Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - September 19, 2000, Winnipeg, Manitoba A14 Winnipeg fkr 2000 editorials Freedom Oft Yade Liberty of religion Equality of civil rights not Frozen a committee of Hospital food managers yester Day invited health minister Dave Chomiak to spend on kitchens a portion of the new Money the Federal government is offering for healthcare they offered the Little reason to Hope the extra Money would buy better the shared food services working group urged Chomiak to Stop buying prepared foods from external All Hospital food from now on would be prepared in the kitchens of health sciences once cooked and the food would be shipped to two locations Boniface general Hospital and the regional food Centre in the Boniface Industrial Park to be portioned out on trays for each from those two the trays of meals would be shipped to the hospitals of this method of ing Winnipeg Hospital patients has the highest annual operating Cost and entails the fewest Hospi Tal employee layoffs of any method the working group it will by the working groups million of capital the least capital Cost and the lowest annual operating Cost would come from centralizing food operations at the regional food an option the working group the working group does not disclose the Cost of its first recommendation that the hospitals should cease buying prepared food from outside suppliers and rely on their own employees for All food this astonishing recommendation requires the Winnipeg regional health authority to Cut itself off from All competing even those that make food better or cheaper than the in House it provides no Opportunity for innovators with new products to bid for Winnipeg Hospital it provides no Check on Ineffie it guarantees steadily rising the working groups plan assures lifetime employment for Hospital Kitchen employees at health sciences Centre and Boniface general that is the one evident advantage of the proposed the working groups report alleges that its sys tem will be More More sensitive to the presence of allergens in the More responsive to special dietary needs of yet the report shows no evidence that a Winnipeg Hospital patient with special needs was Ever badly served because food was bought from an external it refers vaguely to what might happen if a patient allergic to gluten were fed soup containing wheat though such a thing could happen with locally cooked food or externally purchased the report cites no actual Case either the report acknowledges at length the social and emotional importance of meals in nursing yet it adopts the former conservative govern ments plan of shutting Down nursing Home All nursing Home under the working groups would be fed from the health sciences Centre the working group explains that nursing Home food should be different from Hospital food and then it pushes Hospital food into the nursing this is a backward the working groups plan benefits neither patients nor it offers chilled food from one a monopoly As though that were a big improvement on Frozen food from Many at this the new health funds from Ottawa will soon be spoken for and the patients will never know the fresh voices City councillors will be asked tomorrow to set the dates of their retirements by embracing term Lim when the motion is councillors will have two they can suspend rules and debate the motion or they can vote to have the motion referred for councillors should vote for a snap debate now would serve no useful Pur while the need for term limits grows increasingly the idea has resurfaced so recently that Many Winni Eggers have not yet formed a a detailed report showing How term limits might operate would help to focus a thorough debate would ensure that the issues Are Clear in everyone a snap debate and vote would not Only preclude important Public it if term limits were rejected by a majority of Council appear it would seem to be nothing More than a Means of ensuring that the incumbency party those councillors who return term after lacklustre term would continue to enjoy their accustomed Job City Hall needs fresh voices and fresh it currently is dominated by councillors of very Long standing if they had an Agenda when they were first should have fulfilled it Long the councillors who have declared support for term limits have on average served four years on they see that serving on Council should not be a but rather an Opportunity to serve and then to get out of the Way for others with similar councillors opposed to being forced from office or who have not stated a position on the Issue have on average served on City Council for earn childrens Trust a Bright Light was shone on the forces of dark Ness last week in an insistent Blaze that revealed the multiple ways corrupt governments and their armies wilfully destroy the International War affected children con Ference was a place of of anger ultimately of some Small Hope that substantive change will take there were demands for the sort of old fashioned reckoning that used to gov Ern Small towns and Fame a taking to task of those who knowingly commit Lara the special representative to the in Secretary general on children and armed con called for a return to old fashioned to stronger families and to a commitment to allow Chil Dren a Safe and unsullied passage to Carol executive director of demanded the shaming and disgrace of countries that commit crimes against children in times of time after cruelty and indifference