Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - June 13, 1979, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free june Winnipeg free press Freedom of Trade Equality of civil rights Liberty of religion published six Days a week Al 300 Carlton Winnipeg r3c 3c1 by f p publications Western limited Felep none 9439331 second class mail registration number 0286 Nicol acting publisher r s Malone chairman Peter Mclintock editorial Page editor Murray Burt managing editor Maurice Western Ottawa editor r h Shefford president general manager h h is it Worth the Cost in a time of fiscal restraint it is appropriate to examine the usefulness to Winnipeg of sending a team of councillors to an event such As the recent annual conference of the federation of Canadian held in Quebec it is also appropriate to consider whether Winnipeg should continue to belong to this the justification for sending City councillors to such conferences can Only be that it helps them to become better this improvement in their knowledge must be direct and it must also be proved to the taxpayers who Are footing the taxpayers have a right to expect that each of the seven councillors who at a Cost to the City of will Supply an individual written report that will be available not Only to the Council but to the pending these no final judgment can be made on the Worth or otherwise of this but it is possible to say that the Early impression to be gathered is that this conference was almost a Complete waste of time and tax the Winnipeg councillors appear to have displayed Only a desultory interest in the in they were not much different from other representatives from other munic but this does not excuse them since the Agenda must have been available beforehand and they must have had at least an idea that several sessions would be Ungro Winnipeg seven delegates did not choose to make Many interventions in the conference a coyness that could be interpreted As Lack of interest or having nothing to either interpretation is disturbing to those who Are paying the the federation itself has been in existence for 42 years and is supposed to be a lobby group on behalf of municipalities seeking help from the Federal does it bother holding sessions about such issues As capital punish ment and the Reform of the Constitution of Canada the views of municipalities on such topics May have intrinsic interest but Are they the main business of City councils most taxpayers would say that they Are that there Are other forums in which these issues can More effectively be and that the business of City councils is running that being the Why were sessions dealing with real problems of cities so modestly attended Why was an inordinate amount of time taken up in debating a Large number of resolutions that have been passed at previous that have been ignored before and that May Well be ignored again the federation has a membership of 225 municipalities out of about in this is about five per cent of Canadian although the federation says it represents 35 per cent of canadians in population it has been losing members in a 65 since and it is not hard to see the fact is that the As now does not seem to be very relevant to the problems of Canadas cities and membership in the federation costs Winnipeg about per unless the detailed reports from the seven Winnipeg delegates can paint another it would seem to be time for Winnipeg to Stop sending costly delegations to these conferences and for Winnipeg to withdraw from the federation of Canadian one big pain in the neck the Clark government has ordered a review of metric which now threatens us with problems the most practical an official of the metric commis Sion is reported to have observed recently that we Are seven years ahead of the United states in this if it is not reason for satisfaction but evidence that a simple Rule of common sense has been it ought to have been a guiding principle from the outset that we would move in concert with our great trading partners but never in Advance of some of the effected through bureaucratic have no relation whatever to our sales abroad Are in no Way dependent on celsius readings in Sherbrooke or Smiths nor Are such readings at All helpful to canadians at Home the fahrenheit scale offers finer of store generally understandable temperature last week an Ottawa Csc television station for the Benefit of visiting american to provide fahrenheit Why have resident canadians so Long been denied the same consideration other Are of a different since the automobile Industry is going our plants Are bound to follow but the change to litres at the gasoline pumps is merely mindless metric we have used the Imperial gallon throughout the automobile age and it mattered nothing to customers or Sellers that our american neighbors have a different unnecessary changes of measurement Are undesirable changes for the simple reason that they can be used to cover Price nor does the harm Stop if the results Are unsatisfactory and the Public demands a return to the former the problem of camouflaged increases arises the government appears to have been inspired in part by a conservative research study which reached the somewhat uncouth conclusion that metric conversion is one big pain in the further inspiration May Well have come from the constituencies in the recent it should be without much to get rid of the irritations resulting from metric extravagances of the celsius some of those inflicted on the Farmers fall into this the review should concentrate on the More difficult what is necessary is that we should get Back to some sort of parity with the the Cost of metric Folly May otherwise be High in Light of the present trading higher than this country can a costly agreement the court decision that has invalidated an agreement to pay a female police Constable full salary while she attended Law school should eliminate any Legal entanglements that have