Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - August 25, 1981, Winnipeg, Manitoba A Buist Winnipeg free press free Tom it Tommy ctn Ryhti Lizorty of by Bitta tuft no Max 9434331 jaw Dafft Adf Terai Murav government automobile insurance should have two primary to should eliminate the possibility of an uninsured Driver causing financial hardship to people who Are themselves and it should keep costs to the a 4 the rates charged by Manitoba Auto Pae have in Lew than a a Fitsum to the government which is the equivalent of a full years that Money has been invested in Good to Manitoba at a return to the motorists of the province which is ten than they could expect at today interest Manitoba motorists have been overcharged by the equivalent of about ten per cent a year so that the government could invest the the investments have not been used to decrease As they would be it the object were to provide the cheapest in the motorists have become the unknowing supporters of projects ranging from municipal hospitals to Money losing Crown this failure to achieve the lowest possible coat is but it As the saying Only what should concern Manitoban More is the process by which aut Opac has succeeded in making sure that some Manitoba Drivers Are effectively at anyone who buys Auto acs cheapest at the preferred gets the bargain because he under takes to use his vehicle primarily for and not to drive to and from or for a court has now oiled that the Agency cannot refuse to pay a claim because a Motorist who claimed the preferred rate did in use his car primarily for it pointed out that the interpretation of primarily can aut Opac has said that it will find a More appropriate and have the provincial Cabinet restore the restriction on insurance cover age by the simple procedure of passing an Ott Vemity intends to continue to give its of the right to deny it can do so mainly because it is an Arm of by doing Auto Pae appears to be saying that the policy of Manitoba is to make sure that some Drivers in the knowingly or remain no private insurance where the government has no insurance gets the same Opportunity because governments that Are not in the insurance business take the attitude that it is their Job to protect customers against the private insurance to for it a Motorist or buys insurance that does not fit his driving the onus for the mistake is on the company that Sells the if the Motorist has an the company has to pay the claim but is allowed to the difference Between the Premium that was paid and the Premium that should have been in the onus Tor correctly insuring a vehicle is on the this when coupled to the rubber stamp Type of renewal system that is geared to often leaves motorists unaware that the insurance they have bought is not the insurance they should if an Accident takes they find out quickly under the rules in this is fully within its rights to deny it would seem that rather than jumping through Auto acs hoop when the request is forwarded for the regulation covering a word that is More appropriate to aut Opac than primarily the provincial Cabinet should take a longer look at the it should decide that the governments since it has a monopoly on automobile insurance in this is to protect the not its chosen keep the gallery alive the Winnipeg Art gallery is a Lively and delightful place because of the variety of activities it sponsors and a com childrens exhibits of contemporary Art and of works from the gallery own collection draw Many different Public into the and make it the Community not the preserve of one narrow interest credit for this Success must be distributed among the authorities who designed and built the gallery on its present the organizations and individuals who have put it to use and Given it and the Board and management who have recognized the Rich variety of tastes and interests among the Many Public that look to the gallery and who have found ways to serve a heritage working group appointed by the provincial government has listed the along with the museum of Man and nature and the provincial As one of the institutions dedicated to preserving objects from Manitoba that one of the Many jobs Manitoban ask the gallery to but the working group has proposed that the wag should receive its government Grants through a new heritage which would be the focus of provincial heritage program coordination and the group rejects the proposal of the earlier cultural policy review committee that the gallery should receive its Grants through the Manitoba arts the it is a museum of Art by National and International definition and it would be inappropriate to separate this institution from other Manitoba the like the museum and the provincial archives of is a custodial institution whose collections Are primarily historic and an essential part of our what matters most about the gallery Grant from government is the numbers on the so Long As the directors and managers Are sufficiently forceful and sufficiently clearheaded about the variety of their Respo Sibili it should not matter much which group of cultural overseers attempts to Tell them what to do with the but the gallery is much More than a custodial institution very Echo like a prison it is a meeting place of ideas and aesthetic not simply a storehouse of correctly preserved the danger in the working groups proposal is that a heritage Given the task proposed for would try to reduce the gallery to the custodial institution the working group wants it to a gallery director who must satisfy a heritage representing just one of the Many interest groups to be before he gets his government Grant would be under pressure to pursue heritage work even at the expense of the Many other activities that have contributed to the gallery the heritage working group is surely right that Public spending on heritage preservation in Manitoba has lagged behind Public interest in the the wag must continue to play an important role in preserving and display ing objects from the past and from the present which will soon become the but the government must not give any particular interest group heritage crowd nor any stranglehold Over the Oil does Hurt governments have been known to spend considerable sums of Public Money on studies that discover the such As that Green grass often makes Good cattle the news from Ottawa that Federal scientists have decided that Oil spills can harm Polar bears fits into this Manitoban will remember the news that scientists had deliberately covered Polar bears with Oil to see what would three bears were dunked in and two died As a the third was nursed Back to health in the Assiniboine the final report has and the main finding is that Oil