Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - March 3, 1981, Winnipeg, Manitoba and it rowed a 300 Gar Toyi Winnipeg r3c 3d by ear Badwi newspapers company limited Telephone 9439331 second class mall registration number 0286 Winnipeg free press Freedom 0 Trade Equality of civil rights Liberty of tory prospects look grim Donald Nicol publisher John Dafoe editorial Page editor Murray Burt managing editor Joe Clark presented the final session of the National conservative convention with a staffing picture of a party which has put the question of leadership behind it and is United and ready to March to Victory in the next general the speech was a Fine example of Clarks steadfastness in the face of for him and his he was very Likely in the Wake of Friday nights convention the question about a new leadership convention is not but a couple of factors Are Likely to delay any immediate pressure in the party for a new Choice of there ought to be a moratorium on internal manoeuvring until the conservatives have finished their parliamentary Battles Over the Constitution and the governments Energy the Choice of Peter of As party will probably delay somewhat a new leadership if he were to reveal his secret who is not troubled by a Lack of would probably confess that he regards himself As the Best Man to Lead the that being the he is not Likely to make any moves which will create Early opportunities for other claimants to the there is virtually no that a decision on the leadership can be put off for another two dissidents in the caucus Are already making their opposition to Clark Many rank and file who might have cast a lukewarm ballot for Clark on will be encouraged today to think bad thoughts about their chief concern of the party strategists will undoubtedly be to maintain As much flexibility As possible on the leadership they would dearly love to choose a new Leader just after the liberals selected a successor to Pierre on the grounds that the party with the freshest new Leader has an Edge with the the of could Call an election without giving the tories a Chance to choose their new that might not be Cricket but the tories should have Learned 15 months ago that the liberals play to if they can restrain their penchant for undermining their Leader fora the conservatives May yet be Able at least to reduce the damage created by the weekend aside from the leadership the party displayed few signs of serious on policy delegates firmly in the Middle of the Road the temptation to emulate Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan by swinging the party drastically to the right was delegates rejected a proposal to pay Peter Lougheed even More for his Oil than he they staved off the militant anti abortionists and the new rightists who wanted to do away with pensions and those elements Are in the party and they May coalesce around a candidate for the leadership at the they Are More of a nuisance than a Clark must Hope now by hewing to a moderate and principled he can yet win enough support in country to prove to his party that he is not its chief at the prospects for and for his look rather for a better tax credit Winnipeg City councils executive committee is renewing its quest for a larger share in those tax controlled by the which tend to grow with the cites income from its property tax does not Rise in step with the inevitable increase in costs and raising the property tax besides being generally imposes hardship on some City councillors would like a Guaran teed share in sales and income tax which Rise automatically As prices and incomes the objections to the property tax Are Well the amount collected from a particular property owner depends on the value attributed More or less arbitrarily to his property by the assessment system and not on his ability to the property values used in Winnipeg Bear no particular relation to Market so that increases in the prices of land and buildings give the City no extra but even if taxes did Rise automatically with Market that would simply mean that a Homeowner whose income would not necessarily Rise in step with the value of his Home would find municipal taxes demanding a larger and larger share of his the costs of municipal government do not necessarily vary in step with the real estate a system that related assessed values More closely to Market values would produce a Windfall for the City following any rapid Rise in House prices and a shortfall following a period of real estate the cites costs do not necessarily follow the same but the cites costs must growth in the deficit of the transit system cannot be curbed until the Council establishes a development strategy aimed at supporting transit use and until developers put up buildings in keeping with that that will require years of but in the meantime the transit system must continue to the City faces a growing backlog of capital works to replace the oldest sewers and whose condition is revealed by every wintertime Watermain every Spring crop of potholes and every bout of basement flooding following a summer past councils have allowed the City to grow and spread and have invested in financing the spread while older parts of the City have been neglected so that the old facilities Are now aged beyond their useful life and taxed beyond their the City does a Tittle of the necessary replacement work every but nowhere near enough to keep Pace with it cannot do More without borrowing which is imprudent in the current state of interest or else taxing its property owners More the Merit of the property tax is its the people who pay it Are also the people who elect the councillors who decide what the rate shall be and How the Money shall be systems that give the Council backdoor sources of Revenue for which they need not account to their electors confuse and dilute the relationship Between what the Winni Peg resident is paying for municipal services and what the Council is providing him in the inequity of the property tax is alleviated by the property tax credit in the provincial income which is an attempt to reduce the pain which the property tax inflicts on those least Able to pay the costs of operating the City of Winnipeg should be paid primarily by the people who live in the All of whom will complain if they Are asked to pay More in property tax but a great Many of whom probably could afford to pay the plight of those who Are genuinely unable to pay higher property taxes should not be used As an excuse to shelter wealthier property owners from the costs of the services they expect from