Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - May 13, 1995, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free press May editorials editor John 6977044 speak out on rights if Canada were to make an absolute link Between Trade and human if it were to say that we would Trade with no nation that did not meet our standards of recognizing human rights and honouring then there would be few nations at All that we could Trade we could not even Trade with the United which allows capital a practice we regard As inhumane and and a nation which does not meet the standards of amnesty amnesty of does not set the Stan Dard of human rights that governments look to in setting the nature of their although it would not Hurt at All if they that Standard is set by International agree which unfortunately Are usually Hon ored More in the breach than in the foreign relations minis Ter Andre Ouellet this week set out Canadas standards pretty specifically Canada will not make a link Between Trade and human rights in its foreign it is easy to be out raged by but pragmatism has an important place in foreign pol Canada has in the past taken the High moral ground in its foreign Boycott of South the Boycott of the Moscow Gener ally it has opted for the pragmatic and with Good if we applied the same policy implemented against South Africa to All there would be few that we could Trade the policy is Only sound and if it is it self linked to another policy that we will not let the Poten tial profits of Trade silence us about the abuse of human rights by our trading the Canadian record is it should be Clear and events such As the massacre in Tiana men the continuing atrocity in must elicit from the Canadian government the strongest possible even if those condemnations Cost us some Trade As they might in business arrangements with China or they still must be the losses will be inflicted by the abusers of human which is better than having the gains achieved at the expense of the Canadian con it can be business As As Long As business As usual does not require our silent acquiescence in Bomi Ouellet has yet to commit himself to mostly honest the Good according to the Federal auditor Gen is that most Public servants believe in honesty and the less Good news is that a Small but significant minority of them Are not Clear about what Hon esty and integrity philosophical questions of ethics and conflict of interest would not have Arisen in the reports of previous auditors though specific examples of fraud or impropriety have been denounced by a Long Parade of of the auditors Job has the present Denis no longer con tents himself with the single massive report on govern ment waste that used to land on parliaments desks with a thump every he plans to Issue min reports throughout the and the study of honesty and integ Rity was part of the first in a poll conducted on behalf of the most Public servants said they and their departments met High ethical a slightly but still percentage of them thought that their Bosses were ethical which is less a significant minority apparently believe that if they have an unethical Boss they should not blow the whistle on Twenty nine per cent of senior managers said it would be appropriate to Issue a questionable no tendered contract when a supervisor has indicated that a senior manager of the minister had requested and 47 per cent of them would not Snitch if they found a Superior involved in questionable those figures May reflect a keen instinct for survival within the rather than any inherent tendency towards but those attitudes do offer grounds for so does the fact that most people in the Public per cent of All civil servants and 17 per cent of managers dont know what the governments conflict interest guidelines none of this suggests that the Canadian Public service has lost its sense of canadians dont find their pub Lic servants demanding a Little Baks Heesh under the counter when they process a passport application or Jet Ting off to a tropical Paradise with a bidder on a govern ment Canadian Public on the May be in fact a Little More honest than the rest of the auditor finds no cause for immediate he does suggest that the government get to work on what he Calls a framework for most he Points out where a concern for Public service ethics should be Gin with the bureaucrats elected Winnipeg free press Winnipeg free press est 1872 Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 Rudy publisher Duncan Mcmonagle executive editor John Dafoe editorial Page editor directors Verne Kalichuk human resources Stephan Majorki operations Perry Nixdorf advertising Glenn Williams finance 01995 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 Romance and reality How swiftly 50 years go by May 1945 seems close enough to touch like Many i can close my eyes and imagine that i am almost i was just about to turn nine years of age when the european War ended in 1945 like Many of my male i had mixed feelings about the we would have been stupid in the extreme not to think that the end of the worst War in human history was not a Good just the Many of us Felt slightly since 1939 we had been bombarded with War prop we had watched older boys marching off to Battle to the music of the military bands and longed to March with we had heard Lorne Greene and Matthew Halton describe Canadian exploits on the Many of those news reports sound like a misted propaganda but at the time we took them for gospel and yearned for a Chance to take a shot at Hitler unlike the children of who see the misery and horror of War on the evening news in we imagined that War was exactly like the Holly Wood version that we saw at the up with John Errol Flynn and others who had a Good War on the Back lot defeating entire armies of storm troopers and Black uniformed Gestapo men with a solid right to the Christopher Dafoe if the War lasted just a bit longer we might get a Chance to go overseas and strike a blow for we had heard of boys of 14 who had con Vinced the recruiting officers that they were old enough to join up and some had actually shipped out before their fathers had tracked them Down to Maple Creek or i had a Book that told of a 12yearold midshipman at the Battle of Jutland and there was a picture in a copy of chums that showed a Gallant youth who looked no older than 12 or 13 Manning a gun surrounded by the dead bodies of his older you could almost smell the powder and the As Small boys we had seen our elders March off in stood on Academy Road with my a Veteran of the 1914 