Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - May 2, 1981, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free press saturday May 2, 1981 Winnipeg free press Freedom of Trade Equality of civil rights Liberty of religion published and printed six Days a week at 300 Carlton Street. Winnipeg 3c1 by Canadian newspapers company limited Telephone 943-9331 second class mail registration number 0286 Donald Nicol publisher John Dafoe editorial Page editor Murway a cmdr politics holds up the Grid editorials Reading Between the lines of the carefully worded communique issued by the four Western premiers on the Power Grid negotiations it is quite Clear that any blockage still in the Way of the scheme is political in nature. The first paragraph of the communique states detailed feasibility studies on the locations and construction of transmission facilities ii Kirg Manitoba Saskatchewan and Alberta and on the Sale and Purchase of electricity Between the three have been completed and Are at the ministerial negotiation the last paragraph says a Western Power Grid would provide Security of Supply of electricity for the three provinces in addition to contributing to the goal of self sufficiency by displacing the use of Fossil fuels. The construction of a Power Grid would also demonstrate in very real and positive terms what can be achieved through Western provincial in simple language the first paragraph says the work has been completed up to the Point where the politicians must approve. The last paragraph sets out advantages that have been Given lip service by All three premiers. It is the second paragraph that has the cold water in it. It reads the premiers instructed their ministers to give the highest possible priority to Complete the internal analysis and joint financial studies of the material now available on the Western Power Grid and to advise the premiers at the earliest possible Date of their the facts Are that these internal studies Are Complete in Manitoba and in Alberta. Alberta is looking to Manitoba to provide for the next 35 years at least about 10 per cent of its anticipated increase in Power requirements. Manitoba stands ready to do so once the Grid can be approved. The Holdback is in Saskatchewan. Premier Allan Blakeney said at the Thompson conference that he was not looking for a fee for transmitting Manitoba Power Over Saskatchewan to Alberta just the full recovery of costs. One of or. Blakeney s senior Cabinet minister Roy Romanow took pains to say that there was no truth to the suggestion that Saskatchewan is dragging its feet in order to stall the time when Manitoba can announce resumption of Nelson River construction until after the next provincial election Here. If there is another reason it was not presented. The White Shell squeeze the minister responsible for Parks in Manitoba Harry Enns has done the Only thing any respectable conservative Cabinet minister can do when faced by the draft plan for the future development of the Whit Sheil provincial Park he has grabbed his hat and is running As fast As he can. There has been no doubt in anyone s mind that cottage owners in the White Shell and in other provincial Parks have been getting their summer recreation at bargain basement prices. Few responsible cottage owners would object to having their rates increased to reflect the times. The draft plan however confirms their worst suspicions that the main aim of the bureaucrats is neither fairness nor Cost recovery. If the plan is adopted by the provincial government then the government will be treating the users of provincial Parks in the same manner it accuses the Federal government of treating it. The plan gives Park users a Bill of rights of the kind Premier Lyon claims he will never accept in the Canadian Constitution. The plan tells Park users not so much what they cannot do but what they can. At the same time it tells them that anything that is not allowed is prohibited. It should be the other Way around. By establishing As the plan proposes a two tier system of charges the provincial bureaucrats Are acting the same Way the Federal government has acted in using bait and switch tactics to increase the provincial share of ramp costs. The province like it or not enticed Ordinary people to the Parks by offering bargain rates for those who would invest in cottages and who would at the same time provide a summer population that could justify the establishment of services to accommodate casual visitors. Having persuaded them to locate the province now proposes to Cash in by charging the Semi permanent Park users not Only the usual 25 per cent of operating costs but also an amount equal to an additional 50 per cent tied to inflation. It will be a neat trick if it is carried out since few cottage owners own their land. They lease it and they May become the first lessees in history apart from their counter parts in National Parks to pay extra because the land owned by the government is increasing in value. The most incredible part of the scheme one already disputed by the minister to his credit is the plan to put toe province Back into the inheritance tax business it was so anxious to get out of. Government spokesmen lose no Opportunity to Point out How unfair inheritance taxes were and How they were abandoned because they were in effect a form of double taxation once Canada adopted a capital gains tax. Someone needs to Point out to them that the capita tax has not been repealed and to suggest that the imposition of a 50-per-cent assignment tax based on the increase in value of the summer property is just the same double taxation they have complained about. The draft plan for the White Shell is just that a draft plan. The danger is that the plans of bureaucrats have too Good a track record of becoming government policy. This is one that should be strangled before it does. Gallery Phil Mallette cry of Justice sort. Cowl of c the billion Dollar Rabbit growing threat to privacy As Val Werier Points out elsewhere on this Page there is increasing evidence that the Protection against