Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - January 6, 1994, Winnipeg, Manitoba Afi Winnipeg free press 1994 editorials editor John ancient nonsense the self satisfied sounds of lawyers patting the Cho sen on the Back could be heard again this Christmas As it is every year when the minister of jus Tice hands out those coveted initials to be a Queens to be a living relic from centuries to bask in the glory of a fictitious Honor dating Back to Queen Elizabeth the current Elizabeths Northern do minion would be Well rid of Manitoba minister of Rosemary succumbed to the irresistible urge to make a handful of lawyers Happy by prolonging the nonsense for at least an other until the granting of pcs was strictly a patronage with the minister doling out the titles like Christmas Candy to the party the worthy of there is a committee which advises the committee made up mostly of lawyers who Are in a splendid position to determine who among them Are worthy of the Royal name and the Beneficence of the Queens Loyal governors Here in the once upon a somewhere Between the 14th and 15th centuries King of by Royal proclamation and letters named leading Barris ters sergeants at they enjoyed a monopoly in some of England they became Kings it was they and Only they who could represent the Crown in it was a recognition of seniority and today pcs need Only have served 10 years at the some of them have not seen the inside of a courtroom in if the designation is just an insignificant then Why do governments continue to bother the practice endures because the letters mean something to innocent shoppers for Legal services who May actually believe that lawyers with pc behind their names Are better smarter and More reliable than other lawyers whose Busi Ness cards Are less no other professionals receive such Royal treatment from not dental hygienists or the new Federal minister of Allan will not spend his allotment of 50 pcs this he is reviewing the criteria and will decide what to do before next years lists Are there is no his study should be cheap and Century would Vodrey can come to her own conclusions without the Benefit of any further let this years Lucky lawyers be the last of a Noble and forgotten democracy derailed the Campaign to derail the april 27 South african election is escalating As groups opposed to the provisional Constitution grow More and More it Falls to president de Leader of the White nationalist and Nelson Leader of the Black african National to ensure that they do not Suc the two face Many last terrorists launched an attack on a Tav killing four people and injuring several the dead Are among the 100 South Black and who have been killed since Christmas in More than were most of the Vio Lence is the work of Black and White Funda mentally opposed to sharing Power with each other in any Many More can be expected to die in the less than four months leading up to the some of the violence results from the struggle for Power and position in the nation that is in the portions of the White governments police Force have been accused of running out of the govern eventually and agreed that it was True and promised even within the Anc there Are violent this week the government accused the Ancs self defence forces of being out of control in the Black parts of Johan Nesburg they Are at War with the at War with the inkatha Freedom party and at War with the Anc immediately agreed and vowed to control another obstacle faced by the two leaders is the free Dom an unlikely grouping of the Zulu based inkatha Freedom party the country second largest Black political party and various White separatist organizations drawn together by their opposition to a Strong Federal they a number of Home lands largely free of Central government if they continue to work together and can control their de Klerk and Mandela can overcome these the greatest weapon which they have in this fight is the overwhelming support of the population for the election to go the greatest threat to a stable and democratic South Africa May come not be fore the but after when Blacks Are forced to real ize that the benefits of Freedom they had dreamed of for so Many years will not be realized Winnipeg free press Winnipeg free press est 1872 Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 Maurice publisher Duncan Mcmonagle executive editor John Dafoe editorial Page editor directors John Bardawil marketing Craig Barnard circulation de Belhumeur resources Bill Brian Cottom finance Stephan Majorki production Winnipeg free a division of newspapers division of Thomson newspapers company limited published seven Days a week at 1355 Mountain Manitoba r2x pm 6977000 a member of the Manitoba press Council rough Justice in the taxes one of Montreal richest men was once reported to have appealed his assessment on the grounds that it was too he was profoundly insulted that the City of Montreal should judge that his Man Sion was Worth less than his neigh no one in Winnipeg seems to be do ing that at the the Telephone is ringing off the Hook at City Hall As thousands of Winnipeg homeowners try to get their assessments they Are protesting dramatic in creases in those assessments which they know will eventually Lead to dra Matic increases in their property tax i can sympathize with them because i am among those who got clobbered by the new assessment up almost 60 per cent from last i am not going to because i cant re ally convince myself that the new assessment is in if i would have to admit that i have been getting off pretty lightly for the real Story about the taxes on our House is not that they Are going to be so High this year but that they have been so Low for so property taxes on our House in the downscale part of trendy Osborne Vil Lage have not gone up very much in the 14 years we have lived in since most other including my have risen in that it has been a pleasant Surprise that taxes did not Rise at the same they Are going to Rise dramatically this but the fact is that the new assessment reflects accurately the Price at which houses on the Street have been i hate to admit but the new assessment seems eminently it is easy to be philosophical when the mortgage has been paid and the John Dafoe kids Are grown it will be a lot less easy to be philosophical a couple of years from now when i am retired and stuck on a fixed income while my prop erty taxes keep and that the trouble with the prop erty it is no respecter of individual the value of the prop erty one lives in is at Best a rough Mea sure of ability to pay and no better a measure of value for the cites Central residential where civic amenities tend to be Crum Are bearing the major Burden of this years