn’t tell much, it’s pretty much a passive thing. A truer statement might be that “time marches on”. Another adage is, “Time stands still for no man.” While that’s true, it doesn’t speed up for anyone either.
Yet another saying, “Time heals all wounds”, isn’t true, but it pacifies some people. Physical wounds indeed usually take time to heal but while man may provide the cure, it’s God who provides the healing.
So too with emotional healing, time simply measures the passage of days, months and years but without man providing the cure and God providing the healing, emotional wounds can fester forever.
That’s why the current approach by many people to the wounding of First Nations people over the past century and a half is totally unproductive. On the First Nations activist side, re-opening the residential school debate and finding new ways of attaching blame to successive generations of former Europeans isn’t very productive. Similarly, people, regardless of background, who want to forget it all aren’t solving a lot of problems either. On the “white” side of the question, the continued and ongoing agonizing and soul searching and blame attaching isn’t helpful. Let’s get a couple of things straight. I didn’t put anybody in residential schools. Neither did my father or grandfathers. They were all born in Scotland and had absolutely nothing to do with Canadian governance back in those days.
The second thing we need to get straightened out is that, given conditions for many First Nations people in the mid to late 1800s, the government of the day felt they had to do something to help First Nations people. And further understand, that sending children off to boarding school was a well accepted and somewhat successful practice in England. For us to second guess the governments of the day is unfair and unproductive. To study the policies and learn from them is a good thing.
The simple passage of time will never solve the emotional hurts of the past unless man provides the cure and God provides the healing.
First Nations need to stop blaming the “whites” and everyone, First Nations and whites, need to learn from the mistakes of the past and move on with better policies and programs. There have been enough apologies already. Another adage comes into play here, “Actions speak louder than words.” So, given that everybody is sorry that bad things happened, and given that we know things need to change, what needs to happen before too much more time slips away?
We all need to understand that the reserve system is unfixable. If in fact FN people want to have self- government as individual “nations” across the country known as Canada then they have to become much more municipal in governance, generating taxes and setting by laws. Individuals need to get title to their homes. Home ownership is a very important step towards beating back poverty. Our home is often our biggest investment and our most important possession from a physical and emotional point of view.
Economic opportunity for many FN communities could revolve around local food production. We now have the technology to grow many kinds of vegetable based foods within a community, regardless of how remote the community may be. Greenhouse technology is a must for remote communities to be enabled to grow their own food. Domestic animal based food production isn’t practical in many remote communities because hay and grain can’t be grown there, but vegetables will grow anywhere you have a greenhouse, water and sunshine. The wild animal harvest is still an option in many remote communities.
Getting back to time, it was proposed back in the 1960s by Prime Minister Trudeau and Indian Affairs minister Jean Chretien that the so-called Indian Act be dissolved. The FN leaders objected. If they had agreed, it would be interesting to see how that “cure” might have succeeded to bring about positive change and healing. Instead, a law that was brought in in the 1800s and was to be abolished in the 1970s, but wasn’t, is still inflicting fresh wounds today.
Until man provides the cure, God may not be able to do the healing.

