Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - April 7, 1983, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free april 1983 7 nip seeks bilingualism Compromise by Terence Moore the Pawley governments efforts to avoid facing a supreme court judg ment Are drawing Manitoba toward Large scale amendment of its special Corner of the Canadian constr the exercise began with a show Down Between two absurdities in the Roger Bilodeau speeding ticket it has ballooned into a albeit a Remote to the Validity of most of the Laws of Manitoba and an Effort to work out a new Deal on the uses of French and English in provincial government lawmaking and in Provin Cial government services to the pub in the Bilodeau accused Roger Bilodeau and his lawyer Vaughan Baird offered the Manitoba court of Appeal the astonishing claim Highway traffic act and summary convictions not having been printed or published in French As the Constitution were invalid and could not serve As the basis for convicting Bilodeau of but if that line of reasoning was difficult to the reply of the provincial represented by lawyer Kerr was no less some requirements in Laws Are mandatory while others Are merely the argument the Way to Tell which Are which was by the degree of inconvenience that would follow one Way or the it would be extremely inconvenient if All the Laws of Manitoba were found to be therefore they Are All valid and the words saying they shall be printed and published in both languages Are directory Only and not mandatory and the two acts Bilodeau challenged were invited to choose Between these two lines of chief Justice Samuel Freedman and his colleague judge Gordon Hall chose Tad judge Alfred dissent that Manitoba statutes enacted before the supreme court of Canada in the 1979 Forest decision resurrected Section 23 of the Manitoba act should not be found invalid but that the Bot languages requirement was nevertheless Bilodeau and Baird had begun the process of appealing that split Deci Sion to the supreme court of Canada when the 1981 provincial election in stalled the new democrats in Roland As the new attorney inherited the government Side of the Bilodeau but As he looked Over the position the govern ment would have to take in court and the possible conclusions the judges might he concluded that he did not much want to argue the did not want to win it and did not want to lose it to argue the he would have to Send his attorney into court to say that Section 23 of the Manitoba regarded by Franco Manitoban As the Cornerstone of their collective language rights in the province and of their was he would have to argue that Franco Manitoban did not have and had never had the constitutional right to have provincial Laws issued in their since the nip wants to be sensitive to the linguistic sensibilities of he would not be comfortable making that argue if the government won and Bilodeau producing a supreme court decision very like that of Small business offers most new employment ruling by chief Justice Freedman inset put attorney general Penner in Tough the Manitoba court of Appeal the franc Manitoban Victory of the for est decision would have been snatched away the Manitoba nip wants to uphold Frenchman Guage rights in the not to bring about their but at the other the government badly botched its handling of the Case and the supreme court judges were in a bad it is just faintly possible that their Deci Sion could impair the Validity of most of the Laws of no one seriously expects such a especially since in the argument to the supreme court which the government would have to is not asking for the invalidation of the Laws of Manitoba but Only for a program of action to bring them into compliance with the requirement of Section but since the government is looking for reasons for not forcing the Bilo Deau Appeal through to a the phantom possibility of judicial invalidation of 90 years Worth of Manitoba Laws is Worth since last pen Ner and his officials have been negotiating with Bilodeau and Baird and with the so cite franc Manila Baine to see what terms could be agreed on that would Lead to a drop Ping of the Bilodeau the agreement of Bilodeau and Baird is needed because if they do not agree and proceed with their Penner will have to take in court the ant French position he does not want to take and try to get the ant French judgment he does not want to the agreement of the Federal govern ment will be needed because the aim is to Amend Section 23 of the Manitoba which needs resolutions of the Federal Senate and House of com Mons As Well As one from the Manitoba since the Federal government is sure to want to know what Franco Manitoban think of the pro posed rewriting of the constitutional provision to which they Are deeply Penner want to have the Sam on Side from the because its members Are entitled to be consulted about their rights and to help smooth the passage in Otta the Manitoba governments first idea was to repeal Section 23 of the Manitoba act the Section requiring two language journals and rec Ord from the legislature and permit Ting use of either language in the legislature and in the courts and to put in its place a new Section protect ing the Validity of past Laws and prescribing a timetable for translation of but neither the Sam nor Bilodeau and Baird would buy the pres ent text of Section 23 in their remain