harms it is something that could have been decided at less both to the taxpayer and to the Polar letters the Winnipeg free press welcomes letters from writers must give their name and the authors name will be used and letters Are subject to inner rot this is to protest the or maybe inaction would be More acc of our City fathers regarding this great they Are sitting in their offices at City Hall presiding Over the death of downtown they seem determined to turn us into an other Detroit or Cleveland of pinball vacant garbage strewn lots and close Down shops and can you imagine London allowing Bond Paris the Ber Lin the Kurfurst Tendam to get into this state shopping malls in the suburbs will never replace the heart of a As anyone who has visited the great cities of the world can their latest action of denying free parking on saturday is just one More example of their the loss of business tax from empty shops must be they think nothing of giving huge subsidies to the Winnipeg and so they these Are the things that make Winnipeg a pleasant place to but a Safe downtown area also make the City a finer place to live and this should be a concern of every the Council must look at build ing realty and business taxes and give both landlord and Mer chants a fair shake in what is becoming an increasingly difficult location to do they might also take a Sec Ond look at free saturday parking on a trial we need our downtown area and something must be done to Stop this Joan Johnson Baldy Northcott sporting goods Winnipeg unsound reasoning Ruth Rachlis writes in the free press of August 13 that there is a great defect in either the free press re porting on August 1 of one aspect of the provincial governments Antie Cepha Litis spraying or in its Edito rial on the subject of the same perhaps the defect lies in her under standing of i have always understood that an editorial reflects the official attitude and opinion of the newspapers a news Story is merely one correspondents report of an instantaneous event to which he or she has been in this the event was the criticism of the governments Bay on Spray decision expressed publicly by Frank la Bella of the University of Manitoba and Gene Whitney of the Canadian wildlife the free press reporter obviously found that criticism newsworthy to decision which was her that does not make it or guarantee it any influence on those after thinking things write a newspapers in As it was quite unsound and and the editors of the newspaper obviously reached that con neither 14 Bella nor Whitney faces any Public they said what they were reported to have said that Day unencumbered by any responsibility to answer for the Public in Whitney he offered commentary that revealed him to be quite uninformed on Western Equine encephalitis and its method of trans that does not make it Unwor thy of news it simply makes it unworthy either of belief or of editorial Rachlis demands further information from the government and an answer to the criticism of not providing a program of horse As has been and innumerable we have Long had a program of horse vaccination in Mani while relatively Benefi Cial to the horse such pro Grams do nothing whatever for the Protection of she wonders whether the editors of the free press know something that was not included in the reporters news the answer they certainly so do All the other Manitoban who listened to the advice that their govern ment and relayed from the provinces responsible and account Able experts in Public Excepha weather and insects Sherman minister of health Winnipeg on solid ground As the air traffic controllers around the world begin ganging up in support of their Muti Neering Brethren in the United i find i am having cold whatever happened to the International workers of the world their motto was simple unite their objective too was Clear Cut to destroy free societies wherever they when one considers the iwo and instead of collective bargaining and they simply skulked around in Dusty preying on the minds of weak it is hard to believe that even in their wildest flights of fancy they could imagine a More Fertile situation than a world encircling network of air transportation which touches every person in the the most we can Hope for is that we have Good people tending the store in our countries from the decisive actions of president Ronald Reagan and minister of transport Jeanluc it appear we Are on solid ground w at least for the George Russell Winnipeg Disraeli crosswalk according to your own the Accident rate at the Disraeli North crosswalk is top my suggestion to reduce it is to do away with it or move it one Block North past the curve so motorists would see it in Winnipeg actually we have no trouble keeping track of 1981 As the year Ethel got a Job with the Post office and i Lavisse Zaire will not do by Wilson special to the free press Ottawa there is hardly a corporate management in Canada that does not feel that if government would just get off its leaving it to run its affairs according to its own Best judg everything would be greatly in the men who own newspapers Are no exception to this general business out it is a viewpoint widely accepted by society and indeed newspapers themselves generally do not accept it when other businesses Are political will there Are some Strong signs that the government possesses the political will to take action on the recommendations of the Kent commission on newspapers if it does it probably will command a Good Deal of Public sup that poses a serious problem for the men and women who control the coun try newspapers and those who work for a simple backs approach is not Likely to work and is quite Likely to be counter the need during the next few months is going to be for a Nice judgment Between government action which Falls within the acceptable limits of Public policy and Steps which could Lead to undesirable influence Over newspaper newspapers do not feel threatened in their editorial Content by the Post office subsidies and sales tax exemptions they receive at a Cost to the taxpayer not far Short of million a they accept these benefits so much As a Well established fact of life that the Canadian daily newspaper association could Tell the Kent com Mission that newspapers Are Independent from subsidization of any presumably the Edna made the state ment in Good not even thinking of its members sales tax and Post office benefits and certainly not feeling that these endanger the editorial integrity of the the implication of this is that the Kent commissions proposals to use the tax system to encourage greater Edito rial expenditures by newspapers can not convincingly be dismissed out of it is not much use with any