unrestrained police bugging which was written into the misnamed Protection of privacy act has turned out to be dangerously ineffective. The ostensible aim of the legislation was to ensure that police used electronic surveillance Only in the Pursuit of serious crime and Only in cases where other methods of investigation had not worked. In fact it seems All too often that electronic bugs Are being used in fishing expeditions which go far beyond the purposes for which they were authorized. At one time or another police have bugged the caucus room of the Manitoba legislature a Public Telephone in a restaurant the office of a provincial Cabinet minister a Telephone used by judges and the lawyers room in the courthouse. In the process police were Given the Opportunity to overhear the private conversations of thousands of innocent people. Some of those conversations involved matters generally regarded As privileged. The most disturbing news now comes in a decision by judge Ian Ubienski who refused to admit wiretapping evidence in a police Case because no other avenues of investigation had been tried and found ineffective. That decision raises questions about the very Core of the Protection of privacy act the judicial approval which is required for police bugs. It is the judge who is supposed to determine whether an application for electronic surveillance meets All the tests required by the Law. If he does not do that then even the minimal Protection of individual privacy which the Law seeks to establish disappears. There is always room for honest disagreement Between judges on How convincing a Case the police might have made in any individual instance. But judges Are Busy men. They tend to have a certain Faith in the police. It is ail too easy to imagine How the signing of authorizations for electronic surveillance could become a matter of routine. Certainly the number of authorizations which have been turned Down Over the years has been remarkably Small especially when compared to the proportion of bugs which actually produced the kind of evidence the police claimed to be seeking. The Law intended that electronic eavesdropping should be an exceptional procedure for use Only in important cases where More acceptable methods of investigation had failed. If it comes to be regarded As a routine tactic either by the police or by the judges then an essential Protection for civil liberties will have been lost. By Leonard Shifrin special to the free press Ottawa finance minister Allan Maceachen May be a wily old soul but he is not he says a magician. In response to opposition questioning in the House he has declared that he has no magic formula for making inflation disappear. Nonetheless since he resurrected a politically deceased sex prime minister not so Long ago the notion that he May have further feats of legerdemain up his sleeve lingers on. My own theory is that he has plans for a billion version of the Rabbit out of a hat trick later this year. Making such a chunk of Money Dis appear would be no trick at All. Finance ministers have done that for years. But making the billion appear in the Federal Treasury cancelling its Transfer to the provinces without making provincial treasuries poorer would be a feat. My theory says both the intended Rabbit and hat were indicated last fall in or. Maceachen s inaugural budget. They just weren t labelled As such. The incentives and preferences in the income tax Are expensive and it is incumbent on govern ment to ensure that the incentives Are effective and that their Cost is Justi he said. We might be better served he said if such provisions were fewer and More that s the hat. The financial pundits had predicted a major assault on tax expenditures but the budget delivered nothing of the sort. It merely suggested something might be done. The portent of a Rabbit appears else where in the budget in the part where notice is Given that a significant reduction in Federal transfers to the provinces for social programs is to be achieved when the established pro Grams financing Elf agreement comes up for re negotiation this year. What that Means according to Ottawa sources is that the portion of Elf providing billion in Aid to Post secondary education programs in the prov inces will not be renewed. But at the same time the Federal government wants to strengthen the conditions governing its contributions to health care to end extra Billing by doctors. The provinces of course Are not Likely to agree to a provision which could Force them to increase payments to doctors if they Are going to have to come up with More Money for Post secondary education. Unless that is the Federal government somehow magi that extra Money Sud Denly appear in their treasuries. And that brings us Back to the hat. One of the reasons Why the Federal government has been reluctant to move on the tax expenditure front has to do with the Federal provincial tax sharing arrangements. If Ottawa were to eliminate a tax break under which qualify ing taxpayers have been saving billion in tax it would not find itself billion Richer. One billion dollars of that would belong to the provinces. If in the Elf negotiations Allan Maceachen were to propose the elimination of roughly 0 per cent of the tax Breaks identified in the finance depart ment s annual tax expenditure state ments that could compensate the prov inces for the funding cutbacks. And if the measure came to pass As part of the new Elf arrangement or. Maceachen would be Able to share with the provinces the heat generated by those who object to losing loopholes., eliminating those tax expenditures would not produce Only the for the provinces of course. It would also enrich the Federal coffers by something in the neighbourhood of billion. As a benevolent magician who seeks no embarrassment of riches or. Mac Eachen could choose to return some substantial portion of this Windfall by Way of a tax credit. Perhaps even by Way of the refundable Energy tax cred it. Perhaps even by Way of the refund Able Energy tax credit that he Unac countably forgot to include in his budget