Between head and heart

kwaddell — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:32:42 +0000

According to the Winnipeg Free Press, the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce is urging the Manitoba government to remove all Sunday-shopping restrictions and let retailers set their own hours.
“The Chamber has had a long-standing policy that Manitoba retailers should have the same ability to decide when they open based on consumer demand, as retailers in other provinces do,” C of C president and CEO Dave Angus said in a written statement. “This is simply about giving Manitobans more choice and added convenience.”
It used to be that no store would even think of being open on Sundays. That was the way it was and it seemed to be rooted in Christian tradition and then the Lord’s Day Act.
There are several problems with that approach. One is Sunday is not the Sabbath, Saturday is. The other is that restricting activities on Sunday has always been half-hearted at best. If you worked in a hospital, a mental institution, a jail, a nursing home or as a policeman, Sunday was pretty much another day, all day.
When technology and the market place demanded highly efficient manufacturing, 24-7 became the norm. Many years ago, I am told, the trains stopped on Sundays. Now everything that moves, moves every day.
A tradition of Christian influenced legislation has a been Sunday shopping restrictions. The hypocrisy of that has been that a majority of Christians troop off to the restaurant right after the Sunday church service. The Christian church has tried to legislate Christianity into peoples’ heads rather than teach it into peoples’ hearts.
When Jesus was asked what is the greatest commandment, he said in Matthew 22:36-40: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’”
The Ten Commandments say in Exodus 20:2-17 “You shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
“Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. “You shall not murder. “You shall not commit adultery. “You shall not steal “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour. “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.”
Doesn’t say much about Sunday shopping in there. In fact, the only reference to anything remotely close would be, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” and again that’s Saturday if the truth be known. Strangely enough, if you ask people if they want to work Sunday, most will say, “No, it’s a family day.” A family day sounds pretty close to a “day of rest” or a Sabbath to me.
God gives the above two sets of verses as a guide to living our lives. It takes a lifetime to understand the second set. One can keep coming back to them and in so doing draw closer to God. In the intervening time, the first set provides the short notes version: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment, etc. (see above).”
And what about attending church services on Sunday? Maybe churches should be open seven days a week too.

Contrasting Times

kwaddell — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:14:27 +0000

As I usually do, I have a history book beside my bed for late night reading. The current one is called The Overlanders. It’s about a group of Canadians who gathered in 1862 at Red River (Winnipeg) and struck out for the Caribou in what is British Columbia today. They were looking to strike it rich in the gold fields. The group included around 150 men, one woman and her three small children. Oh yes, the woman was also several months pregnant.
They travelled by ox cart, on foot, by horse, by log rafts, by canoe, in beef hide boats. They experienced one stretch of 11 days straight of rain. A few died, mostly by drowning. Oh yes, they had to stop for the baby to be born.
In what would become Manitoba, the trail was well worn and with even a mediocre guide, they could make their way across. In what would become Saskatchewan, the trail was sketchy. In the future Alberta, it got even rougher. To get into what is now BC, they needed a new guide, one who knew the way. From Tete Jaune, (Yellowhead), they needed another guide as individual guides only knew parts of the trip.
The point is that they went across a wilderness with no government assistance whatsoever. They took, what we would today call, horrendous risks for a reward they could only dream about. It was really a very foolish trip but they struck out across a wilderness in search of a dream, a chance to improve their lot in life.
Contrast that today with the student protesters. Dressed in pretty good clothes, and some students adorned with very expensive tattoos on their arms and who knows where else, taking days and days away from classes or work to protest in Quebec, where it’s reported that the tuition fees are the lowest in North America. The sense of entitlement is atrocious. There is only one place to put the blame. It’s on the parents. Take a glimpse into an elementary school class room. In come the little ones, back packs on their back or dragging in the dirt (whatever) and then look closer. In some cases, mom follows into the classroom to unpack the backpack. We can be pretty sure it was mom who packed it as well.
Contrasting the Overlanders with a few people of today, we can see what’s wrong with our world. Students investing hundreds of dollars in tattoos and designer clothes and losing out on weeks of work or classes, all the while protesting an increase in too low tuition fees, seems like a very foolish move. They obviously don’t have to work so is mommy still packing and unpacking their backpack?
In one scene in the Overlanders’ saga, the group has to portage (carry) their goods and herd the cattle and horses through nine miles of rugged country to bypass a particularly bad set of river rapids. They had to cut trail through the bush for themselves and the herd of cattle and horses to pass through.
It took days to go nine miles.
In contrast today, a student protester only has to roll off the (his mother’s) couch and hit the streets to show how badly treated he is at university.
We can be very thankful that most students today don’t buy into the entitlement and protest movement. There are times for protest but it’s called the ballot box, the political committee room, the campaign team. And how smart are these protesters anyway? They haven’t figured out that if you throw a rock at a cop, you might get retaliation.
I think we want our next generation leaders to come from the group that went to class, took a summer job, took an extra course in the summer. Universities and university professors are far from perfect but it sure beats the stupidity and destruction of student protests gone astray.
I was at university in the original protest days, the 60s. The protests, the demonstrations, the violence of the 60s accomplished nothing. The whiners of the 60s passed on some of their genetics to today’s protesters, two generations later.
It boils down to getting off your backside and finding something to do. Hopefully it’s something you like to do but at least do something that will advance your goals. Maybe that’s the problem, the protesters don’t really know what they want but they will fight to the death to get it.
Contrast that again with the Neepawa Area Collegiate H.O.P.E group raising money for a water well in Kenya and for local projects here at home. Every high school in the country is reaching out to their community and the world in some charitable way. It’s the same old story, most people get it. We have to work to make a difference in our lives, in our communities, in the lives of others. Working and protesting all take effort. Most of our students have decided which effort is more productive.

Change will take a little longer

kwaddell — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:00:59 +0000

“It looks like change will take a little longer,” said Alberta Wildrose Party leader Danielle Smith on election night. Earlier in the election campaign, some had predicted a Wildrose victory but it was not to be, not yet. Wildrose only elected about one-third of the number of seats of the 41 year reigning PC Party of Alberta.
The PC Party of Alberta campaigned on change, Wildrose on more change and the people opted to go for less change rather than bigger changes.
The rest of Canada will have to follow Alberta’s lead in years to come. Alberta balances their budgets. They should actually be building up huge reserves but at least they balance their budgets. It’s something most provinces, including ours, can only dream about. Manitoba not only doesn’t balance the budget, it has to get 40 per cent of its budget from the federal government. Manitoba has so far to go to catch up to Alberta on that front that it may never come.
Change in Manitoba may come, some day. Hopefully it will come before the province goes belly up.
There are some lessons we could take from Alberta. The largest part of Manitoba’s budget is taken up with health care. Again, it’s about 40 per cent of the budget. In other words, if the federal government funding was pulled out of Manitoba, we would have no publicly funded health care or other programs would be cut back accordingly.
In Alberta, health care is much different than in Manitoba. Both operate under the auspices, supposedly, of the Canada Health Act. But, in Alberta, you can buy an MRI or a CATSCAN. Not in Manitoba. Why?
It seems it is based on the NDP premise that health care can only be funded by the public coffers. They feel that if they let any private funding into the mix, all the “good” doctors will work in the private sector. They have said those exact words.
The problem is, depending on what you include in the formula, 40 per cent of health care is privately funded already. Funny how that 40 per cent figure keeps popping up. What do we mean by private health care? Much of the drug costs are privately paid for, so is massage therapy, chiropractic care, alternative medicine, eye care, dental care and many other areas.
Albertans feel a lot more strongly about things like property rights, individual freedoms and being independent thinkers. That independent thinking took a bit of a hit in Alberta if I understand the campaign reports. Seems like unless you are a Wildrose supporter, you aren’t allowed to have so-called cosncience rights. The two cases cited were that a person practicing medicine couldn’t refuse to perform an abortion and a marriage commissioner couldn’t refuse to perform a wedding ceremony. That seems pretty restrictive. If a doctor says no to any procedure, shouldn’t they have the right to say no? And, should a marriage commissioner feel a marriage isn’t the right thing for a couple, shouldn’t they have the right to refuse? I would have thought so but I guess not. That whole process needs to be talked out a bit more. I thought a person had the right in this country to refuse work based on beliefs but maybe we don’t.
The underlying problem in government today is that too few people want to fund their own way in life. We have become overly dependent on government. Recently, there was a conservative politician speaking to a group in a very conservative town. When the time came for questions, there were only three. All three related to how the town could somehow get more govrnment funding. That’s pretty sad when you think about it.
Yes, change will take a little longer than we thought.

