Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - September 22, 1994, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free press september Bouchard in charge the Slippery and devious Lucien Bouchard is nudging aside the Blunt and pompous Jacques Parizeau As the chief strategist of Quebec Sovereign list whether the Leader of the bloc quebecois also has ambitions to nudge aside the Leader of the parti quebecois As the first president of an Independent Quebec is something that will be a matter of deep concern to Parizeau but not so much to the rest of for the what is Clear is when it comes to the timing of the March to it is Bou Chard who is doing the leading and Parizeau who is do ing the in the Days before the Quebec election Parizeau left no doubt that a parti quebecois government would begin the process of achieving Independence immediately after it was elected and before asking the views of the province in a once the election was under Bouchard offered the purely personal opinion that the process of achieving Independence could not begin without a referee the next Bouchard opinion was Parizeau during and after the Parizeau promised Over and Over again that the referendum would be held within eight to 10 months of the this Bou Chard offered the purely personal opinion that the referendum could be delayed much longer if do ing so served the inter ests of the the next Day Parizeau All those who thought they had heard Parizeau Promise to hold a referendum within eight to 10 months must have been and other would be Wise to take note of the reason now Parizeau for putting off the if they held it when they they would the aim of the ref says is to there was a time when the aim of the referendum was to obtain a Clear and untainted picture of the deepest wishes of the people of that is not the vision of who is not one to take chances with the opinions of the the aim of his referendum in his mind is not to get an honest expression of the views of Quebec people but simply to get a that Means finding the moment when the separatist forces can get a Quick and dirty yes the Quebec referendum could have a profound effect on the future of the province and of its aim should be to record the considered views of Quebe cers about their it should not be a test of the ability of Parizeau and Bouchard to manipulate opinion to produce a temporary majority for canadians within Quebec and outside will find Bouchard cynicism profoundly nuclear smugglers it is an axiom of Law enforcement that police catch Only a fraction of while it would be Comfort ing to assume that the smugglers of nuclear material who have been apprehended in Bulgaria and Belgium in recent weeks represent All of the culprits so that would be a doubtful what is beyond doubt is that criminals Are finding a source of plutonium Likely some where in the former soviet Are seeking a Market for either by Selling it to governments that Hope to attain a nuclear weapons capability or to terrorist it is a problem if will ultimately be More worrying than All the factional violence that has sur faced out of the ruins of the soviet stopping it will not be easy and will require International cooperation on a Large some Small Steps Are now being made in the right the intelligence agencies of the United France and Germany have agreed to cooperate in at tempting to curb the smuggling by sharing their re sources and information among themselves and with the International atomic Energy which is charged with policing the spread of nuclear weaponry around the the four nations Hope to provide the Iaea with More enforcement Powers to act on that As the russian government of president Boris Yeltsin has pledged to review and tighten its controls Over nuclear material from its plants and the weapons it is pledged to these Are positive there the problems of Ukraine and both of which pos sess former soviet nuclear and of tracing the source or sources of the smuggled plutonium with the cooperation of the who should be pressed urgently by the and with More Money and More muscle for the that should not be difficult to it to be done quickly before a nuclear disaster becomes Winnipeg free press Winnipeg few pass my 197 Winnipeg Tribune 1s90 Rudy Duncan Mcmonagle executive editor John Dafoe editorial Page editor directors John Bardawil marketing Craig Barnard circulation de Belhumeur human resources Stephan Majorki operations Perry Nixdorf advertising Glenn Williams finance Winnipeg few div Don of con up atm Wmk 13 editorials Freedom of Trade Liberty of religion Equality of civil rights editor John 6977044 hobgoblins hound Carstairs Reading and hearing the gratuitous advice being offered Sharon Carstairs on her appoint ment to the i am reminded of israelis comment to the effect while there Are exceptions to All it Seldom answers to follow the advice of an the advice in Carstairs Case involves the Wisdom or propriety of her accepting a seat in an unelected Senate Given her longstanding and Public advocacy of an elected some of the advice has come camouflaged As As in Bonnie Mitchel sons i wish her but i wonder How and some of it quite unadorned As in the Reform Par Tys categorical assertion that Carstairs should have refused on Prin and so in one the Issue is of no great consequence being an advocate of change Doest require if you Are to take your marbles and go Carstairs has accepted the appointment and the cause of sen ate Reform is not much impeded or advanced As a the Impact of the self righteous depends greatly on Short Public memories and on people not thinking through the implications of the criticism and advice being of in refreshing Public memories it might be Well to recall that by the Early 1990s there were very few political people outside Central of any if they had an opinion at had not been converted to the idea of reforming the Many new to be wanted to Reform it out of existence through Abo but even they both nationally and in the Charlottetown a major component of which would have provided for a re formed one of the authors of the Charlotte town it May also be was Gary Filmon Mitchel sons Leader and though that May not affect her views along with the other premiers of divers partisan Affili the Federal liberals and the fed eral conservative in William Neville Carstairs had no reason to refuse appointment to the ment on the grounds now being Sug Mulroney critics and Carstairs critics have suggested that it would be possible