because its meaning has been established to some extent and it establishes a parallel Between the rights of the English in Quebec and the rights of the French in Mani Manitoba act Section 23 is worded the same As Section 133 of the old British North America act protecting two languages in the legislature and courts of the similarity had contributed to similar judgments of the supreme court in the Blaikie Case from Quebec and the Forest Case in Franco Manitoban could not afford to let go of that so Section 23 must stay and the amendment must consist of further sections added after Bilodeau and Baird were determined to reverse explicitly by constitutional amendment the court of Appeal judgment based on the theory that convenient Laws Are mandatory but inconvenient ones Are merely the amendment must or they will go ahead with the the Sam is hoping to use this while a sympathetic government is in Power and Section 23 is being to get a guarantee of provincial government services in French written into the Are the main ingredients of the constitutional Amend ment now in the drafting and discus Sion a reversal of the Appeal court decision on the mandatory character of the two language Rule in Section 23 Protection of the Validity of Manitoba Laws that were adopted in one Lan Guage Only a timetable for compliance with the two language Rule and a guarantee of provincial government services in it stands now at five pages of double spaced typescript and the drafters Arent through first of two articles Ottawa Small is Small is where the action and the jobs it seems Likely that the full Impact of these which have been publicly available for quite a while have not yet been absorbed by or their Southern it May be Pierre the Bright Young head of Montreal Stock argued at a Regina meeting the other Day they offer a fundamental new insight into the Workings of the Canadian one that will mean very Large changes in Public in the Way govern ments think when they think about Job at a they will help shape the economic policies of the forties Likely the Best presentation yet Laid before a Canadian audience on the deserved More Public attention than it his thesis was that the coming from All is fueling the Emer gence of a consensus on the Central role of Small business in modern econ especially in Job technological Advance and economic the he told a Liber Al party Are that Small Busin esses Are in fact the prime Force in the in making the the Young Stock Exchange president was not exactly a disinterested his speech argued strongly for policy changes that would put More equity capital at the disposal of emerging proposals deemed essential to the growth and even survival of Many Young in Lortie has an exceptional interest and unusual exposure the his own Montreal Exchange just three months ago launched limited trading in Small Canadian in in a pioneering and delicately crafted venture designed to provide and thus a for higher risk the Story of Small Busi Ness role in our economic life is com Pelling and by now persuasively documented in its own forties paper showed first of All How Small and medium sized Busin this Case with employees ranging from a handful to 500 definitions differ nearly half the jobs in Canada Large a few thousand of employ 25 to 30 per cent of the labor Force and the Public sector almost 25 per the Stock Exchange president calculates that the smaller firms he likes the concise French term Moyenne or pres Likely generate More than half the employment in and Over 70 per cent of employment in most other As Lortie was to evidence from a study of the 1968 to 1976 period in the United involving Mil lion established that inde pendent firms with less 100 employees generated 80 per cent of the net new jobs in the private the designed to shed new on How jobs Are was carried out by the Massachusetts Institute of the and widely publicized in a Magazine report late in in Large firms not Long ago hailed by such notables John Kenneth Galbraith As the dominant element of postindustrial econ actually been creating fewer than jobs per Lortie tells and possibly under that is a drop in the bucket compared to the new jobs needed annually in the Large As he mod expand buy com sell divisions on the Joan Cohen Ottawa editor do not create new Over the past 30 the Fortune 500 firms have barely doubled their total world wide employment despite thousands of acquisitions and expansions in Over seas turning to the forties paper names two types of them As significant Job the by Are new firms though about half of these disappear within five Tak ing their new jobs with the second group is composed of a limited number of High growth which rapidly hit medium or Large size Sta the Lon term growth of the he depends on these two out of the universe of Small and new the Stock Exchange chief will emerge some firms with High probabilities of growing into Large the co terms and the like Are usually led by an Are less than 15 years old and Are found in a High growth Lortie describes product risk taking and sheer Energy ability to accumulate capital to fuel their growth As key elements in the Takeoff of the Young the formula is by now Standard stuff to people watching the Success stories in the High tech but is this process understood by government it is somewhat ironic to realize that Ottawa has had a very Junior minister of state