The hard questions

kwaddell — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:03:54 +0000

It seems that questioning actions is a lost art. The news this past few months yields a number of examples.
Let’s just set the stage for a moment.
The federal government is running deficits that would make former governments blush. The provincial government in Manitoba has no idea where their deficit is going to climb to and their upcoming budget will be interesting to say the least.
Municipal governments are all struggling to balance their budgets for varying reasons. It may be an increased demand for services, it may be long delays in repairing infrastructure, it may be trying to respond to an ever increasing landslide of downloading from senior governments.
Within the above framed scenario, tough questions need to be asked.
The federal government has made a small dent by attempting to reduce the federal civil service. They say they will eliminate 19,000 jobs. Sounds good to a conservative thinker but it has also been reported that this government increased the civil service by 35,000 jobs. If that’s true then we really have a problem because Canadian lives have not been improved by that addition of jobs.
No one wants to return to the 1950s or 60s but the tough questions have to be asked. Why do we have so many civil servants?
At the provincial level, the government hasn’t got a hope of balancing the budget but they have promised a million bucks to the Spirit Sands Casino. Give me break. Another casino; another casino out in the country. You mean, like the one at South Beach that has to virtually give away its rooms so it can try to fill its restaurants and gambling rooms. When will someone ask why aboriginal groups are so infatuated with casinos? When will someone ask why the government owns casinos or runs casinos. When will someone ask why the province has now launched its own on-line gambling gig?
When we need roads, housing and infrastructure, why are we employing people in casinos? It’s nuts. Hasn’t the government figured out that jobs, real jobs can involve real work, such as building roads?
On the municipal side there’s a big move afoot to increase sales tax by one per cent so it can go to infrastructure. There’s also a move afoot to slap on a gas tax, at least in Winnipeg to pay for similar stuff. Run, don’t walk, run away from that deal. Never let the government, at any level, get their hands on more of your money. Tax increases are usually a cop out.
Government budgets should grow from a real growth in the economy, not from increases in taxes rates.
The municipal example I often cite is this. First, the growth in a budget should be from the growth in new assessment. Then budget growth can come from the growth in re-assesmnet or the regular assessment changes that come by way of re-assessment. The rationale is that if properties go up in value, then the amount of taxes can go up. That has some pitfalls as those on a fixed income may not be able to afford more taxes. Just because a property goes up in value doesn’t mean that a person has more money. The last place a budget should grow from is an increase in the tax rate.
There’s a good perspective builder in determining tax increases. Take a look at the last 10 budgets be they federal, provincial or municipal. The figures aren’t that hard to obtain. Every one has gone up by rather large percentages. Then the question needs to be asked, where has the extra money been spent?
That’s where the tough questions come in. Too often, politicians simply sit back and say, “Oh well everything goes up, there’s not much we can do about it”.
Wrong!
There’s always a different way of doing things. Some ideas will work, some won’t, but all ideas need to be looked at. That’s a politician’s job, to look at new ideas.
Several questions have been posed. More need to be posed. For example, most towns pave but some use concrete. Which is cheaper over the long haul? I don’t know but we need to ask.
Why does the government build schools and hospitals? Could private businesses do it better? Could they be on long term leases? What’s the difference? One difference is that if a company designs, builds, owns and pays the upkeep on a building they would likely do it better, faster and cheaper than a government could ever do it. And if they don’t, they might go broke. That’s something a government never has to face. Going broke is the big fear factor for businesses that keeps them a lot more frugal than government ever will be.
Hard questions indeed need to be asked.

It’s all in the name

kwaddell — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 01:49:50 +0000

Did you ever notice that when the media wants to amp up the attention given to a story they start applying new names to it. The favourite tactic is to add the word “gate” to the end of anything that smacks of a scandal. The amended nicknaming of anything that is even slightly scandalous is tagged with the add-on “gate” The term hearkens back to the U.S President Nixon era when there was cover-up of political espionage that happened around and about the Watergate Hotel. So the scandal was titled “Watergate”.
Our latest run at federal political scandals has attracted the relatively new moniker “robo”, in that anything that is automated immediately becomes “robo” as in automated phone calls or automated phone messages. In this case, alleged calls to people asking them to vote at a different voting station were put out through an automated calling system and have now been dubbed robo-calls. Somehow the term “automated phone calls” just doesn’t have the sinister ring to it that robo-calls does.
On Monday, protestors organized a rally at Parliament Hill to protest the use of robo-calls as they allegedly were used in the last federal election. Obviously it’s not a serious deal to many people as the protest only attracted a handful of people.
Now I don’t know who, if anyone, used robo-calls to misinform people about voting stations. If they did, they should not have done so and should be punished.
Here’s a bit of background. Automated calls have been around for years. Sometimes organizations will use them to let people know about a meeting. Sometimes, it’s about an event or a change in a venue and it’s too late to buy an ad in newspaper or send out notices by mail. Last year, the Neepawa Banner used robo-calls to let people know about the Canada Post strike-induced cancellation of deliveries and that readers could pick up a paper at local locations. It worked well; about 2,000 homes were called and it was done in a matter of minutes at very low cost.
However, robo-calls or automated phoning only works as well as the data that a person uses for the phone number list. If a political party used Elections Canada or Elections Manitoba lists, they would have a lot of errors. Having worked extensively with both EC and EM lists, I can attest that they are full of errors. At best, their lists are a guideline and a person intending to run for office can only use them as just that, a guideline. Based on EC and EM lists,a person could well get a phone call giving them the wrong information. If a person has moved but kept their phone number, or if an old phone number had been re-assigned, it would cause the wrong person to get the wrong message. Phone numbers are re-assigned quite quickly. For a while, I had a Winnipeg phone number and I kept getting calls from someone in the Winnipeg Police Service looking for one of their motorcycles. Trust me, I didn’t have the motorcycle, but I apparently had the former phone number of the guy who used to have the motorcycle in his care.
Locally produced and checked data should be the basis for a political campaign and it just takes time to develop proper lists, more accurate lists at the local level. Robo-calls are annoying at times but so are a lot of things. If a person doesn’t want to take a call, don’t answer it. Call display is a wonderful thing. If a message is left and you don’t want it, delete it. It can be momentarily annoying as one has to, as far as I know, listen to the whole message before deleting it. But that’s a small irritation isn’t it? It’s far less annoying than most TV commercials and the internet commercials that interrupt downloaded shows.
In a nutshell, robo-calls are here to stay for a while at least. They are cheap, effective and sometimes annoying. If used for illegal purposes, users should be punished. For political parties to use robo-calls in an illegal or unusual fashion is just wrong. But once the story broke that calls may have been made in one riding, the conclusion was quickly drawn by many losing candidates that they had been victimized. That was a leap in logic. Except in very close elections, a few calls aren’t going to make the difference.
Elections Canada should investigate, but let’s hope they don’t spend too much money chasing something that doesn’t exist.