to adopt the employed by Mulroney on one of a prime minister appointing to the Senate someone who had won an unofficial election in the province in principle that was and is but the reality As the Charlottetown Accord demonstrated is that changes in the Senate have implications for the House of commons and for the positions of Ontario and Quebec particularly such As the Accord also were not and Are not Likely to be resolved in a separate and apart from other constitutional issues in which eluding the great Mulroney after the Accord was Mulroney resumed making appoint ments to the Senate in the old Way he said that the electors had a Chance to Reform the Senate and had rejected this was Mulroney in his spite Ful Iny surface but what he said was even if not the whole nothing on the Public record suggests that any tory advocate of Senate re form declined or anguished Over a proffered Mulroney Senate appoint those provinces consider they have an such As the Accord fur ther Are not guaranteed to be Happy to Many Senate re formers in provinces like what the Accord provided was seriously flawed in the Long term it would have brought about a diminution of the position of the Small provinces in the House of which would have remained the More powerful chamber and one whose membership would have continued to grow driven by the growth of the Large prov to that any particular Senate reformer should decline appointment to an unreformed Senate and thereby encourage or Advance the cause of Reform verges on the notwithstanding the futility of such a Carstairs had declined prime minister Chretien a what would the immediate consequence have been Chretien would have appointed someone but among prominent local liberals it is difficult to think of any who did not support Senate Reform there May have been in which on the critics the prime minister should have been forced into appoint ing a Liberal of conservative views on the or a Liberal nonentity with no known views since the will continue to function As part of Parlia ment whoever is How an appointment of this kind would help the cause of Reform or of Good govern ment is not in the two interesting re forms have been achieved Manitoba now has an equal number of women and men in the Senate probably a first for any and the Reform party in urged the prime minister to ignore the results of the 1992 referendum for a party that has talked As though the voice of the peo ple was the voice of this is Reform two tory plans for social disaster the provinces welfare Snitch line and juvenile offender Boot Camps Are prime illustrations of the Folly of social programming based on upper Middle class the Boot Camps rigorous confine austere conditions and Clear rules with known consequences May be just the ticket for teaching self discipline to spoiled brats whose chief problem in life is that Treyve had too much of the Impact of this environment on children who have nothing and whose Only experience in life has been abuse and Lack of love is far less the social assistance spy line with its accompanying climate of fear and intimidation will end up discouraging the very work ethic so prize by those most agitated at the thought of welfare family services minister Bonnie Mitchelson is proud of the lines after two months of operation and an upfront Price tag of to say nothing of the Cost of the civil service time required to run Down Anonymous the line has pulled in just 22 that a Gross recovery of a far cry Tram the initially and scarcely per of the provinces million so under the dome Frances but it toe Money important to a tory government with one Eye on the polls and another on a possible election welfare abuse is a surefire political Winner with the conservatives Coreed Helwer chairman of the governments is one of Sev eral Rural Las who has been storing up political capital at the expense of welfare its a double score for because he gets to be labor Liberal family services critic Norma Mccormick Osborne Helwer was recently quoted in the Rural press As saying he was astounded that Mccormick would condone welfare fraud by opposing a cos effective and proven Way to catch let there be no mistake about Helwer whats involved is the theft of Public Money approved by the legislature to support needy Manj obviously Doest stare Ite Nurmi Vii which Alf fill Tew u Luib regard Rural the tory caucus chairman perhaps Mitchel son and the rest of the government caucus Are unaware of some anecdotal information which shows that the Wel fare Snitch line May be undermining those moral standards and a Winnipeg my has uncovered two instances of the kinds of behaviour be ing rewarded and punished by the governments rat in one a woman arrived in his office in she knew her landlord was using the provincial 945stop Callin to try to hound her out of his since it she social workers had been Landing in on her at All hours of the Day and night trying to see if she was living with a the welfare Snitch it is encouraging harassment and invasion of a second Case familiar to the my involves a woman on social assistance who had gone out cleaning houses so her child could participate in a sports when the Fink line the woman became so fearful of losing her benefits she stopped the child was forced to drop out of the the welfare Snitch it is discouraging the work ethic and Good it is to irony of this preoccupation with welfare cheats that one of the most common forms of fraud is people doing exactly what the de helpers and Bonnie Mitchel sons of this world most highly that going out and get Ting a Manitoba social allowance rules Al Low a recipient to earn a after which every Dollar earned is taxed Back 100 per imagine what the same politicians would have to say about a tax bracket of that magnitude applied to the the welfare Tayback is one of the oldest and bes known of the disincentives to work railed at by the right yet it is the one no one will and that another har Vard economist John Kenneth Gal Braith questions the common sense of a society that thinks that too much Money robs the poor of their work ethic but too Little Money makes the Rich Mccormick says the politics of the Boot Camps and the welfare Fink line Appal they Appeal to the worst in human the desire to blame people for their were losing our sense of equity and social Justice when politicians encourage voters to believe the most unfortunate in our society Are ripping them i dont know Why we do and its get to ;