watching the Patricia go handing a packet of players cigarettes to the last Man to pass because i had failed to identify my Uncle in the mass of during recess at Queenston school during those War years the boys fought Battles on the playground with Lead spitfires and hurricanes and Small Cannon that fired pebbles when you re leased a troops of cavalry Trot Ted and charged across the school patrols of Lead soldiers hid in the tall grass at the Edge of the soccer those of us who had read trea sure the three musketeers or the prisoner of Zenda imagined a War in which rapiers and Broad swords dominated the Field and we imagined ourselves in single combat with Hitler or playing with them cat plays with a mouse before making the final our War years were not All pointless we bought War Sav Ings Stamps and pasted them in a Small we pulled our wagons along the Street collecting tins of Bacon fat for the War although we could hardly imagine what use the military might make of this breakfast my theory was that the melted Down and boiled in a great was poured Over the Heads of attacking nazis As they stormed some Allied fort or re i probably read too there was an even greater one Day our miss asked us to bring in the Silver foil from Tea and Coffee we argued Long and hard Over what use might be found for this could they melt it Down and make bullets could it be fashioned into bulletproof vests was it used to reflect the suns rays into the eyes of the enemy years later i Learned that some of that Silver foil had been dropped from Allied aircraft to confuse the enemy a piece of my mothers Tea packet Drifting along at feet Over Germany might have looked like a Lancaster bomber on the radar causing the Wehr Macht endless trouble As they at tempted to shoot it Down with their to fors on 8 May 1945 we gathered in the school auditorium to sing patriotic wave flags and listen to a Pep talk from the then we were told that the rest of the Day would be a i went Home and helped my Mother decorate our front porch with the Young would be warriors of 1945 soon Learned the terrible truth about the second world War and in time we came to realize How much the men and women who endured that War had Given because of them we have lived our lives As civilians for 50 years in safety and our own children have been spared the horrors of world in a less than perfect world we have much to be grateful fifty years have passed since that warm Day in and i have yet to hear a shot fired in a fascinating portrait of the Lake its remarkable to contemplate on this 125th anniversary of we Are today finding out How the ice age shaped the scientists have been examining Lake Winnipeg and have made some dramatic one is that most of the South Basin was dry land As recently As years ago and since then the Lake has migrated South Ward to its present this raises a fascinating question is movement southward still continuing the Lake Winnipeg Survey was con ducted last August by a team of 30 government and University scientists from Canada and the to find out More about one of the largest lakes in the never before has the Lake come under such scrutiny As in this research by the geological Survey of Manitoba Energy and Manitoba by the Canadian coast guard and the Freshwater As Well As looking at the physical in the researchers Are exam ining Shoreline water toxic materials such As Mercury and and exotic cores up to nine metres deep taken from the Lake Are being Analysed and examination of peat and radio Carbon dated to years ago con firms that the Basin was a layer of soil was then says Erik of Manitoba Energy and mines these cores Are still in the process of thorough analysis at laboratories across the including analysis of physical proper and the study of microscopic Bottom and Bio logical samples have also been the the coast guard ship based at was outfitted with an array of electronic devices and sampling de the research has changed our Pic Ture of the it has been conjectured that the Bedrock was of Lime however now it is revealed that the precambrian shield of Granite Rock underlies about of Brian todok3eological Survey of Canada Val Werier testing the Lake Bottom from the coast guard ship Lowed the final drainage into Hudson a Core taken off grand rapids should provide proof about when the Saskatchewan River started emptying into Lake which it bypassed thousands of years it will reveal the Date by the increased accumulation of sediment carried by the River into the North Basin of the says Nielsen the profiles Indi Cate that 10 metres of Lake Agassiz Clay were eroded from the Lake Bottom before Winnipeg mud began to accumulate As much As years Nielsen says that learning of to the Lake proceeding from the East Lake a Large glacial covered much of Manitoba years to the fantastic depth of three Kilometres in Northern Agassiz impacts Are being studied by scientists Lake Winnipeg came into being when the melting ice Al origin of these features will help us understand How the Lake functions at including such issues As Shore it was a Core offshore from Gimli that revealed that recently deposited Lake Bottom mods Overlie Marsh Sedi ments and soil formed in Lake Agassiz seismic profiles reveal a sub merged Beach South of Hecla Island As More evidence that this was dry land years seismic instruments Send pulses Down and print out a picture of what is underneath the Bottom of the fascinating repercussions of the ice age Are still being registered in the province the huge layer of ice depressed the land to such an extent that it is still rebounding from this ancient at the land is rising at the rate of one metre per Cen As determined by gauges at sea so the whole province is still the North rising relative to the As created the South Basin of the the crucial says is whether this natural migration continues at it will be essential for an answer to be obtained before we arrive at a better under standing of How to manage Shoreline proof May come from examination of More and an analysis of Lake measurements taken during the present a new project for the in cooperation with will use satellite receivers at flin flon and to actually Mea sure vertical and horizontal motion of the earths surface velocities measured in Millimetres per a Progress report on the research will be released this in May scientists will report on their work Here to the geological association con the research shows dramatically How we Are part of our something to remember As we celebrate a mile Stone in the history of our firs articles ;