Wow, that was fast

kwaddell — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:13:20 +0000

Not being able to get to sleep on Monday night, I decided to post a little bit on Facebook. Within seconds, a person on the other side of the world responded. It’s somewhat interesting, and a bit unbelievable that they would notice or even care what I posted but the person has an indirect connection with this area. Their fiancee was an exchange student in our home and I have been “friended” by both the exchange student and his betrothed. In fact, the student still calls me “Dad” when he emails me directly.
If ever we had a chance in this old world to build relationships and perhaps re-ignite the hope for world peace, now is the time. I know it may be crazy to wish for peace but I’m not going to stop regardless. I may never see this young man again and we do live a world apart. We aren’t the same background or religion but we do care for one another. And so we should.
Contact with each other is almost instant. It can also be almost instant with anyone else in the world and I have no doubt that soon the whole world will be inter-connected by the internet. It’s a powerful force. The internet can be harnessed to exchange any kind of news or information and the beauty of it all is the truth, hopefully, can be conveyed around the world without the restriction or constriction of the large media outlets. Media outlets tend to get a particular editorial bent to them. In Canada the CBC is pretty left wing. CTV, not so much. Sun News is quite right wing. The larger papers all seem to have a particular slant to their news and editorials. But with the so-called “blogosphere” journalists, the game is wide open.
Unfortunately, not all bloggers are interested in telling the truth but enough are that the truth cannot be suppressed.
It’s a good thing that we have newspapers and TV and books and movies. But it’s also good that we have the internet and can communicate around the world at almost the speed of light. Good indeed. And good to hear from my friends on the other side of the world.
Goodwill to all and to all a good night.

Coming, coming, ready or not!

kwaddell — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:42:11 +0000

During the early history of Manitoba towns, development decisions were really quite simple. Build it and they will come was the method of the day. That was self-evident. Wave after wave of settlers were filling the vacant land and towns sprang up about every 10 miles along the railway tracks. The demand for free farmland, the need for the railroad to develop markets and the immigration to western Canada overwhelmed the system. Farms were developed, towns grew, industries sprang up, it was a heady time.
Then some very basic changes took place. The Panama Canal was completed in 1914 and western Canada, and especially Winnipeg, took a huge drop in freight traffic. Crop production topped out as the farmers located on marginal land struggled even more than those on the better land. WWI came along and took a lot of people away, many who never returned. The 1920s showed some more growth and stability but that faded in the 1930s. Faded and, in some cases, fizzled completely. WWII provided a halt in the decline and the 1950s showed a bit of growth or at least a slowing of the decline
But all that faltering growth started to taper off even more severely in the 1960s. Proof of that is that Neepawa’s population basically stayed at 3200 from 1948 until 2008. That’s 60 years of perceived steadiness, albeit surrounded by a huge decline in the population of the surrounding areas. Some towns held on, some disappeared or almost disappeared. Certainly schools, grain elevators, stores and other services disappeared.
The remaining service centre towns became very good at hanging on. In fact hanging on became a tradition, a well worn practice to achieve survival.
But all that has changed. Towns faced with an aging population, an aging infrastructure, an aging housing inventory and an aging commercial building inventory are now faced with a growth spurt.
It may be a handful of families in a town of 400 people. It may be 100s of new people in a town like Neepawa. The percentage effect is similar and the challenges are similar in most Manitoba towns today
Even if town populations weren’t increasing, the above named three challenges of aging population, infrastructure, housing and commercial buildings would still be there. The difference is that without immigration, be it from other parts of Canada or from overseas, we would be facing those challenges in the 1960s way, that is retreat, shrink and dig in, preparing for the next shrinkage.
Today we are much better off as we can face the four challenges with assistance from a true population increase. Our towns are not increasing in population or holding their own like they did in the 50s and 60s because of a migration from other small towns or from the farms. This time it’s a true population increase for the whole area.
We are not accustomed to planning for real growth. We need to plan for growth and we need to do it quickly. If we do it well, our communities will be well positioned for the future. It has to be sustainable and affordable growth.
We need renewed and new water and sewer systems, new and renewed roads and we need new and renewed housing.
The changes are upon us already. Just like the childhood cry in a hide-and-seek game, “Coming, coming, ready or not!”
We need to gather together all our resources, municipal, provincial and federal, to face these growth challenges. The biggest resource is the ideas, the innovations of the people. Gathering the ideas and innovations and encouraging people to express and implement those good ideas must not be forgotten as the challenges are being met.

One has to question why

kwaddell — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:26:39 +0000

At least once a week, and sometimes more often, I hear this statement, “The doctors aren’t sure what’s happening but I need an MRI. They tell me it will be 20 weeks before I can get one.”
Understandably, emergency MRIs are happening faster than that but diagnostic MRIs in what is deemed a non-emergency are indeed taking months to happen.
And this story isn’t new. Years ago, a friend needed an MRI and was told it would be 17 weeks. He went to Calgary and for $1,000 he got an MRI in three days. Once he had the MRI report in his hand, it was matter of days and he got his treatment. The bottleneck wasn’t the treatment, it wasn’t the surgeon, it wasn’t the operating room. It was the lack of an MRI.
An MRI, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, isn’t all that complicated any more. Certainly the report isn’t complicated. The reports are printed out on a normal printer/copier and come in a standard copy paper format.
Whenever there is a discussion about health care in Manitoba, there’s a lot of talk about complying with the Canada Health Act. We are told that to comply with the act, things have to be done a certain way. For Manitoba to get federal funding, we have to comply with the act. Sound right doesn’t it. No, it’s actually quite wrong. All provinces and territories are under the Canada Health Act. Manitoba and Alberta are both under the Canada Health Act. So if one can’t buy an MRI privately in Manitoba, why can anyone, including a resident of Manitoba buy an MRI in Alberta? No government bureaucrat or politician seems to be able to answer that question.
A recent call to a small town in Minnesota revealed some interesting points. I talked to the administrator of a health clinic in northern Minnesota and asked if they did MRIs. Yes, they did. I asked how long it takes and he apologetically answered that as it was November and the “snowbirds” were getting their health records in order before departing for Texas or Florida, that there was a waiting period of about five days. Normally it would be three days. However, the administrator explained that they do about 15 MRIs a day and about eight are appointments and seven are for emergencies. The net effect was that you wait three days for an appointment and you don’t wait for an emergency. He also went on to explain that there were three or four other clinics with MRI capability within an hour’s drive of their particular location.
The bad news is that it was costly, but there certainly must be some kind of compromise available. Somewhere between waiting up to six months in Manitoba and not having to wait at all, a few hours drive away in Minnesota or 10 hours drive away in Alberta, there must be a method and a cost that could be reachable. There isn’t in Manitoba. Worse yet, no one is willing to challenge the government monopoly for an MRI clinic.
Given the political landscape in Manitoba, it doesn’t seem that anyone is about to challenge this ridiculous situation. Manitobans should be able to purchase an MRI if they want to have one. Not sure what it will take to change that but it does need to be addressed.

