Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - January 7, 1994, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free press january editorials editor John 6977044 More than their share when health minister Jim Mccrae issues a press release to announce that Manitoba pharmacy Are program remains among the most generous in you can guess that bad news is on the the bad news this after several paragraphs of weasel ing and is that the Manitoba government is Tak ing a Little More out of the pockets of people who rely on the Pha Macare program to help them pay potentially crippling drug the which the individual must pay before the government makes a will increase by a year to for families with at least one member 65 or for families with no Mem ber Over the deduct Ible jumps a year to Mccrae has Trou Bles of his he is trying to give a More human face to the program of cos cutting in health expenditures inaugurated by his a reduces Don at the same he has to get the costs out of the sys tem and one place where costs Are rising rapidly is in the Price of which has gone up by 32 per cent Over the past four the minister maintains that his aim is to ensure that Pha Macare remains accessible to those who need but the Sharp increases in deductibles Over the last couple of years could begin to threaten that an extra a year is not going to destroy the pharmacy Are or deter Large numbers of people from get Ting essential an extra last followed by More this year and More again and again into the future have exactly that especially on pensioners whose incomes Are the increases Are supposed to reflect what Mccrae Calls the skyrocketing Cost of but in fact the deductibles Are rising faster than drug the ministers figures showed that Pha Macare paid out per cent More in 1992 the last year reported than it has the year the deductibles went up by about 10 per neither do Mccrae figures support his claim that Manitoba Pha Macare program is among the most Gen Erous in people Over 65 do better in almost every province than they do in some of them do very much the people who rely most on Pha Macare Are the aged and those with Long lasting they have now paid More than their share of the Cost of getting Mccrae budget under defending Ukraine to anyone on the outside looking the benefits of Ukraine giving up its nuclear Arsenal seem Obi this is particularly True from the Vantage Point of someone in the when it declared its Ukraine inherited nuclear missiles and warheads from the former soviet a it initially promised to dismantle them but has yet to do senator Sam Nunn Points out in an article on the Page opposite today that Kiev is making a mistake and that its intransigence could Cost it a great its Independence As a eliminating the nuclear would open floodgates of Western Aid and ensure that Ukraine is warmly embraced by the International Community of nations where it can Prosper in All of that is and senator Nunn argues it but if you Are on the inside looking you Are a ukrainian looking at might get an entirely differ ent Moscow has relentlessly hounded the government in there was the quarrel Over How the soviet Black sea Fleet should be there were russian claims to the which now belongs to and there is a creeping economic through it the ukrainian government has looked to the West for it has received very ostensibly because of its refusal so far to give up its nuclear Wear but almost because the Western Aid budgets Are with More Bellicose noises emanating from Russia each week and with russian nationalism and imperialism on the the ukrainians Are understandably if they abandon the nuclear what stands then be tween them and the far More powerful russian army certainly not nor the United nor a Europe that has shown itself incapable of action even in yugoslav the ukrainian argument is a Strong it is in the wests interest to see a nuclear free but the West will have to be willing to pay for it both with Cash and ironclad guarantees of ukrainian sover a Deal can be reached with but what is True today May not be True once the ukrainians and other Eastern europeans realize de spite Western they Are very much on their Winnipeg free press Winnipeg free press est f 872 Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 Maurice Switzer publisher Duncan Mcmonagle executive editor John Dafoe editorial Page editor directors John Bardawil marketing Craig Barnard circulation de Belhumeur human resources Bill Burns advertising 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 he Manitoba press Council Joys of the Reading season theres nothing like a Christma Sweek of television watching to make you appreciate a Good one could read War and peace in the time it took Cole and Victoria to consummate their marriage in Las i suspect i could watch my next Epi Sode of the Young and the restless in 1998 and Hope would still be baking that same loaf of bread in her Kitchen in so it was a major Relief that various elves and gnomes had left an Assort ment of Reading material under the i Long ago realized that the Best Way to assure that seasonal gifts Are always pleasant surprises is to drop Broad hints about As Well As pro vide strategic shopping information such As Price Range and store As a this years array of books once marvellously suited to my personal Reading those generous enough to include me on their gift lists know that fiction is not my cup of partly be cause it is never As bizarre or interest ing As the and partly because i subscribe to the ancient greeks the Ory that All drama is manufactured from the same dozen or so see Cole and this years yuletide piece de Resis Tance was a 1937 edition of the written and illustrated by Hendrik Willem Van a self taught dutch Man who at various times in his career was an associated press correspondent covering Belgium in the first world War and a history lecturer at Cornell Van Loon dedicated much of his life to the premise that All the arts have but one single to contribute to the Art of and made his Point in prose that was elegant in its simplicity and profound in its he invites his readers to join and by us i mean All those who feel we can occasionally do without dinner or but that