their if the City pins its Hopes on cornering a share of provincial revenues from some particular tax or group of it will be at the mercy of provincial tax policy from year to year and it will obscure its responsibility to the residents of the refinement and expansion of the property tax would provide Relief More precisely where it is needed and would leave the Council free to set a tax rate related to the cites the property tax credit is politically appealing to the province since it allows the province to deliver the Benefit directly to the grateful instead of seeking larger Grants from the province or a larger share in its the City can make a better Case and can accomplish More for itself and for the taxpayers by seeking an expanded property tax saving a theatre it is ironic that the cancellation of the 1981 season for festival Canadas Only major festival of Cana Dian should be prompted by the decision to take advantage of a government program intended to bail out artistic groups that find themselves in financial the sponsored by the Secretary of is a onetime Opportunity for arts organizations to get rid of their it requires that the organization applying for the Grant raise on third of the amount of the deficit that can then be matched by equal amounts from the Federal and provincial it is a useful and helpful although the festival deficit was relatively Small its directors determined that they could not both raise on third of that amount themselves and also finance a 1981 the cancellation May not be an entirely bad there should be a place for a festival of Canadian and the directors say that there will definitely be a season in of the government program should enable them to Start it with a clean the years respite should also give them time to do some serious planning for the As Winni Eggers know it is not unusual for an arts group in Canada to run a it is incumbent on the directors of those to work towards reducing a deficit As much As is possible by examining both their own organizations and the programs they Are festival Lennoxville has never achieved an attendance of More than per cent of its during their years its directors should make a serious Effort to find out the reasons for the attendance being so Low and then Correct in should be one of the main and constant concerns of All arts whether they be in Lennoxville or the great satan is tamed by Frank Walker special to the free press Montreal difference this time around is that we have seen the great satan and he rather a so it will be almost impossible to work up a head of steam Over Rene Levesque and the parti quebecois when we Are asked to vote some time in the after temporarily at any the Issue of so much so that Lise minister of state for social development and women has chosen not to be a candidate but rather to continue the Battle for Independence outside the discipline of Good or bad what we have left to there is not whether Quebec should be a though not quite but whether Levesque and his party have Given us four years of Good or bad and that is something much More difficult to de the wildness has for the out of politics the violence of feeling which confronted Premier Robert Bourassa and which produced a resurgence of the Union National and gave an overwhelming Victory to the parti has abated As it would from exhaustion As from the results of the there is a world of difference be tween the Quebec of today and that of the confused and bitter months of the liberals did not deserve then the kind of brutal verdict they were handed Rodrigue Biron certainly did not earn the seats he won playing Down separatism As he should not have been Given his Large majority that if politics were a More rational we have suffered a surfeit of political polarization Over the past few and it has got us we Are Back to the mundane in to that decent dullness John Dryden recommended As the proper atmosphere in which to conduct Public listening to the that is in deed what we Are going to for the first time in Many for Claude bedevilled As he is Over disagree ment within his party about the Lan Guage of it is the ec9iiomy which must be the Lack of jobs and new Industry for Roch whose entry into Provin Cial politics has if not the then the Lasalle is More interested in the practical work of with we May a relatively Low keyed dealing with those concerns which affect our daily of which there Are More than enough to occupy us for the 28 to 35 Days it takes for an election in que Levesque has promised a budget before we but he has not promised it will be which Means that it can be a purely political designed As part of an election Campaign and not As serious but putting the Best face on any budget at this we Are still going to have gloomy news in the province deficit that is Large and growing despite cutbacks affecting not just civil whose lifestyle has been sharply but the whole Range of Public Down to the Basic work of the grassroots social new austerity Ryan has warned of a new aus finance minister Jacques Parizeau has already begun to impose and there seems Little doubt that the next four years will no matter whether the liberals or the parti quebecois Are in a marked decline in the rate of government Levesque is playing Down the language though he May be tempted by differences in the Liberal party to revive he is also trying to maintain the Constitution As an education funding at the end of january the minister of Keith announced that he was instituting a new formula for the funding of education for Manito this news was prefaced by the fact that the government was pumping million into the on the surface the plan seems quite adequate and As the present Grant Structure is both outdated and misleading in its implications to the education system of Mani the problem arises for several school divisions in the Urban these Are is sit f Lansdowne school River East and with this new three year plan in operation these Divi Sions would share in an increasingly smaller portion of the monies this would necessitate an increase in local tax Levy to the Point where taxes for education would Border on the of if there is no sharing among the divisions local autonomy will become nonexistent and the future will see one bureaucratic school in such a Case local input would be almost nil and the system would become highly impersonal in an already too Imper Sonal the basis of the reorganization of the City of Winnipeg in 1971 stated that the Cost of education would be spread More fairly across the entire Urban i would like to know How the minister