Pulling together

kwaddell — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:41:08 +0000

One sign of living in a small community is how people pull together when faced with difficulty. When a home burns, when a person needs help to meet extra medical expenses, when a disaster of any kind hits, the community tends to pull together.
Neepawa hasn’t exactly had a disaster but more precisely some unfortunate circumstances recently. Long famous, and still well known, as Manitoba’s most beautiful town, the news out of Neepawa hasn’t all been good lately. Having gained national news for the hazing incident a few months back, Neepawa has also had some other media noted setbacks over the past few months.
In response to the hockey hazing incident, several people in Neepawa dug deep financially, and dug even deeper as volunteers, to work through the consequences of the incident. Reviewing the details of the hazing will serve no purpose here. The incident happened within the Neepawa Natives Junior A hockey team and will be reviewed yet again in agonizing detail when the MJHL final report comes out.
That said, people in the community realized that this is “Our Team, Our Community” and when fixing is needed, the community can rise to the occasion and try to fix things.
The Neepawa Natives team decided to have a “free game” last Friday night. A local businessman gathered together a bunch of support and workers and came up with the idea of having a week long anti-hazing event. The profits would go to an MJHL anti-hazing, anti-bullying fund. Money was raised, team members worked with groups in the community, draw tickets were sold and awareness raised. The message was simple. Hazing is bad, it will likely happen again, some day, somewhere, but as a community, Neepawa is going to do its best to see that inappropriate actions are reduced or eliminated in youth sport or anywhere else for that matter. The crown jewel of the week’s event was the “free game”. The team dug deep and did their part by winning 4-3. The community did their part by coming in the hundreds, an estimated crowd of 1,000 attended. The 50:50 draw was bigger than the gate receipts from an ordinary game. The Yellowhead Centre organization helped out. The Filtoba Filipino group volunteered. The lobby was full, the concession overworked, the stands filled up nicely. Oh yes, did I mention, the team won? And to celebrate the week and the win, fans gathered in the Yellowhead Hall for free hotdogs and coffee and viewed decades of hockey memorabilia.
Going forward, this community and others will continue to respond to bad situations. Hopefully, the hazing situation won’t make a return appearance. Nobody is looking forward to a return match of that particular kind of event. It would be nice to say hazing and bullying are dead.
It remains to be seen how much money will go to the MJHL anti-hazing fund. It is a fund that should grow as other teams and other communities mount an effort to build those coffers. Hazing is a rite of passage we could well do without. Sure, it has happened before and it will likely happen again. But perhaps there’s a better rite of passage that could be adopted. With the kind of leadership that was displayed these past few weeks in Neepawa, perhaps volunteering and working with kids and helping out in the community will become the new rite of passage. It’s one we can be proud of. Then Neepawa can truly be Manitoba’s most beautiful town with flowers, gardens, trees and peace of mind.
The trees are still here, the flowers and gardens will bloom again come spring and with the good work done last week, the peace of mind may grow and thrive too. It will need some tending, just like the flower beds, but with community effort, it can grow as well.

Perhaps a famine would be good

kwaddell — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:51:05 +0000

Ag Days is coming up next weekend in Brandon.
Perhaps it’s the unseasonably warm weather, perhaps it’s the usual optimism of a new year, not sure, but there is a lot of optimism out there about farming.
There should always be optimism about farming but that’s certainly not always been the case. Having experienced my parents’ despair with the drought year of 1961 and having watched them at various times struggle to make the mortgage payment, I was raised in a cycle of determination, optimism and outright despair.
In later years, in our own farming experiences, we experienced drought nearly as bad as 1961, years of good crops and some years of flooded out disasters. There’s always been the cycle.
Now, to observe the cycle, all I have to do is start selling ads. We have doubled the number of ads for our Ag Days edition this year. More dealers and ag industry people want to get the word out that they have the solution to farm challenges. It’s been a good run this past few days as several new advertisers have joined our more regular ones to get the word out to the public in our readership area. Now if an event like Ag Days is on in Brandon, it makes sense to advertise in the Neepawa Banner and Rivers Banner. South-western Manitoba is divided into roughly four quarters. The quarter served by the Neepawa Banner and Rivers Banner has the largest population, the best land base and the most mixed farming base and has the highest incomes. When it comes to the ag industry, the Neepawa-Minnedosa, Carberry-Rivers area leads the way.
As stated above, there should be optimism in agriculture and it should be there all the time. After air and water, food is the next most needed commodity in our lives. Can’t go too many days without it. Some of us have trouble going more than a few hours.
I am maintaining a long habit of reading Canadian history books. I particularly like books about western Canada and the political decisions that have been made. Quite frankly, agriculture has never had the respect it deserves, both in the farming communities and in the cities. It’s not likely to happen, but if Canada had a famine, perhaps we would look at what’s on our dinner plate with a bit more awe and respect. Put another way, “Don’t complain about the farmers when your mouth is full.”
And speaking of history, it would seem that in the 140 plus years we have officially been a country, that agriculture gets better treatment from conservative leaning governments rather than liberal leaning governments. There should be no difference as it doesn’t matter what your politics are, you have to eat and hopefully eat well. Food is not an option and so food production and all that is attached to that production should be treated more sensitively and seriously than other industries.
It seems odd that governments can pour money, by the hundreds of millions of dollars, into big city stadiums, human rights museums and arenas but can’t get the roads and bridges fixed that allow our food to be hauled to the cities.
Perhaps our senior governments could use a reality check. Or maybe a short famine.