The gold medal

kwaddell — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:21:43 +0000

Canadian winters need great events to give us some much needed diversion. This year we have had the Olympics and our whole nation’s attention was indeed diverted toward this great event. The critics can complain and so they should. There’s great expense and as with all human endeavour, there’s some down side. But that said, the Olympics, in spite of the politics and in spite of the heartbreak of losing by a hundredth of a second, the Olympics are still a great thing. Anybody who says that they didn’t enjoy some part of the Olympics needs some therapy.
The Olympics are an open tribute to the achievements of mankind, both mentally and physically. It’s the ultimate expression of adulation for human effort. The Olympics make no apology for the fact that they showcase human effort and human effort alone. God simply isn’t part of the official Olympic mindset. In fact God, or the mere mention of God is so completely absent from all official aspects of the Olympics that it becomes almost conspicuous by it’s absence.
The only time that God was even mentioned was in the 14 times O’ Canada was sung, the occasions of the awarding of our 14 gold medals. An all time high for golds by the way.
And so it has become in Canada. We are a secular country and that’s the way most people want it to be. We as a country barely recognize God. It would be good if as a country, we recognized God and all He has done for us a bit more but the secularization of our democracy has pretty much erased that from the public scene. Except for the O’ Canada reference, God is pretty much on the sidelines.
But we shouldn’t be surprised. God made mankind in his own image with a free will. We all have a choice, we can acknowledge God or we can ignore Him. Many people “seem” to ignore God. The vast majority of people in Canada certainly ignore the church, be it Christian, Jewish or other.
As devoid of reference to God as the Olympics appear to be, I’m willing to wager that just about every athlete that competed was in prayer mode at some point in their Olympic competition. Whether it was while being in the air high over a ski slope or gasping for breath at the end of a cross-country ski run, I’m sure there were many prayers said. Perhaps by some who hadn’t prayed in a long time.
Recognizing God and praying to God is very personal thing. Just as we are made with a free will, we are not constrained by God to recognize Him, to love Him, to listen to Him or to obey Him. That’s our God-given individual freedom and choice.
A wise person will realize that they are born, they live and then they die. Life spans are obviously different in length. No one gets a choice about being born, few choose when to die. Both are sacred events or should be. What happens in between birth and death and how we use that time is affected by our choices and choices that are made for us. Some we can control, some we can’t. In Canada, we get to control a lot more choices than people do in some countries. Even within Canada , some people have very limited choices.
However, there’s one choice that every adult or young adult person has available. That choice is to serve God or not. Regardless of talent, physical abilities or disabilities, regardless of riches or lack thereof, each and every person has a choice. And we shouldn’t be surprised. God made us that way, with a free choice. The decision to be an Olympian may not be available to us.The decision to be rich or famous may not be available to us. But the decision to serve God, our maker, is available to us.
In that life event we can all have a gold medal.

Contributing to the public debate

kwaddell — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:25:45 +0000

By Ken Waddell

There are two “traditions” in the newspaper business that have done great harm to public debate.
One is the fact that among the newspapers that actually publish an editorial, its written by an editorial board or, if written by an individual, it’s written anonymously. There is a marked difference between an editorial and a column. What you are reading here is called an editorial but by today’s definition, it’s a column. In today’s newspaper world of anonymity and weak journalism, what they call an editorial would never have a writer’s name or picture attached it. It wasn’t always that way. Some famous, even notorious editors have applied their names and pictures to editorials over the years. Somewhere over the years it was decided that an editorial can’t be an individual opinion, it must be a “corporate” opinion. Corporations don’t have a conscience so how can they be expected to have an opinion?
Perhaps the reason for anonymity could be to avoid backlash or repercussion against an individual writer. In times past, readers who disagreed with an editorial might even inflict violence on a particular writer. Not many editorials conjure up that level of animosity any more. Today, anonymity prevails even over the most bland of topics. In 20 years of writing I have only had one threat to my life. It came early in the days of The Banner when I got an anonymous late night phone call from a man with a distinct British accent. He claimed to be a labour union leader and he assured me that I would be taken out of I kept on writing against the unions.
In Canada’s style of political blandness, there are few issues that generate the level of animosity that could result in harm to an editor. In many countries that is not the case and journalists and editors face danger and death all the time. In Canada, the only topic today that might generate any real threat to a writer would be if he dared to discuss the terrorist intentions of certain Islam extremists.
The other newspaper “tradition” that has developed is the fact that all the news industry has far too many “repeaters” and too few “reporters.” Getting the real news in the papers isn’t that hard. It takes some work and a willing staff at a local paper to accommodate local submissions. Most local newspapers do that fairly well. Some not so much. Community newspapers are having a bit of a struggle as ad revenues seem to be a bit more elusive than say 10 years ago. However, it’s obvious that small towns still like their newspapers as, including our own two papers The Neepawa Banner and Rivers Banner, there are a dozen or more scattered across western Manitoba. They have a fair bit of local news, the kind that matters to local readers.
Where the problem comes up is that even in local newspapers and certainly in the larger daily papers there is lots of news that a reader has seen on the internet the day before or on television. Reporters, and editors, seem happy enough to take stories off a wire service and plunk them on a page and call it news. Well it’s not really news unless it contains fresh facts. At least it should be written from a local perspective.
The real problem is that newspaper ownership is too concentrated. The corporations such as Quebecor and Glacier have bought up papers by the dozens. They figure that they can run a newspaper with very few people. And they can, if all they do is “repeat” the news rather than “report” the news.
About 10 years ago, an astute editor of a community paper started to peruse the large dailies across the country. He looked at the front page story in about 20 large newspapers. Eighteen or 19 had the same front page story. Now, it’s really sad that there’s that little original thought going into our daily papers.
In order for there to be proper public discourse, readers need fresh news and opinion columns that are both local and original. We try to do that. Readers can help us by sending in news stories, pictures and news tips. We prefer email but a phone call works too. Dropping by our offices is nice too but we may not be able to visit for a long period of time.
As far as editorials and news columns go, may the day never come when we have to resort to unsigned columns. And if you want to call what we write on these pages, editorials, that’s fine with us. An editorial should have a name attached to it. Surely we can have that much freedom of speech in Canada.