responsible for Small business for most of the past no has Ever pretended that this ministers Job was to plug Small business into the nerve Centre of economic policymaking in As forties speech it has been far removed from any such nerve and indeed scantily in the Semi autonomous Bureau cratic organizations who administer governments Are inevitably biased toward their own kind in the private the Large company Organiza it is a question of culture dinosaurs love suggests this Montreal his own de tailed list of proposals heavily emphasize methods that would give these Young growth firms Access to equity first of two articles Pierre Lortie Small is Good loses h sometimes the government just can not while it is usually attacked for being involved in an Issue which is allegedly beyond its criticism can also flow when it attempts to stand above such a this has been evident in regard to horse racing when Assini Boia Downs went into receivership and was closed last summer because of the governments reluctance to bail out an owner who had created most of his own cries of protest were because the track was a major tourist attraction and employed a Large num Ber of Many urged after some serious the govern ment did act by leasing the track for from the receiver and giving it to a former owner to operate for the remainder of the that measure was designed to meet an immediate said economic development minister Muriel and did not indicate any nip desire to operate the track on a Lon term she was True to her word and eventually the track was bought by the under the dome Arlene Billinkoff i person who had been managing it and the government was not directly determining How the track would be it did want to improve the method of that Avenue was provided through the horse racing composed of people appointed by those in there was supposed to be an arms length relationship Between the but it was generally understood that government had some influence on a commissions when Ron Keenberg became chair Man of that commission last the tories insisted that he was merely a political Hack with no while his activities created some con those accusations had Little a action taken by the commission in the past month has added a bit More substance to the at Issue was the appointment of an chosen from More than 250 Canadian the commission had advertised across the country for an administrative director and made no mention of experience in the racing when the hiring of Dave Freeman was announced March the Job title had been changed to supervisor of those who were not chosen were upset and commission officials were reluctant to explain Why the Job title was changed in mid the tories jumped on the with unemployed in Manitoba and Job creation As an nip Gary Filmon wondered Why the commission had hired an american with Only a temporary work it made no Smith the commission had assured her of this persons out standing background for this senior in track controversy position which required technical knowledge and the Selec Tion process had been quite they Are conscientious and approached the task with great careful despite her prefer ence for a local she did not want someone less than the according to the free Man was head and shoulders above the others in the breadth and depth of his but the advertisement was written specifically to fit his charged the Why did the com Mission go through the charade of advertising asked it was especially ironic since the appointment was reported nine Days before the position was that was maintained this was a new position with enlarged the result of the commissions desire to regulate racing in a tighter and More effective it was much More technical than in the she for the first the commission advertised across the she could not see the logic of taking that course unless they were acting in Good what about the change in Job description asked it was an attempt to be More said the the process had been open and she rejected entirely the Hypoth Esis that it was a perhaps she did not question the method of but Federal employment minister Lloyd Axworthy was since he had to ratify the position and Freeman appoint ment was announced before that of his department would not Grant him a new work visa until it was proven that there was no suitable Ca Nadian for the after some second the minister became even More emphatic and ordered the com Mission to re advertise the position and hire a when Gerry Mercier asked Smith if she approved of the she tried to Back insisting that it was the responsibility of the would she get rid of the members of that commission he weaknesses Smith but they should be placed in perspex since the commission had worked diligently for the past year to keep the track in a healthy one mistake was not enough to justify she was confident that the commission would comply with the Federal require ments and was astounded that tory individualists wanted the government to remove responsibilities from a relatively Independent since tories normally argue that the government should do As Little As pos they had taken an unusual Posi of they basically disapproved of any new demo9rats making they were entitled to express that but that was the extent of their Only the results of an election could give them the right to make if that they would probably disco that even tory action or no action can cause of i ;