Hope of convincing the Public and Cabi that we dont want any govern ment Money when we have been accepting the taxpayers help since the country the existing subsidy and tax concessions will take some explaining in that limits newspapers generally consider that establishment of Competition policy is Well within the acceptable limits of government at least when it applies toothed that makes it difficult to argue flatly that govern ment has no business concerning itself with Competition in the communications people in the Trade May Well feel since Thomson have financed the Globe and mails efforts to become a National Kent is highly unfair in his View that papers should not be owned by organizations which also publish local the May sympathize with the View that desirable Competition is a More important consider vulnerable experts in the Field of corporate takeovers consider that the pattern of its shareholdings makes one of the existing newspaper chains exceptionally vulnerable to a hostile takeover it is known that one of the great holding with vast financial resources at its has had a thoughtful look at that particular it is fair to say that most journalists would loathe the thought of those particular newspapers being taken Over by the holding company in against that it does not seem so unreasonable that the commis Sion has made some recommendations dealing with the question of corporate ownership of it becomes difficult to argue that these would be an unwarranted government intrusion into the they among other make the sort of takeover referred to above that Safe guard should not just be dismissed out of this is a Complex Field and the instinctive journalistic reaction against any government action that affects newspapers is but the Public climate is not favourable to a Raissez Faire approach and we in the Trade Are going to be faced with the need for some very careful thinking in the months Why pres owners sell out by Frank Walker special to the free press Montreal since i am not privy to the confidences of the the or even Conrad i am not aware just How these menaces to As the Kent commission seems to see go about acquiring newspapers from a Reading of the Are the men who produced that i do not believe for a to that any of the three organizations or others do anything very special or very sinister somebody wants to sell they Are willing to the important question Why or so Many owners of Large and Small newspapers in this country and elsewhere chains now control 65 per cent of the daily newspapers in the United compared with 31 per cent 20 years ago want to get out of the business in Many cases the Rea sons May be but they Are most often it no one in the family is or death duties play a part a change in the Market the High Cost of ind Epen for these people the Way out is to find a and there Are buyers for with association come economies and though not Al especially in technology because the capital is Avail but basically it is Lack of interest on the part of the family which leads to the concerns and the ambitions of the second and third generations Are they to put it have gone and softness makes for unhappiness in the operation of a news no press rights panel or legislation can do anything about and merely preventing one group from buying and opening the Field to a second would do nothing to change More important is a fantasy which seemed to have gripped the commissioners As they rushed in to save free Dom of the press from the trauma of near monopoly or Plain big this is the conviction that some where in the Good old in a More Pristine an Ideal situation existed hundreds of newspaper going about the defence of Freedom in hundreds of competing with each other for the opinions of of for the advertising the facts very the Good old when cities like Winni Regina or Calgary had five and six were not the Halcyon Days of the they were almost without bad they were often venal and they did not serve the Public weal they too special sometimes it was Clear who those inter ests More often it was there were qualities to these papers which Are missing they reflected directly the character and ambitions of those who owned them and very produced in the smallest towns and even villages related to the Community and they shared the bad and Good of that com knew the difference owners and editor knew where they were they could Tell toe difference Between Oats and they knew when a change of weather would mean hard they followed closely the activities of their member of Parlia ment and they held him to account if he did not perform As they thought he should but what they asked of him was not necessarily Good for any of these reasons and toe interests of a few were often confused with the interests they were vulnerable and they were often careless about the sources of their there were Good of Many of but they were not Good because of their status or up called but because they happened to be run for a period of time by outstanding who were also Honor these were the How not the papers Are not Good or bad because of their a Good paper does not necessarily become a bad paper because it is no longer managed by local interests but by interests often far but it does become a different almost inevitably it is Homo Gen too often outsiders Are brought in to run ambitious men on the upward determined to give a Good account of which too to make before proceed ing Onward up the corporate they Are not too often the material provided for them becomes intellectually Limp and because it has to be aimed in too Many directions at and Only too often there is a Premium on keeping out of when there should be a Bonus for getting into if a sin can be charged against the it is this tendency to employ at the top of individual units men who will play whose conduct of the paper will not reverberate into the padded boardrooms of Distant places if they Are heard from at will be heard from Only in the Happy Jingle of the Cash this is a serious sin there should be a commitment by owners of chains to newspapers which dance to a different and perhaps there or perhaps a selection process should be developed which seeks out the Able and the concerned and accepts what will emanate from both these All this has nothing to do with the fact of Chain As compared with Independent some of the most Craven of newspapers have been in the hand of single it All depends on the characters of those newspapers in terms of writing and better than they Ever have or certainly better than they were a decade As the Kent report they May be better still by the end of the next but they will be differ because conditions Are and because the world in which they operate has ;