The school van

kwaddell — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 10:16:15 +0000

An ad in last week’s paper from a local school division advising that there could be school bus driver shortages and possible disruption of transportation caught my eye. Seems that it’s difficult to find school bus drivers and especially part-time or relief drivers. I asked around a bit and found out the answer may be fairly simple as to why we have shortage. Used to be that school bus drivers were drawn from the ranks of small-time farmers. Those were generally the farmers who could maybe break away from the barn or the tractor long enough to drive a morning run and an afternoon run. It was welcomed income and helped the farm make ends meet and make the payments on a vehicle. The drivers owned their own vans or buses in those days.
In 1954, I started school at six years of age. The school “van” route was up for tender and my dad decided that he could maybe take it on. He had a nearly new International half-ton truck and with a bit of work he made a box for it. A pretty simple box actually, the sides being a centre split sheet of plywood mounted on some oak stakes. Those oak stakes were darned hard too and they had to be drilled by hand with a brace and bit. They were attached with carriage bolts. A front and back was fashioned. The first top was a brown tarpaulin if I remember correctly, followed by a curved plywood top.
Later, in 1958, a new three-quarter ton IHC truck was bought and the box making episode was repeated. In the fall harvest season, the truck served double duty. The top had to be lifted off, the truck taken to the field and filled with grain from the combine and loads driven to the yard. At the end of the harvest day, the truck had to swept clean and the heavy wooden roof or lid put back on ready for the following morning’s school run. One day, when the roof wasn’t fastened down good enough, the wind caught it and slowly lifted it off the truck and into the ditch as we drove along. Fortunately, it was a sunny day and all that happened was the students were a bit wind blown.
Now picture this. The students were met at the end of each farm lane and loaded into the back of the truck through a small crouch down door. Then the door was latched from the outside and the tail gate put up and latched. There was no escape from this rig. Trucks and other private vehicles were pretty much the standard for hauling students in the 1950s in the rural school divisions.
One winter, the snow got so deep that the truck couldn’t be used any longer. Out came the team of horses, the sleighs and off to town to pick up an old horse drawn van. For six long weeks, the trip to and from town was slogged out by the horses, morning and night. The roads then opened up again and the truck could get through, slipping and sliding over the greasy spring time roads.
Now students and parents of today might think that the box full of students on the back of half ton truck was a bit of a risky thing. It was in a way. But what it replaced was something even more bizarre. The previous school van tender was held by the local fuel truck dealer. Sometimes he used a car but sometimes, if he was headed out with fuel anyway, he would load the kids in the back of his open fuel truck. It was called an express sided truck, that is a flat deck with slatted sides and a few fuel barrels on board for good measure. If the truck had to brake or swerve, the students would have to dodge the sliding barrels. Great fun. I never had to do that as my Dad started to drive the school van route in my first year of school but my two older brothers had a few wild rides in the back of the fuel truck.
Dad’s 1958 truck was retired early as the rules changed in 1961 and school vans had to be, well, vans, closed in station wagons or the slightly bigger units we called panel vans. Some had side windows, ours didn’t and again it was an International, a 1961 IHC panel van. If it had windows it was called a Travelall and this type of vehicle was very popular for school vans and as a mainstay vehicle on Hutterite colonies for many years.
By 1967 the rules changed again and van drivers had to buy real school buses that didn’t look a lot different than today’s buses.
I am wondering if stress isn’t another reason that drivers are scarce. I am told that school buses can be pretty noisy places and that sometimes the students can even get unruly. In the old days, it wasn’t uncommon for an unruly student to be put out on the road and told to walk home. Thinking back though, once the students were “locked” in that old truck box, you couldn’t hear them anyway. They could holler as much as they wanted but the driver didn’t hear much and with the door latched and the tail gate up in the locked position, they weren’t going to get out.
Maybe the old days had some advantages after all.

Public life is rarely fair

kwaddell — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:10:01 +0000

The past three months or so has been an interesting time to observe United States politics in particular and human behaviour in general. It was about a year ago that a YouTube video went viral that showed a ex U.S. marine singing the second verse of the U.S. national anthem. He was a retired guy who wanted to make the point at an outdoor political rally that verse two needed to be known, listened to and adhered to.
The marine sang very well, with conviction and a cappella.
The speaker at the political rally was a man I had never heard of named Herman Cain. He was just about the only black man at a Tea Party Rally. Tea stands for Taxed Enough Already I am told. The people at the rally were moved by Cain’s speech and by the marine’s rendition of verse two of the Star Spangled Banner.
Some months later, Cain came to my attention again as he had declared he was a candidate nominee for the Republican Party. He is a business man, a former head of the national restaurant association and a very good speaker. He came up with some very good ideas on the economy and taxation. The U.S. could certainly use some good suggestions on the economy, ones that would go against the Obama administration is ideas of tax, spend, borrow, spend some more and, oh yes, tax. Debt and illogical conclusions know no bounds in the states. Something like Manitoba.
So Cain rose fast in the polls, became the front runner and was, in fact, a real threat to become the Republican nominee for the 2012 presidential election. Then disaster hit. Several women came forward and said he had sexually harassed them. Another woman said he had had an affair with her. Not good news for a political candidate. The allegations, so far all unproved, undid Cain’s campaign and he has now basically dropped out of the race.
But there’s more to this story. Even if all the allegations against Cain are true, and as yet none have been proven true, what does this say about politics? Remember Bill Clinton? Who can forget him, he’s still very high up in U.S. politics. His wife is Secretary of State. Clinton, even while in the president’s office, committed some very serious things, sexual and almost unspeakable things and he’s still a hero to a majority of U.S. people.
So why the difference? Why the apparent hypocrisy? Perhaps it’s because the Democratic Party (Clinton’s and Obama’s party) has always been able to accuse the Republicans of being racist. The Democrats have always received a majority of the black vote. If Cain, who is all black as opposed to Obama being half-black (white mother and black father) had become the Republican candidate, the democrats would have lost the big racist stick in their fight against the Republicans.
I believe every method possible was used to bring Cain down. There was no way that the Democrats wanted to put Obama, who can’t speak without a tele-prompter, up against an articulate black Cain. Cain knows common sense and he knows business. He had a very simple tax plan, a flat tax, that every- one understands. Whether it would work or not remains to be seen. Certainly the way the U.S is going isn’t working and people were very attracted to an articulate black man with a common sense plan to lead the U.S. economy out of very dire circumstances. Cain wasn’t strong on foreign policy but many voters in the U.S. think the U.S should be a whole lot less involved in foreign affairs and look after their own problems.
The downfall of Cain was hypocritical. He is alleged to have done some wrong things and was slaughtered by the opponents and by the media. Clinton and many others have gone their merry way with money and women and have sailed through unrepentant and unscathed.
Fairness has never had a high place in public affairs and that hasn’t changed.

Leadership by default

kwaddell — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 16:01:33 +0000

On a recent road trip across western Canada, my son and I had “chance” encounters with three different university students in Alberta. One was a hotel desk receptionist, two were restaurant servers. They work from two to five nights a week to support themselves going through university. One is in education, one in business administration, one in law. Interestingly enough, they are all working, they said, to avoid having a student loan. I suspect there are hundreds more like them with the same goal.
These young people contrast severely with the students we have seen across Canada involved with the “Occupy” movement. The “Occupy” movement involves a few students, but many seem to be part of a pack of professional protesters, perennial victims, making the most of their victimhood. As one commentator said, they are protesting that they don’t have all the privileges of the rich and famous. One particularly poignant comment was that some of the protesters who have been to university are upset that their $100,000 student loans that paid for their degree in bitterness studies was not generating them much income. Another commentator told them to “have a bath and get a job”.
There is no doubt that universities have gotten off track in some cases. The sad thing is that most students are hard working and on track and want to stay that way. One of the students that we met said that they didn’t want to stay in university as what was being taught wasn’t relevant to a business career. That may have been a naive comment, but there’s plenty of evidence to show that some university courses and some university professors are way off track.
Brandon University gives us at least one case in point and that is the case of professor Joe Dolecki. Dolecki, and his life partner, are professional complainers and protesters. Call a demonstration or a public hearing and they will be there. They both participated heavily in defending the NDP government’s hog barn ban bill. They have been well known for years in many battles for left wing causes, often without much merit. As one person said upon hearing Dolecki’s testimony at a government committee meeting, “That, ladies and gentlemen, is who teaches your children economics. May God help them.”
That Dolecki is a professor who deals with economics issues seems to be lost in his role of head of the Brandon University Faculty Association (BUFA). The demands that have been put forward seem way out of line. Ironically, the president of Brandon University, Dr. Poff, comes from an NDP, left wing background as well so we have two old socialists dueling over money. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad for the students who have now lost 40 days of studies.
So how does a prairie university, with a fairly conservative student base and a very conservative surrounding community, end up with a socialist as president and a socialist as head of BUFA. Poff may have been chosen by a left-leaning Board of Governors or she may have been brought in as a person with a labour friendly background. But Dolecki was chosen because he was willing. Thus it is, in unions and even other organizations. The reluctant are lead by the willing. Dolecki was willing and with a huge majority of faculty not wanting to take the the time to attend meetings or even vote, an ambitious unionist can get into positions of leadership quite easily.
As it has been said, if you don’t get involved in politics, then you are doomed to be governed by those who do. Such is the case at BU and the rest of the faculty and all of the students are suffering for it.
A larger question is why has BU been on strike twice the past few years? Why are all the mouthpieces and leaders at BU, socialists? See the paragraph above for that answer; they were willing and they take extreme positions that only a few are willing to be associated with but, by default, they get into the leadership roles.
This strike will cripple BU in the short and the long term. Students who get squeezed out of this semester will transfer out. Future students, considering BU will steer away to places like Lethbridge or Saskatoon or others. Any talk of a pre-med school for Brandon is now sheer fantasy. And the prospect of there being 3,000 students again next year is severely diminished.
The students we met, and ones like them, will not only work for a living and for their degrees, however, it may not be in Brandon. Hopefully some people will begin the long hard task of restoring BU’s reputation. Don’t hold your breath for the socialists to do it.

