Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - June 2, 2000, Winnipeg, Manitoba A10 Winnipeg free june 2000 editorials Freedom of Trade Liberty of religion Equality of civil rights in Broad Daylight an 18month investigation by City auditor Shannon Hunt showed that meddling by councillors sometimes makes the City Ineffie wasteful and inconsistent in leasing and Selling municipal mayor Glen Murray and the Council need to mend their but they can not do so simply on the auditors they and the Public need a Fuller account of the the mayor and councillors should debate the mat Ter a veil of secrecy is customarily Hung around City real estate deals on the grounds that private buyers and sell ers will not wish to negotiate in the auditors report shows that the veil of secrecy Fosters suppliers meet privately with councillors to sell them office space the City does not need at prices the City should not councillors order officials to make foolish recommendations that the councillors wish to these things came to Light Only because the auditors draft obtained by free press reporter David pierced the veil of the work of Reform should be done in Broad Day councillors criticized in the report should be Given their Public Chance to respond to its accuse developers and real estate dealers should be invited into the the cites real estate accused of slow response to fast moving should offer their views on the mayor Murray needs to decide Early on whether the Council is Able to diagnose and treat the councils own members of the tight Little club that makes up our City Council could easily convince each other that the few abuses the auditor discovered were minor slip ups that do not require curtail ment of councillors opportunities to make quiet or secret deals with the Public has Little reason to Trust councillors to judge their own the mayor intends to draw the provincial govern ment into the a panel of the municipal Board May be the right Agency to receive the Audi tors damning report and hear the responses of developers and once hearings have been the Public and the government can form a better idea where to take the Case the municipality owns on third of the land with in its own City it plays a huge role in obstructing or shaping growth and Winnipeg cannot afford to let meddlesome inefficient bureaucrats or squabbling civic clans impede growth and drive away mayor Murray must not let this scandal disappear into the private Council behind closed he must obtain whatever outside help he needs and impose a system that excludes secret deals and Fos ters Public roundabout ways the City is planning to build a traffic roundabout at the Forks As part of a larger plan to improve traffic flow through the area and across the new Mil lion Provencher Bridge and allow for the expansion of the can West global although also called traffic circles and predate the use of automobiles and Are common in the concept of driving in circles to get somewhere is new to its appearance now in Street Indi Cates that civic traffic engineers Are paying close attention to trends toward greater use of roundabouts to increase safety and traffic a study released last month and jointly conducted by Ryerson polytechnic University in Canada and the University of Maine and the insurance Institute for Highway safety in the United shows Why the trend is the study of 24 intersections that were converted to roundabouts found the conversion resulted in a 39 per cent Overall decrease in a 76 per cent decrease in injury producing accidents and a 90 per cent decrease in incapacitating to anyone unfamiliar with roundabouts and who see them As confusing and Likely to cause the fact that they produce an opposite result seems the found the reason they defy intuition is because they have the effect of slowing traffic at intersections and because they tend to reduce the need to Brake while eliminating the inclination to beat or jump traffic the technical Rea sons to consider roundabouts Are the added Benefit is that a especially one at the and to a new Bridge and Cable stayed pedestrian Walkway and Plaza Over the red will become another inter Esting feature of Winnipeg premiere in it was Learned that a Developer wants approval to build 120 condominiums at the the Developer clearly sees that the Forks is an attractive location that will Only become More attractive As More Public Money is spent on More Public such As Bridges and a what the Developer and the Forks officials who promote the development appear not to Howe is that the Public understands that the Forks is a Public amenity built with Public Money for the pub Lic to they do not want to see their and ambitions used for exclusive and Pri vate not even in roundabout question the Falk Tagis a fee d water nip follows tories footsteps Manitoba new nip government proves once again that in where one stands depends on where one in the new democrats railed against the tories Freedom of information act and even moved a six month hoist the Legisla Tive death penalty on the in the nip is fighting Access requests More fiercely than their predecessors heritage and tourism minister Diane Mcgrif the indignant opposition critic who tried to kill the Bill in is about to use Cost pres sures As an excuse to tighten Access even her critics in the new democrats railed against the tories spotty record on protecting the in the nip is still relegating the environment to the Back seat in relation to the ten times out of rubbing Salt in environmentalists conservation minister Oscar Lathlin has been refusing to meet with his own advisory last the Manitoba environmental Council tried in vain to talk with the minister Over plans to Slaughter an additional hogs at Winnipeg schneiders lath Lin has yet to meet with the Manitoba round table on sustainable although he is required by Law to do so three times a the minister says he cant see any Point in getting together because he wants to modify the Power has a Way of changing perspective and the new democrats Are not alone in Dis covering How quickly the Blacks and Whites of opposition blend into a uniform Grey at the cab inet but in the Dps the flip Flop has an added peril its their own supporters there making the newly Shornin Cabinet got a taste of anger from within at the celebratory postelection convention in irate National Farmers Union members new democrats inside and outside the Hall Over the Dps embrace of the tories corporate hog farm they