life without a few extra dishes of music or painting is publisher Maurice Switzer hardly Worth people touched by the divine fire of creativity Are Van loons anointed for he the cold attic and the stale Spaghetti Are of no Conse you will take them in your for you Are kept warm by the fire that is burning inside your heart and a crust of devoured before your will taste better than All the delicacies of old Raymond orteig most excellent biographies ordinarily make fascinating although Many of the Auto variety probably would be More at Home on the fiction shelves of most despite this i had been keen on Reading a life in the verbose musings of Conrad lord of Baron of Bay and publisher of the Punxsutawney the Good news is that Blacks cur rent bestselling Tome is about 400 pages briefer than his Doorstop on the life of Quebec Premier Maurice Dup Conrad Blacks Duplessis has burdened bookshelves since 1977 the bad news is that readers must shovel through arcane vocabulary like and to unearth the authors often shrewd my Christmas had not included a new then theres Blacks 1969 assess ment of repeated in this As intellectually and inadequately coming from a Man who owes a Good portion of his personal Fortune to the daily labor of journalists at some 200 Blacks frequent invective aimed at reporters is nothing if not from another a 1994 copy of the guinness Book of i Learned that the most massive single Issue of a newspaper was a 14pound 1987 edition of the sunday new York this would Dwarf the 832page december 12 Palm Beach Post sent to me by Winnipeg Snowbird Sidney tre after All this boo browsing i picked up a copy of our own free press and Felt a sense of Pride that those of us who play Small roles in putting it on doorsteps each morning Are part and parcel of the meaningful world of liter Acy Here was a piece about Winnipeg transit experimenting with numbered braille cards to make it easier for visa ally impaired passengers to catch the Correct marvelous that not even blindness is an obstacle to acquiring knowledge through Reading and there was an article about the free press literacy education pro Gram supporting Community work shops with the generous assistance of such major corporate sponsors As the North West there was no apparent end to this Binge of Reading induced self High at least not until the Satur Day soaps column alerted me that the following week Victor would learn of Cole and Victorias stereotypes enough for everyone most of my readers Assum ing that i have any beyond the poor Devil who has to edit these articles every and my Rel who read it faithfully to see How badly i have embarrassed the family this time would fall into one or More of the following categories dog War social Butch real Homeak holy carpet women in army social people of the left journalists and per verts of every imaginable i Hope i Haven left anybody i have no wish to offend particularly this which is the year of racial Harmony in it we Are a year in which we should All try to draw closer together and to live As one big multicultural family a worthy goal but clearly a difficult one to none of the words listed above Are very of epithets would be a better term for but the fact that i could come up with them All in Tom Oleson less than a minute and there were several others that crossed my mind but which cannot be printed in this wholesome family paper is an Indi cation of How widespread their use is in our multicultural and unlike most of i have no except perhaps against men who to hit on my wife when were out at Par ties or in Public no women Ever try to hit on me so there seems to be a cer Tain Lack of sexist equity the fact that almost All of us know these and Many of us use sometimes in a cruel Way and sometimes just unthinkingly or in what we mean As a joke in general con indicates that racial Dishar Mony is widespread and is increasing As Canada becomes not just More multicultural but More multiracial As it also takes different in the same downtown hotel i witnessed two very different both of which could be described As in the a group of men were complaining How the goddamned French got everything in this another Man came and they called to him hey frenchy Sid Down and have a he and an extremely amicable drunk if these men were Rac there was nothing personal or vindictive in their racism it was a symptom of a general social malaise they didst blame they blamed the world for their in the second some weeks two men sat at my table and proceeded to curse the goddamned Pak who were taking the jobs from All us Fine White Folk and eating Steak while we ate i said to my but then they were both considerably bigger than me and of unpleasant As so often my silence was taken for and i became a the most uncomfortable buddy i have Ever been to before i left they gave me a business card with the information line for the Kun flux that was racism in its Purist form and it was frightening to 1can remember very clearly the first Black and the first native in Dian that i saw As a on both occasions i embarrassed my Mother by asking Why the Black was Black and Why the Indian was not wearing a head this country has changed a lot since we dont use any of the words from that original list in our just As i never heard them in my parents or at least we try not because our kids dont understand what they mean and we dont agree with what they some years my wife worked As a leasing among her first instructions were not to lease to East indians because they Cook and the lingering Aroma is not liked by some people who Are unfamiliar with the taste treat that it her first customers were a couple from in and being both fair minded and perverse by she rented them the All the others were later rented As which would indicate that the prejudice was in the perception of the not the bigotry of the my children play with Indi ans and orientals As Well As White kids and never seem to notice the differ its not that there color Blind they just dont care they judge kids As kids and not members of another that probably the key to racial har it will take a lot longer than a year to get and in the you can Call me a Goolie if you like most i have no idea what it ;