AMM to debate re-shaping Manitoba

kwaddell — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:10:24 +0000

It’s interesting that the Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM) is debating a resolution next week to ask for more funding for rural veterinary boards. The resolution says that funding has stayed the same since 1989 and of course costs have gone up. The resolution states the obvious. What the resolution doesn’t state is that funding for rural vet boards started in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was obvious at that time there was a shortage of large animal vets around. Many vets of that era had trained after WWII and were getting a bit long in the tooth. Others had gone on to work in small animal practices or had taken up working for the government, both federal and provincial. There was undoubtedly a shortage of vets at that time. So the program was well-intentioned and clinics were built in Gladstone, Alonsa, Minnedosa and later in Neepawa and Ste. Rose. There are today many more veterinarians than there were back in the 1960s. So it could be concluded the program achieved its goal. Unfortunately, like many government programs, there never was an end date or sunset clause. It has just gone on forever. Perhaps it’s time to end the program of subsidizing vet clinics. Perhaps not. It does need to be debated though.

This may not be popular

kwaddell — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:51:38 +0000

A letter to the editor that is on these pages lays out clearly the point that this editor has, at least of late, been pretty quiet about the Canadian Wheat Board. Before you read this column you should read Art Gagnon’s letter that challenges me to come out in support of the farmers who wish to maintain the monopoly for the Canadian Wheat Board. Gagnon raises, as always, many good points.
The CWB was first formed in the 1930s as a voluntary board. It had mixed success. In the early 1940s, the CWB was given mandatory selling authority over Canadian Wheat. Some say it had more to do with keeping the price of wheat low enough so that Britain could afford it during the huge war efforts of WWII. Some say it was to maximize the income over the long haul for western Canadian farmers.
Some want the monopoly to stay, some want it gone. Both sides are passionate in their views. The federal Conservative government has run three elections with elimination of the wheat board monopoly as part of their platform. Now comes the interesting part. The CWB only has control of wheat sold in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and parts of B.C. It doesn’t control wheat sales anywhere else in Canada, albeit most of the wheat grown in Canada is in those four provinces. Every constituency that grows wheat in the CWB area returned a Conservative MP to parliament and some areas by overwhelming votes. The government says it now has a mandate to make the change. Monopoly supporters say the CWB legislation requires a plebiscite to take away the monopoly. The government says the plebiscite is only required to add or take away a grain from the CWB.
There are people who figure the wheat board control of their grain is wrong and besides that they claim the CWB is not getting the best returns available on wheat. In short, they say, the CWB has cost them opportunity dollars. The CWB monopoly supporters say that without the wheat board, they will not be able to market their grain properly.
So back to Gagnon’s challenge. I am a free trader. If I had my way the CWB would not have a monopoly. I have consistently said that for years. The CWB has years of world-wide grain marketing experience and they should be able to sell wheat. I said that 20 and 30 years ago. It’s unfortunate that recently the CWB has spent so much energy creating uncertainty in the market place by fighting a battle they won’t win and at the same time appearing to give up on pursuing markets. The CWB should contract with farmers and sell the wheat they have access to.
That said, the government has a huge problem on their hands. Half of the farmers want out of the monopoly, half or so want to keep it. Even when a vote is held, it’s almost impossible to determine who should have a vote as the voter’s lists are in pretty bad shape.
I believe there are far bigger problems in farming than whether the CWB has monopoly or not. The CWB is a marketing board but, unlike the other boards, it wasn’t voted in by farmers, it was imposed by the federal government. However, the CWB and all the other marketing boards have a strangle hold on farming that severely limits innovation, seeking of markets and entry into farming. Its almost impossible to start up farming in the traditional pathways of the 40s, 50s and 60s. Today, the financial threshold of land, inflated by quota value and the actual quotas themselves, keep any sane person away from farming. On the pretense of supporting farmers, we have built barriers to entry into farming.
Another big thing that drove farmers off the land was the lack of facilities on the farm and in the farmhouse, a lack of opportunity and communication. Today, all those obstacles have been beaten back as our towns have all the social amenities, our transportation system, while needing improvement, is much better than the 1960s or 50s and we have instant communication in every farmhouse. Many of the old obstacles are gone but the marketing board obstacle remains
I can’t predict how the CWB debate will end up. I can predict that some farmers will be very happy with what I have said and some will not.
I will continue to defend the little guy as Mr. Gagnon suggests, it just doesn’t seem to me that the CWB, or the largely defunct grain co-ops did a great job of defending the little guy either.
And as soon as the monopoly is gone, I will be willing to invest in and promote a flour mill and wheat products factory in the area. That’s something we can’t easily do now. While we are at it, how about a cheese plant so we can have some local cheese on our bread? Oops, sorry, that’s still virtually illegal due to the milk board monopoly.

Hazing always hazardous, time to stop it!

kwaddell — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:05:11 +0000

It was very tempting this past two weeks to simply re-run editorials from Sept. 20 and 27, 2000. The topic then was a Neepawa Natives hockey team rookie party (or hazing) that went totally out of control. Back in 2000, a player was injured and hospitalized overnight. Then, as now, the hazing was not sanctioned. The team reacted quickly and traded a number of players. No one involved with the team in 2000 officially sanctioned the hazing. Certainly no one involved with the team today sanctioned the 2011 version of the hazing either.
What hasn’t changed though is that some people in the hockey world seem to think that hazing is still OK, at least to some degree. It’s not. It wasn’t in 2000, it isn’t acceptable today. A lot of phrases have been heard such as, “It happens all the time” and, “Worse happened to me.” Or one will hear, “What happens in the dressing room stays in the dressing room.” None of these phrases reflects acceptable activities in the sports world.
To the credit of the Neepawa Natives organization, they have tried very hard over the years to eliminate not only hazing but a lot of other unacceptable activities that have lingered in the world of hockey. Most of the players have conducted themselves in a very good fashion over the years and it has been in part due to high standards set by the local team.
But stating standards and enforcing standards are two different things. It’s nigh unto impossible to always have a person in a supervisory role with a team but it seems that’s what may be required to avoid a future situation of this nature.
It’s good that in this case, a young man and his family chose to come forward. Similar incidents have been covered up in the past. How much psychological or other damage has been done over the years is impossible to measure but it’s certain it’s been significant. In this case, the hazing details have been brought out in excruciating detail. More may yet come out as the league, after conducting an inquiry of their own, appointed a special investigator.
Hopefully the stupidity, the lunacy, the ugliness of hazing will be eliminated in our society. I’m not holding my breath but we can always hope. It certainly won’t be eliminated, or even reduced, if people stay silent or are bullied into silence.
As for Neepawa’s reputation, there’s some goods news as well. While Neepawa’s reputation took a hit, the majority of the negative comments came from anonymous bloggers. And there’s been dozens of anonymous blog comments. Anonymous bloggers are no better than hazers. It’s all bullying. However, some of the actual calls that we have been getting have been encouraging because people who know Neepawa and know how we do things here also know that we do our best to operate a good, clean and reputable community. Neepawa has been a pretty good place, overall, even for hockey players to come and play. That there’s lots of work to do goes without saying but to listen to the anonymous naysayers is a waste of time.
Hopefully the Neepawa Natives hockey team can survive and thrive. If not, then the community will move on. To survive, the team needs to accept more community input, attract more fans and make more money. Some wins would be nice too. There’s lots more the team and the board could and should do to improve the team’s position. We’ll see if all that happens.
In the intervening time, it’s important to remember that speaking up against injustice is always a good thing