Paying for what we need

kwaddell — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:02:30 +0000

Every Canadian should sit back a bit and enjoy the Olympics. It seems by the television ratings that’s exactly what’s happening. Ratings are very high. And so they should be. The Winter Olympics only come around every four years and we have excellent athletes.
Canadians shouldn’t get too upset about the medal count as many countries have a much larger population and a much larger budget for training than we in Canada have. It may seem strange to have Canadian skaters beaten out by Chinese or Koreans but look at how many people they have to draw their talent from. Korea has 69 million, twice our population almost. China has 20-30 times our population.
So we should sit back, relax and enjoy the show. We paid for it after all.
Paying for the Olympics is akin to buying a Christmas gift for your parents or your kids. You usually overextend, you reach beyond what you can afford. So that’s what we do as a country every 20 years or so, we may over reach a bit. Better to do so for the Olympics than to over reach in many other ways. The point of that comment is two-fold. First, the Olympics are an inspiration, or should be an inspiration, to all of us. Second, it’s better to spend money on the Olympics than some of the dumb stuff we spend tax payers dollars on now. Large car companies come to mind actually, followed by bloated salaries for bureaucrats in our senior governments.
On that point it’s hard not to sound old-fashioned, to sound like an old person longing for some “good old days”. But get over the fact that older people take a strong interest in where the tax dollars are being spent and think about it for a bit. Yes, just think for a few minutes.
Our governments have gotten far too large and expensive. In Manitoba we pay the premier about $150,000 per year. He or she is the head honcho, the one in charge. The person who takes the glory when things go well and takes the fall when things go bad. There’s not much job security and there’s not much pension plan. Premiers rarely last more than 10 years and if anyone has worked out an average but it’s likely less than five years. So given the risk and level of responsibility, why are there dozens, if not hundreds of bureaucrats paid twice and three times that which we pay that premier.
There is a high level of accountability at the premier level. If the premier’s party or the people in general get tired of them, they vote premier out of office. Its a fairly simple system. However, if a bureaucrat gets a cushy job, they may well be there for life and and at two to three times the salary of the boss. We have let the bureaucracy get away with theft of the highest degree.
The problem is, how do you change it? Can you imagine if we all of a sudden told every bureaucrat above that level that they were getting a salary cut to the level of the premier or less? That’s what should happen but it’s not going to. The high level bureaucrats would scream bloody murder if that had to get along with “only” $150,000 per year.
The logical question that should be asked is how about the civil servants and front line health care workers? Why should some person who runs the Winnipeg RHA get $3-400,000 per year and a full time nurse say only $50-70,000. If I get sick and am laying deathly ill in a hospital, I want to see an RN looking over me, not an overpaid bureaucrat.
The world has gone mad. We pay the least valuable jobs the most money. I’m sure that many bureaucrats are well intentioned and honourable people but, sad to say, their jobs are not worth what we pay them.
If we actually got our priorities straight in Canada, we would pay people according to their importance to society. You know, the priority of needs thing. First of all, we would pay high wages to water treatment plant operators as, assuming we have air to breathe, we need good water next on the priority list. Then we would pay our farmers and food workers because, after air and water, we need good food. Then we would pay our carpenters to build us good homes. Somewhere down the line after water plant workers, farmers, carpenters, doctors, nurses, teachers and a few other ranking needs, we might get around to needing bureaucrats.
The list would get awfully long before we would add the bureaucrats. Perhaps somewhere just ahead of government lawyers.