assessment the suburban where the civic Ameni ties Are shiny and get off More Market value is the Only fair Way to assess a piece of but it still permits a lot of a major in equity can arise from the obvious fallibility of assessment assessors can get Market value even when they get it inequities can the Market value of a House is of Little interest to its owners except when they buy it and when they sell retired people on fixed incomes who find their taxes soaring Are being stuck with increased costs which do not reflect any increased whatever the civic assessor May the House to them is Worth just what it was last year or the year before or the year be fore the fact that a neighbor Down the Street has just sold at a Nice Price is of no Benefit to All it Means is higher property when the time comes to sell and move into a Condo or a seniors Resi the increased Selling Price will provide them with some valuable in until the rising taxes Only make it More difficult for them to hang on to the family we will never get away from the property the City has to get the Money somewhere and the tax on land and buildings is the one that it has All to but the More the City depends on property the More significant the inequities when the tax is required to finance not Only a Large share of the civic budget but much of the provinces education budget As then the unfairness is everyone has known that for years but not much has been done about All those angry taxpayers who Are tying up the phone lines to City Hall should inspire another Jeff de free press Winnipeg 1992 City tax protesters rallied at the legislature to demand spending Filmon defends Hawleys secrecy How do you feel about govern ment spending your Money on things about which you know nothing and about if the government says you should know nothing this question is raised implicitly by the free press Dan Lett and Paul Samyn in their recent and useful series on government it is a question to which a reasonable person might say that there Are areas like National or the administration of jus or the privacy of where a government might Well be justified in treating such an expenditure As a conscientious person might add that allowing a government this leeway presupposes Mutual Trust Between governors and and governments careful and sparing use of such secret spending of Public Money erodes a Basic principle of responsible government if governments Are to be accountable to their govern ments should not be empowered to conceal information upon which that accounting must be withholding such information can Only be justified where some clearly higher principle applies than the Prin Ciple of the Public right to know How its taxes Are compare that principle with the one invoked by Gary Filmon in defending his refusal to disclose the results of opinion polling paid for by the govern we follow the same said As they his nip predecessors did and we dont make the results of that polling and the reason is that it is generally done William Neville for policy advice for Cabinet on partic ular it is endlessly fascinating to hear politicians defend their own mistaken or dubious decisions by citing the behaviour of their political opponents in ear Lier such a defence in vites us to forget that the defenders normally characterize the behaviour of their opponents governments As shoddy if not downright we Are also Bidden to forget that those earlier governments were de not because after years in the arrogance of Power caught up with for Filmon to justify himself on the basis of what Pawley did or didst do is so preposterous As to be according to the reason he and Pawley Are soulmates on secrecy is that polls provide policy advice for logically there Are three ways that polls might influence policy in or not at if there Are cases where government policy is dictated entirely by surely we ought to know after if the Only thing required to set policy is a Good who needs a government Why Settle for Gary Filmon when you could have Angus Reid As seems More polling is but one Factor in setting great or unseemly state secrets would be Given away by sharing that information with the people who paid for it the is that the govern ment Doest want to have to explain it self and Doest want to explain or de fend pollsters questions to Many would sound As though they were being asked at Public expense not for the but for the Benefit of the governing the confidentiality of Cabinet discus Sions is also raised by another of the articles by Lett and in which they reveal the fascinating Story of Harold Neufeld was for four years the minister of Energy in the Filmon Cabinet and was directly involved in the decision on the Conaw Apa after the project had been a new information persuaded him that proceeding would have Seri Ous negative implications for the prov feeling unable to reverse himself he ultimately leaked information to the opposition in the allowing them to ask informed and pointed Neufeld breached the confidentiality of Cabinet and the Deputy Jim has described this As Unac it is certainly difficult to argue the propriety of a minister in Cabi net channelling received As a to persons outside in terms of parliamentary Neufeldt moral position would have been infinitely stronger if he had followed the honorable course of re signing and going Public with his Rea having said one is left nagging recent political his tory is strewn with examples of governments making bad or expedient decisions the Pawley governments Deci Sion to delay raising aut Opac rates until after the 1986 election is one obvious in All those cases there must have been at least some ministers who knew or suspected that the stated reasons for the policy were inaccurate or but when did we last have a minister resign because he or she was too principled to see issues fudged in this Way ministerial Resig nations on any principle Are now very and rarer still is it for a minister to resign because a governments pol icy in some Basic the sad truth is that Cabinet Solidar Ity has largely come to mean hanging whatever the to protect the government or the party this for it will be makes no men Tion of the Public Harold Neufeld ought to have re signed but before he is dumped on too especially by his erstwhile col it would be helpful to know what they were doing with or about the information that Neufeld pos no one else resigned Over it did anything else to get the information into the realm of Public of it is possible that Neu Felds former colleagues will say Little beyond what Jim Downey has already said to do after might re quire them to discuss what they knew and what they and that of course you guessed it could run afoul of the secrecy of ;