Manitoba needs to go hard to the right

kwaddell — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 21:02:14 +0000

Many political observers might jump on that headline with sinister glee. “That Waddell character is finally showing his true colours. He’s a right winger, we knew it all the time,” they might say.
Here’s an even more controversial headline, Manitoba needs to go very hard to the right and quickly. I don’t mean right wing versus left wing. I don’t mean liberal versus conservative or conservative versus socialist. I mean hard to the right, as in the truth.
Many things need to change in Manitoba. Recent elections in Manitoba and Ontario show that change isn’t high on peoples’ priority list but it can also be argued that options for change weren’t clearly outlined by the opposition parties. Voters opted to stay the course in both provinces due to a lack of well thought out and properly explained alternatives.
The voting percentage needs to go up, way up, but voters have to know what they are voting for. In the recent Manitoba election, it was pretty fuzzy as to what were the real platforms of the three political parties. In most cases, the party platforms seemed to contain a lot of “Me too” and “We can do it better”, and “Those other guys are crooks and liars”.
Another thing that has to change is that leaders have to lead. In today’s political world, leaders are rarely, if ever, allowed to lead. The gaggle of handlers is both stifling and invisible.
A recent Winnipeg Free Press report said that a high ranking PC Manitoba person commented that nobody would want to lead the PC Manitoba Party as they would have to face the critical blasts from Michael Balagus, NDP campaign organizer. Apparently, Balagus pulls all the levers of power behind the scenes in the Manitoba NDP. I don’t think I have ever met Michael Balagus. He’s a behind-the-scenes guy, not very public. I would like to meet up with him. Actually, I would like to meet him on a debate platform. I like eating socialists for breakfast so it would be great to actually meet the man. Not likely to happen as behind-the-scenes guys don’t come out into the daylight very often.
It would be much better if leaders actually lead and spoke well and stood up for what they believe. For a farm boy who grew up hearing John Diefenbaker, Tommy Douglas, Lester Pearson and Robert Thompson, the current crop of leaders are miserable in comparison. Without a tele-prompter they can’t string three sentences together. If anybody actually heckled them, I think they would pop a cork. If anybody actually debated against them I’m sure they couldn’t handle it.
What Manitoba needs, and Canada for that matter needs, is a hard turn to the “right” to the truth. We need policies we can embrace, polices that we can afford, policies that we can understand, policies that make sense.
Currently the federal government is asking every department to look at a 10 per cent and a five per cent cut in budget. That may be difficult for departments to imagine. For a business person it’s not a huge deal. Arguably a business person has the option of trying to expand income rather than cut expenses but a five or 10 per cent cut shouldn’t be a big deal. At first blush, one could cut a lot more than that provincially by reducing the number of bureaucrats in health or even education. One has to also wonder how many times we have to run health programs to encourage people to stop smoking or to eat less chips or drink fewer soft drinks. If people insist on being that dumb, it’s doubtful if another government program will help them. People, for the most part, already know that smoking is harmful, that overeating is harmful. Proof of that is how much some people spend on weight loss programs and stop smoking programs.
Manitoba and Canada indeed need a hard turn to the “right”, to the truth. If we get leadership that is willing to speak the truth, then we will prosper. If we don’t, it will be only a matter of time before we go down the same path as the United States and Greece have gone. May truth prevail, it’s only the “right” thing to do.

Lacking clarity of purpose

kwaddell — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 22:58:31 +0000

Within two hours of the PC Manitoba defeat in Tuesday’s election and Hugh McFadyen’s resignation, Winnipeg Sun editor Tom Brodbeck posted a column. In part it said, “The truth is, I don’t know what Manitoba’s Tory brand has been for quite some time.They used to have a brand in the 1980s and 1990s. You knew who they were and what they stood for. You didn’t have to tell Don Orchard, Clayton Manness, Eric Stefanson or Gary Filmon what being a conservative was. There was a clear distinction between them and their union-led, socialist, big-government opponents. But not anymore. The NDP’s agenda during this election — out-of-control spending, long-term deficits, record debt, weak justice policies — was the Tories’ agenda. They were one in the same.”
Dan Lett of the Winnipeg Free Press posted a column only minutes later saying in part, “Let’s be clear, this wasn’t just a win. It was a hands-down massacre of the Tories at the hand of the NDP machine.”
As far back as 2003, I pondered why Manitobans would substitute one set of blue suits for another. The two parties had drawn themselves so close together that the average person can’t tell the difference between the two.
Coupled with the fact that half the people in Manitoba are employed directly by one of our levels of government, namely municipal, school divisions, provincial or federal governments, there is a huge built-in fear of, and reluctance to, in any way consider fiscal prudence. In simpler terms, people may favour some trimming of government expenditures as long as it doesn’t cut too close to their own back yard.
The PC Manitoba started off on the right foot in 2006. Newly elected leader, Hugh McFadyen established four policy sub-committees that reported to a provincial committee. My involvement with that was very direct as I served for two years on the main policy committee and co-chaired the economic opportunity policy group with Rick Borotsik. The effort expanded to five sub-committees by logically adding an agricultural and rural development group.
Each group was asked to present five policies. I can in fact show you on my computer to this day the findings of the five groups. However, somewhere in the bureaucratic rabbit warren that seems to overcome any group, those policies disappeared even though they were approved by grass roots committees. Dozens of people who poured their hearts into the policy process were basically set aside by party bureaucrats who of course knew much better than local members what was best for the party and for Manitobans.
Just for the record, here are the five economic opportunity policies that were developed and presented in the fall of 2009. They are sound, solid and yes, conservative.
A PC Manitoba government would:
• establish a 10 year schedule to eliminate the payroll tax,
• establish a 10 year schedule to eliminate education taxes on residential and commercial property,
• remove land transfer taxes for first time home buyers,
• reduce the province’s debt dependency by establishing a long term and legislated debt reduction schedule,
• raise the basic personal income tax deduction to be competitive with other provinces with the aim of getting the exemption at least up to the poverty level.
It’s pretty hard to find those basic policies in among the announced nonsense about paving back lanes in Winnipeg and out-spending the NDP at every turn.
Perhaps if PC Manitoba had stuck to the basics, the simple policies, they could have defined themselves in a way that Manitobans would have embraced. As it was, nobody could understand what PC Manitoba stood for. That blame lies ultimately with the leader, but in fairness there always seems to be a gaggle of overly cautious handlers who never allow a leader to lead. You will, note it was Hugh McFadyen who resigned. There should have been a number of others who should have been out the door first.
By not allowing the leader to have a clear and principled policy, the party ended up always on the defensive. The PC Manitoba party allowed the NDP to define them in ever-increasing negative terms. It was as if the party was always walking on eggshells, walking so cautiously that nobody could hear them.