proposes to keep within the spirit and letter of the agreement with the implementation of the new funding to Date the Only recognition by the minister that the new proposed system is inequitable is a five Mill freeze for the first tax what happens after that i urge the minister to attempt further redress of these there is no Benefit to be gained from one Large Why should the citizens of Winnipeg be penalized because they live in an area where there is not a lot of Industry Michael sup eve Winnipeg birthday bom Minne March letters the Winnipeg free press welcomes letters from readers writers must give their name and the author s name will be used and letters Are subject to editing erroneous we would like to Correct an erroneous article written by an ill informed re your article victims offenders by Glen Mackenzie free february 16 states that no offenders or victims were included in the planning of the Confer ence on Community based alternatives to the criminal Justice nor were they present at the this is absolutely three members of the planning com Mittee went to Stony Mountain Penitentiary and met with a group of inmates to discuss the a second visit by the conference coordinator was also made with attempts to arrange for ten inmates to be granted a temporary absence to attend the con the Penitentiary finally agreed to consider two requests and ultimately approved Only Exi mates were present and some of them took an Active role in discussion in the the Cost of attendance for the three Exi mates was covered so that they could the fact that the conference organizers chose not to put inmates or exin mates on display by identifying them deserves Praise rather than their identification and participation is personal responsibility and they should be Able to be involved As any other some of them chose to identify themselves in some it is unfortunate that your reporter Felt it necessary to look for possible weaknesses in the conference without thoroughly checking out his the setting up and coordinating of a major conference is a difficult it would have been More appropriate to detail the extensive level of Success that was for 327 persons from at least 38 different communities in Mani Toba More than half of this group Are identified As Community people As opposed to civil servants involved in the eight Crown attorneys and four judges Arent these achievements worthy of mention David Kennedy executive director Betty Hopkins president John Howard and Elizabeth Fry society of Manitoba Winnipeg humane act As a member of the Winnipeg humane i want to commend Paul Sullivan for his kindness in putting out of its misery a dismembered this is in reference to his article of february 20 about the cruelty of some snowmobile Drivers who ran Over a Skunk on the ice in the la Salle cutting off its Hind but not killing before they roared Johnny Skunk was fortunate in hav ing Sullivan come Mildred Mackie Winnipeg the Pigeon blight it seems to have been a very Long time since there have been any letters in any of the local newspapers concern ing one of our civic blights the numerous Pigeon these Birds have not disappeared As Many May suppose now that they have been re moved from the Trees around holy Trinity Church at Graham and Donald one has Only to look up at the Cornice on the Eaton place building diagonally across from there on any late afternoon to see where they now there Are numerous others now to be found roosting in the adjoining residential neighbourhood up to As far As Sherbrook Street and toward the Assiniboine int it about time the civic authorities recognized this condition the general unsanitary condition existing on the ground below where these Birds Roost has become equally Offen Sive and possibly As dangerous to health As the do droppings to be found and which we have always been alerted to remove from our lawns where children it is the health Hazard along with the general insight Leness that i am concerned Herb Blake Winnipeg insensitive recently there have been several letters criticizing elderly people utilizing Public transportation during Rush hours and suggesting they be made to pay full one lady wrote that she witnessed the passengers on a bus refuse to yield their seat to an elderly Man with a i cannot comprehend How people can though not with any marked enthuse for his is trying to gloss Over urging his follow ers to keep dissent within the but Here again the debate lacks there is no likelihood of the English speaking school system in Quebec growing fat on new no matter what happens to the language we Are not in an age of great either into the country or into Quebec fro within the close race there is no More talk now of a massive Victory for Ryan and the though the Odds Are still in his despite Levesques claims of a minimum of 70 to 72 seats in an Assembly of a nine percent vote for the Union which is quite could give Levesque a renewed but there is also talk of As Many As 30 seats for the Union though this would seem to be wildly the Liberal party is superbly organized and has million in the it would be safer to assume nothing near that figure for Roch la but a much closer result Between the liberals and the parti with perhaps an Edge for the underlying the Campaign is the ques Tion of the future of the parti Quebec tos which never was a political party in the traditional but much More a political drawing together diverse opinions in Pursuit of a single goal for the most committed of the Sepa the temporary abandonment of Independence is As Lise Payette and there Are Many who believe with for those prepared to accept the the Strain now Falls on the divergence of views within the parti which Range almost across the political Only Leves for the binds these disparate groups which makes the parti quebecois a most fragile be so perhaps the elderly person has a doctors appointment at generally this Means they will get in to see the doctor at and will get out at Why should they pay full fare did these selfish people writing the letters consider that the senior citizens May be living solely on old age pensions and the difference of 40 cents each Way would make a substantial Cut in their income it would be my guess that 70 to 80 per cent of the passengers work in offices behind a after sitting All Day it surely Hurt them to offer their seat to an elderly person who is weaker one Day the shoe will be on the other foot so perhaps a bit of empathy could be Practised just for the i am 26 years Cindy de wit Winnipeg did you get close enough to Lougheed to find of what his Marc ;