last november. And if a billion dollars or so happened to be left Over then the Federal deficit would shrink accordingly. No one is immune from secret wiretapping police investigating Bob Wilson tapped Many phones one of the frightening aspects of Legal wiretapping is that the privacy of thousands of people Are violated. It is a Cornerstone of our democratic system that an individual is free to communicate without surveillance by police. But As recent criminal cases have illustrated the conversations of thousands of innocent people have been recorded. They May have been trivial conversations but they Are personal and Pri vate and not meant for the files of big brother. Thousands bugged in the Case of la Bob Wilson convicted of trafficking in narcotics thousands of Calls were recorded from his Home and other locations including Many from his constituents. Jay Prober his lawyer says thousands of Calls were recorded alone at by s Steak loft which or. Wilson was known to frequent. The restaurant was tapped around the clock from april 26 to oct. 19, 1979. All Calls coming in and out on pay phones and restaurant phones were recorded. Every Call would activate the tape recorder. What happens to these tapes Are the conversations of Many innocent people kept in the records the criminal code says nothing about disposal of the tapes. Just As appalling was the tapping of the phone of the conservative caucus room in the legislative building to record Calls to and from or. Wilson. In this Case precautions were taken that these Calls were monitored by an offi cer who would Cut them out if they did t involve or. Wilson. Still some of the conversations of other members of the legislature were inadvertently re corded. That s one of the dangers of extensive wiretapping. The danger too in secret operations is that there is no Public scrutiny to make certain the Law is observed. The Law was ignored by police in the wire tapping of a Telephone line at Winni Peg s Public safety building during the investigation into the conduct of former judge Anthony Pilutik in 1975. An application for wiretapping by police is first screened by the Crown and then must be approved by a judge of the court of Queen s Bench. In the Case of or. Pilutik authority was Given to tap his residential phone. But according to the Manitoba Telephone sys tem which arranged the tapping after proper authorization this did not in clude tapping or. Pilutik s phone in the court in the Public safety building. An its employee was told by police that or. Pilutik s court phone was to be tapped even though there was no such authorization. Or. Pilutik s phone was connected in a four line rotary which included three other judges. Their Calls were tapped. It is scandalous that judges Calls were tapped by police if even for a few Days. Why was there no inquiry into this illegal procedure nothing is immune from the secret wiretap. Conversations Between Law yers and clients Are supposed to be privileged. But As i reported in a column last week in the Case of a wiretap on the telephones of a Man charged with keeping a betting House at least a dozen Calls were recorded Between lawyer and client. If the phones of lawyers judges and members of the legislative Assembly have been tapped it makes one wonder about the Protection against abuse for the Ordinary citizen. Some horrendous authorizations have been made to wiretap without weighing the injury that could be inflected on our democratic system. In British Colum Bia the phones of James Neilsen min ister of consumer affairs not suspected of any offence were tapped for 14 months into Early 1978. The purpose was to eavesdrop on two contractors suspected of conspiracy to bribe him they were Dur ing the course of the wiretapping the phones of the Cabinet minister were tapped at his legislative office his constituency office and his Home. Thousands of Calls were recorded. A special committee on privileges of the . Legislature after considering All the evidence recently stated unanimously that the wiretap constituted a breach of privilege and contempt of this Law too wide the Issue Here is whether the Pursuit of criminal activity by wiretap Over rides any harm it May inflict on our democratic institutions. There is no doubt a Case can be made for wiretap Ping by police but this should be re served for activities extremely danger Ous to the Community and the nation and those that cannot be solved by conventional investigation. The wiretap Law does express this View to some extent but it covers too wide a spec term of offences including for exam ple breaking and entering. The legislation does intend to limit wiretapping to a minimum. Full details must be provided in the application to the judge As to what places Are to be bugged and Why. After 90 Days of wiretapping an Extension must be re Quested. Those who Are wiretapped must be notified after the event. Above All the Law says that All other avenues of investigation must be exhausted before wiretapping is approved. Police requested and received approval for 29 wiretaps several phones May be tapped in each Case last year an increase of 17 Over the previous year. None was refused. But in the recent trial of James Stephen Wilson accused of keeping a gaming House judge Ian Dubzinski refused to admit six months of wiretap Ping because no other avenues of investigation had previously been tried. Why then were the authorizations granted in this Case Are the judges and the Crown lax in granting approval criminal lawyers Are so upset about the extensive fishing expeditions in wiretaps that some Are concerned their own phones May be bugged. Says Jay Prober i work on the Assumption that my phones Are tapped and i won t communicate with a client about any significant matter Over the says Rocky Pollock a lawyer in Calgary and i were representing the same client. I decided it would be better to Fly to Calgary and discuss the Case with him rather than discuss it Over the these Are not isolated reactions. They result from a system of wiretap Ping that abuses the rights of Many innocent citizens ;