Never bite the hand that feeds you

kwaddell — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:40:01 +0000

Neepawa businesses, the Town of Neepawa mayor Ron Forsman and local hog producers stood up to be counted in the ongoing hog war. A media information event was held at Neepawa’s ShopEasy store to bring attention to the disastrous effects that Bill 46 will have on Manitoba and its hog indsustry. Neepawa is home to Hylife Foods which processes over 3,500 hogs per day and employs nearly 1,000 people. I use the word “war” as the province of Manitoba’s NDP government declared war on the hog industry in 2008 with the ill-thought out hog barn moratorium. That nasty piece of legislation was the most hotly debated bill in decades. The committee hearings went on for weeks and literally thousands of people attended the hearings.
In spite of overwhelming evidence in favour of the hog industry, the Winnipeg centred NDP barreled through with the legislation that virtually eliminates anyone from ever building a new or replacement barn in Manitoba.
The inference has been that hog manure contributes to the pollution of our lakes. Well it does, if you count less than two percent as a “contribution”. The moratorium went into law at the same time that Winnipeg was regularly flushing raw human waste into the Red and Assiniboine rivers, making a much larger “contribution”, if you will, to lake pollution.
The Free Press quotes as follows, “Industry officials and Dan Flaten, a U of M soil expert, argue that not only are hog producers a small contributor to phosphorus loading in Lake Winnipeg, producers have been pro-active in implementing the latest technology to minimize the environmental impact of their industry.” Well actually, it’s “Don” Flaten but the Free Press is a big place and they make mistakes sometimes. So do we sometimes.
Since the 2008 moratorium bill, a 2011 bill, Bill 46, a bill to protect Lake Winnipeg has been passed into law.
On Tuesday, the Winnipeg Free Press web site posted a story that said, “Instituted earlier this summer as part of measures to protect Lake Winnipeg, the moratorium was supported by both the NDP and the Tories.
The highlighted statement in italics is wrong. So the Free Press makes errors in fact as well as spelling. The actual “hog barn moratorium” was brought in by Bill 17 in 2008 as stated above. It was vigorously opposed by PC Manitoba. Bill 46 (Lake Winnipeg Act) passed in June 2011, contained the following amending provision which allows permits to be issued pending satisfaction of environmental criteria:
40.1(1) Except as authorized by a permit issued under this section, no person shall construct, expand or modify a confined livestock area for pigs or a pig manure storage facility on land that is within
(a) an area listed in the Schedule; or
(b) any other area of Manitoba.
The effect of this amendment is to allow barns as long as the environmental standards are met. That the PC Manitoba party would vote for it should not have been a surprise as it loosens the moratorium, albeit only slightly. It is however a move in the right direction and to have voted against Bill 46 would have been wrong. Farmers, hog processors, local councils and business people have every right to be upset about Bill 46. Bill 46 is certainly less than what the hog industry would want or that the very environmentally conscious hog industry deserves but at least this amendment allows for a barn to be built, albeit under very expensive and onerous conditions. Bill 46 regulations are actually beyond what most, if any farmers can afford. That was the message of the Tuesday morning media event at Neepawa. A full report appears elsewhere in this paper.
In a speech on Tuesday morning at the Manitoba Chamber of Commerce breakfast, Hugh McFadyen, PC Manitoba leader said that if elected they would provide help for farmers to meet the new regulations. McFadyen stated that a government can’t impose costly regulations on an industry and not help them to meet those regulations.
The utter irony of Bill 46 and the NDP’s iron-clad stance on hog barns is overwhelming. The hog industry is one of the most environmentally conscious of all farm enterprises. Overall, farming is far more environmentally friendly than just about any other human endeavour and yet the government is blaming farming for the woes brought on by urbanization, inadequate infrastructure and misuses of the environment beyond our borders.
The practical political reality is that city voters and parties that base themselves largely on the city vote don’t care, and don’t have to care, about farming. Until the food shelves at the grocery store dry up, they have no intention of caring.
They say to never bite the hand that feeds you but that bit of advice doesn’t seem to apply in Manitoba.

The difference between need and greed

kwaddell — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 19:01:36 +0000

The Harvest Sun Music Fest was a great opportunity to kick back and relax. The organizers and entertainers did all the work and we, the audience, could sit in the shade and just listen. Among the groups that caused me to contemplate life as we know it was the Dust Poets. The poets are lead by Murray Evans of Onanole, of Poor Michael’s Bookshop fame. Evans’ group was especially appreciated as not only is their music very good, a person can discern nearly every word that they sing. Not being able to discern the lyrics in a piece of music, say on the dance floor, is maybe okay. But if the purpose of folk music is to send a message, then it’s important to hear the message. Many groups on the weekend buried their lyrics in overpowering music and sometimes it was made worse by sloppy enunciation,
However, Dust Poets sent a message with every song. One song, Walk Away, from the CD Lovesick Town, is a bit of a heads up about urban life. One line comments on the difference between need and greed saying, “Three car garage with a house attached” and quickly follows with an obvious truth, There’s so much less to this han meets the eye here’s so much bliss to miss ut we’ll get by, If we walk away, walk away, walk away.”
The “three car garage with a house attached” line really grabbed me in the light of all the housing difficulties that southern Manitoba is facing. We actually don’t have a housing shortage, we have a shortage of available housing. Most people are way over housed as the song line suggests.
In Neepawa, there has been some controversy about smaller houses on smaller lots. In earlier times, as evidenced by some remaining very small houses, building small houses on small lots was the norm. In Neepawa, as in most small towns, and definitely in the cities, it was not uncommon to have 20 foot wide houses. Look around and there’s still some left and some of them are only 30 feet or less in depth. That’s 600 square feet or less. That’s smaller than the “three car garage” attached to the house.
We have to face reality and figure out how to build smaller homes at a profit for the builders and get people the housing they really need. Yes, I said that word “profit” and it has to be there or the money and labour will simply flow somewhere else, perhaps not even into housing. If there’s no return on investment, there won’t be any more investment.
Today, large houses are being built that actually house only two to four people. In the old days, a small house might have ma and pa and a whole pack of kids and maybe grandma too. We have expanded our vision of what a house must be and we have done so at our peril. Let’s face it, housing and today’s housing designs have gone far beyond need and well into greed. So much so that, at some point, nearly everyone with a huge house says, “What do I really need this for?”
Everyone is responsible for our problem. Government has made taxes too numerous, so have municipalities. Governments have set renovation and building codes too high. Zoning has become a nightmare. There are so many hoops to jump through that nobody in their right mind would invest in housing.
In addition, those brave enough to invest have been publicly criticized. You hear statements like, “Well they certainly got rich didn’t they?” The fact is “they” likely didn’t get rich. And who should object if they did? Contractors, realtors and investors invest time, money and risk into projects; they should get a return on their investment.
I say damn the naysayers. I’m sick of people being accused of making a buck when in fact they likel y didn’t and if they did, they deserved to do so.
At any rate we don’t need more “three car garages with a house attached”. We need nice, well built smaller homes and we need lots of them. May God bless (and yes, enrich) those with the wisdom and courage to deliver on that need.