posted signs around the convention welcoming delegates to the Smithfield convention and reminding the party that it used to denounce corporate welfare bums but suddenly was rolling out the red carpet for them in the Best tory the latest Issue of the Union the Nous official fired another Salvo at the nip the Manitoba nip government is picking up where the conservatives left off and have promised millions of taxpayers Money to Smithf ields to expand their hog processing Plant in there is no Money for health or education but they found Money the article says the nip plans to produce an additional million hogs in bringing the total to nine million animals with in five the paper will spew into Manitoba relatively Small agricultural area a volume of manure equivalent to that of 36 million that four times the popu lation of in a coalition of Public interest groups brought in Peter one of Canadas leading Foi to critique the tries new Freedom of information and Protection of Pri Vacy he said it puts Manitoba close to the Bottom of the list among Canadian gov it appears to be quite a conscious step Back in facilitating Public Access to info it contains the most sweeping Cabinet secrecy clauses in the not Only Are All ministerial communications but any record that even reflects As Well As All communications with other governments and even the United one of the worst features for Jacobsen was the Laws 30year confidentiality Rule for Cabinet elsewhere in the length of time Cabinet information can be kept from the Public varies Between is and 20 noting that 30 years is a generation and a Jacobsen said that by the time information comes out in it will be of interest Only to the 30year confidentiality cause has just risen up and bitten the new government on the the Cabinet is unable to find out for let alone the who in the previous tory administration knew what and when about the million Cost overrun on lavish renovations to the Manitoba lotteries two gambling maybe if not the protests of their disillusioned will remind the new democrats that some issues never Stop being Black and Frances Russell is a Winnipeg political her column appears on a web site that lays a heavy Burden my a More adept web surfer than this week located the Vatican web site Vati and downloaded a 16page document called ethics in communications issued by the pontifical Council for social the Vatican has a really Classy web site with a background that looks like old most of the web Sites i stumble across have flashing images and Gar ish colours and Are designed to fool me into buying things i do not it seems incongruous at first that the Vatican would be in there among the Huck the hate mongers and the hustling its wares on the but if you have a Story to you had better Tell it where some one is going to the pontifical Council for social communications does have a Story to its report on ethics in communications is signed by John and pie Franco Sec both of them unknown to and issued on the occasion of world communications june the Council writes that communications Media Are tools that can be used for either Good or evil As with other the users must choose which ends they will the Council summarizes the great Power of Media to help or hinder culture and the Central ethical Prin Ciple governing the the form and the Structure of it is this the human person and the human Community Are the end and measure of the use of the Media of social communication communication should be by persons to persons for the integral develop ment of As one who writes every Day in the new spa i am not sure i am ready for the heavy Burden these priests Are laying upon i am quite prepared to be a person communicating with other which i take to mean that i will assume full personal responsibility for the choices i make and the articles i i am fully determined to write with a personal Reader in who May be wounded or delighted by what i but Here i am held responsible for the Inte Gral development of which i think Means that i am to make my a bet Ter person and your Community a better com i am not at All sure i know How to do i am not even sure i would know How to detect the improvement in if it came or How to Tell what role my work had played in reforming the theory i grew up with in this business was rather different that if All the newspapers and other Media outlets publish the information that their editors find most then eventually most of the people will find out most of the information they need for cultural and social the uses readers make of that information Are up to out of the editors these priests Are not letting me get away with they Are unwilling to let me Wash my hands of the wide social results of my editing and publishing i believe that newspapers will get better if their read ers have a solid intellectual framework for criticizing them Ana asking them to get Mere isolated com plaints about misspellings and lapses of taste have Little effect on commentary that shows a profound understanding of what we do gets us where we in drawing attention to the pontifical com missions i do not believe i am making my readers better i do not believe readers of these pages could possibly be newspapers and other communications May be capable of especially if readers have High the Vatican document could be filed among High in its concluding the pontifical coun cil writes that communications Media can join people in communities of sympathy and shared interest and can also separate and isolate peo More and technology allows peo ple to assemble packages of information and services uniquely designed for there Are real advantages in but it raises an inescapable question will the audience of the future be a multitude of audiences of what would become of would become of love in a world like that As questions for our time that one is not so next time you Are sitting alone at your terminal surfing the recall that there is a web site out there where they have a Knack for using the big words like human and person and i am not sure they Are right but they do take an interest in communications Media and they do think hard before they and that is a great Terence Moore it a free press editorial his column appears on 1 jump hmm i division of new Waw Rudy flee Kip pollster Winnipeg free press est 1872 Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 vol 121 h0178 pushed ruin Mountain Manitoba r2x pm 6977000 a a Nancy n Camii Nicholas Patrick Flynn Diter ;