resulted from As far As Winnipeg taxpayers Are in the dispute should impress on City officials in All departments that the taxpayers of Winnipeg Are not in the business of providing paid full time education benefits to their the particular Case arose when the City police in need of the services of its own decided to Send a Constable to at full to qualify on condition that she continue to work As a lawyer for the City for five years after the if it had been carried would have had the effect of paying or to an individual during a four or five year period just to go to the agreement first became controversial when other members of the police recognizing the advantage that was being Given to the questioned Why no Opportunity had been Given to others to the wider question that should have been considered was Why the need for a full time lawyer for the police department could not have been filled by hiring someone who had taken Legal training at his own what was proposed in the Case of the Constable was to study Law full time while collecting a police salary was entirely different to the commendable practice of the police and other City of encouraging of duty it is entirely acceptable to adjust shift and even to pay Bonus amounts to offset the Cost of night courses where such courses can Benefit the individual and his the particular sequence of events that followed the police departments decision to follow a course unacceptable to the taxpayers should serve As a guide to other City departments that May be tempted to provide tax paid education to their Post 1 my i Vii beyond Vienna by Joseph Kraft Washington recent reports of jockeying in the kremlin1 betray a sad Washington knows very Little about who or what will succeed Leonid Brezhnev in the soviet the big two Summit in Vienna later this week has As its prime purpose engaging the soviet leadership after to that end president Carter Hopes to commit the russian military establishment to arms control in a Way that will promote a benign climate for the change at the top that is certain to come the Rumor Mills were set agog recently by a picture of the soviet leaders in the reviewing stand for the May Day in one photo published by a Moscow evening Brezhnev Deputy for foreign Andrei Kiri was elaborate theories were developed about behind the scenes dirty work aimed at cutting off Kirilenko As a possible successor to dirty work presumably the dirty work was done on behalf of the Moscow party Viktor but it was quickly in done in the Moscow morning papers which produced the second photo that included Kirilenko and left experts scratching their this is not to say that nothing is known of the leadership Outlook in Brezhnev 72 and longer at the top than Nikita Khrushchev or Lenin is plainly accounts of recent meetings with French and German As Well As the schedule for the Vienna Sug Gest that he cannot work for More than a couple of hours at a on some Days when he is known to be in he does not go to the office at when he does go to the he gets to the office around noon and leaves in the Early Brezhnev has even riot been or More Likely not wanted to Lay Down a line of the same aged colleagues who helped him oust Khrushchev Back in 1964 keep doing the same Mikhail at remains the dominant party and Proba Bly the new 2 Man in the Alexei now Heads the government As prime and is probably 3 gang of four Brezhnev own duties seem to have been increasingly spread among a personal entourage in much the Way that the gang of four took Over in China during the dotage of chairman now who has managed party matters for Brezhnev and has been thought to be a Likely interim has been the leading Konstantin now who has recently been Given politburo is another member of the Tentou a third is Brezhnev person Al Leonid who is now another is Konstantin now a member of the secretariat with responsibilities for dealing with other communist the recent jockeying seems to have occurred within this group notably Between who seems to have lost and who has been coming up the Best guess on the succession is that it will be a transitional perhaps Kiri Lenko or who will be obliged to govern there after there will be a struggle for presumably culminating in the Emer gence of a successor to Brezhnev As undoubted the Tricky period begins with the struggle to be top rivals bidding for Primacy seek the support of outside and have to pay for in the past the military has been the decisive outside and both Khrushchev and Brezhnev bought their support by signing on to programs for big military at president Carter will be trying to prevent a replay of that he is hoping to tilt the soviet Union toward a Lon term commitment in the direction of not the presidents tactic is to tie the soviet military to Salt for that purpose he has taken the unusual step of including defence Secretary Harold Brown and the chairman of the joint chiefs of David in the american delegation to the Vienna their opposite numbers on the soviet Side would be defence minister Dmitri Ustinov and the chief of Nikolai crucial figure Ogarkow is the crucial apart from being the ranking soviet military and a widely respected professional he was a senior adviser to the soviet delegation negotiating the first Salt agreement at which time he came to know the soviet response to president Carters military gambit will provide the True test of for the Issue at the Summit is not mainly Between president Carter and president Berezh the Issue is whether Carter and Brezhnev together can engage the soviet succession on behalf of a moderate foreign Joseph Kraft is a correspondent based in Field enterprises not six Days As a subscriber to the Winnipeg free press since 1950 i am taking exception to a falsity contained in the Masthead of your to published six Days a week i hereby Challenge you to Correct the refund the overpayment made for issues not received due to the publishing or publish this let Ter of Valde Winnipeg canadians there each year on june 6 you print a column about Day in each year that i read it sounds the As if the Only people there were contrary to Hollywood and John Wayne there were canadians there including two very Fine Winnipeg regiments the fort Garry horse and the Royal Winnipeg both regiments landed at hour on the first Fred Lusk Winnipeg metric questions it is evident that your with Fred Cleverley being the Banner has maintained an extreme ant metric going so far As to suggest that retaining the Imperial sys tem of measurements is synonymous with True if there Are any advantages to the Imperial system of measurements and i cannot think of except that it gives you instantly the distance from some Kings nose to the tip of the Index Finger on his out stretched Arm they Are far out weighed by its Engi neers and unable to Cope with this awkward have Long since established their own system of dividing feet into inches into and creating such Decimal units As meaning a weight of one thousand Engi Neering offices abound with mathematical tables showing Decimals of a foot for each 32nd of an Decimals of an Inch for each 64th of an conver Sion tables for Long tons to Short tons to on the More tangible have you letters the Winnipeg free press welcomes letters from the authors name will be and All letters Are subject to Royal Winnipeg rifles in Normandy on Day Ever tried to obtain a proper mixture for your outboard when the manual Calls for a your gasoline Container is a five gallon the Oil is sold in two pint plastic to confuse the Issue even Are labelled with the French version referring to a quart As a and the attendant has not got a clue How Many ounces Are in a or or quart would those still sceptical try to answer the following questions routine without the Aid of Pencil or reference Book 1 How Many fluid ounces Are in an Imperial gallon 2 How Many fluid ounces Are in a gallon 3 in what is a pint and what is a Pinte 4 How do you define an ounce and How do you define a fluid ounce 5 if is the difference Between a fluid ounce and a fluid ounce Imperial measure 6 when buying the bottles Are commonly sold in fifths and what is a fifth 7 is there More alcohol in a fifth labelled 80 than in an Impe rial 26 ounce bottle Standard for scotch labelled 75 proof 8 How Many feet Are in a mile 9 How Many Square Yards Are in a Square mile 10 what is the difference Between a statute mile and a nautical mile 11 what is a Long ton and what is a Short ton under the metric most of these questions would never when using the metric equiv could be answered by any eight Langes Winnipeg homemakers i am writing in regard to the Owca women of the year awards announced As i was Reading about the winners of each of the six it suddenly occurred to me that the y had forgotten to include a very important Why is there no recognition of the homemaker the women liberation movement has stressed the need for women to be Able to make a free Choice Between a career and staying Home in a More traditional yet by leaving the homemaker out of the awards Are we not saying her role is somewhat less important than those who choose to work outside the Home i Hope is is any wonder that so Many women feel unfulfilled in their traditional role when society even other women longer recognize the important role she performs when she chooses to stay at Home Linda Whitford Winnipeg disillusioned i am a new resident of and was totally Happy to live Here As the town has much to that until recently when i returned i walked through Bonnycastle Park main Street and Avenue and witnessed something which has ruined All of the Glamor of the town for there was a group of three two teenagers and assorted Chil the adults and teenagers were drinking whisky and throwing the bottles into the red that was not half As bad As seeing the teenagers having sexual Intercourse on the Park grass next to where the adults were and near where the children were there was a groundskeeper not even 50 Yards but he did not do any thing to Stop when trying to find out the bylaws concerning the conduct of people using i got the run i Only wanted a simple answer to a which i never really Ted Bencharsky did without any that he would look into which leads me to believe that not a thing will be Minnich Winnipeg anti death penalty it is with deep disappointment that members of amnesty International group Winnipeg note the private Bill on the reinstatement of the death penal this retrogressive Call for vengeance comes at a time of increasing violence and summary executions in a world caught in the whirlwind of in View of Canadas relatively fortunate and relatively stable it is imperative that our leaders accept the responsibility of moral leadership against Public pressure to exorcise anxiety by punitive execution is an act of Vio Lence Breeds otherwise thoughtful who support the Call for the reinstatement of the death penalty out of a conviction that capital punishment might be a deterrent to often do not have Access to sufficient struggling countries still have the death while virtually All West Ern democracies have abolished an execution violates the right to but More than that it violates Hope for it becomes the most despairing of human Ustun Reinart amnesty International group 19 Winnipeg Moscow underpass i recently returned from a trip to the soviet while in Moscow i walked i Gorky to go to the red Square and the Krem there was no crosswalk and no lights to help pedestrians to Cross the the Only Way to Cross this very wide Street is through an under having no wish to meet the Moscow police i went while walking through the underpass i wondered How Joe Zuken would have handled the i also wondered if the fact that he is a councillor in the City of Winnipeg would have Given him the same immunity from prosecution in Moscow As it apparently does Bert Woodward Winnipeg Portage and main underpass ;