have she these countries must be held accountable for their Maria Canadas minister for International opened the conference with a passionate demand that the maiming and Slaughter of children cease they Are children and that is she voice steady and eyes making children the victims and the agents of destruction is these Are crimes against it must end and that is the Only thing that is when the conference ended the foreign ministers had adopted a 14point Agenda for War affected a document that called for the release of child the cessation of the flow of arms and a Call for foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy announced the imme Diate release of 16 kidnapped ugandan children who have been defiled and forced to be soldiers it is a number that seems insignificant in Light of the children still held it is surely significant to those 16 children and their the Success of the conference can Only partially be measured by the dollars the documents signed and the unrelenting censure of a country wilful in its dismissal of the Laws of human the conference will be for Ever defined by the faces and voices of the youth men and women who gathered in Winnipeg to poignantly illustrate the utter misery in which some of the worlds Young live and this conference belonged to they Cap tured attention and respect by their Mere appear Ance the quiet Young women of North who told of being raped and forced to serve As to kill and to Kidnap other children the laughing teens wearing the clothing of a dozen nations linking arms and posing for snapshots the trembling sri lankan boy who stood to speak and found he had no voice and the Brave and Earnest Canadian kids who offer our Promise of a brighter future by their it was impossible to meet these Young people and not be not be haunted by the stories they told in Low voices with eyes cast not be driven to tears by the crimes that had been committed against theirs Are stories that need to be repeated and honoured they Are the reality that can get hidden behind the in the past armed conflict has killed two million another four million have been countless millions have suffered the psychological scars left by abduction and the murder of family these Are children without a there Are no innocent Carol Bel Lamy told the opening no one who can know and look away without we All have a stake in these a responsibility to demand an end to the Graca the conferences honorary spoke the words that should resonate around the we have to face the children and say we deserve your Trust As your parents and As your she perhaps this conference was a Way of beginning to earn that Lindor Reynolds is a free press her column appears on Axworthy gets the treatment now that it is officially confirmed that Lloyd Axworthy Long and Active political career is about to come to an that career is Likely to be the topic of vigorous retrospective Axworthy has been a figure of controversy through much of his political life and that Contro Versy is Likely to continue even after he leaves politics for the relative Comfort of the academic he was a proponent of activist government at a time when governments everywhere were pulling internal in the great tradition of Lester Pearson and Pierre he adopted moralistic policies which often caused profound irritation for a series of history assessment of Axworthy career is yet to even before he takes his leave from he can take some Pride in hav ing been singled out for what we might Call the National Post that is a treatment our newest National newspaper applies to people who do not share its political Agenda and especially for those who make any claim to altruistic the treatment relies heavily on Phan Tom quotations from Anonymous critics who tend to sound remarkably like the newspapers pro Conrad Axworthy got the Post treatment saturday from one of the papers Isabel most of her article is a if criticism of Axworthy so called human Secu Rity quoting authorities who either dont approve of it or dont think it can be tucked in among this More or less routine Cri Tique Are the malicious barbs that Are unsupported by any the opening paragraph sets the tone before he eases into Lloyd Axworthy wants to save the does he really has he Ever said so have his friends Ever said so for that matter have his ene Mies until the National Post discovered his hidden Agenda a few paragraphs later we get to the real meat but while Many of his supporters have praised his efforts to put human rights at the top of the International his critics refer to his efforts As naive and moralistic and say he is simply indulging in paper exercises spearheading International initiatives that sound Good in Prin Ciple but have no weight in his More cynical critics accuse him of indulging in a Las ditch bid to win a second nomination for the Nobel peace following the example of his hero Lester do they really if they who Are they and what evidence do they have to support their charges and Why must they be Anonymous there seems to be no reason to keep their identity if the cynical critics would reveal themselves and explain How they got their insight into Lloyd Axworthy readers would have some basis on which to judge the credibility of the accusations and of the people who made As it we Are left with a free floating smear unconnected to any evidence or judg that says More about the National Post than about Lloyd John Dafoe is a former editorial Page editor of the free his column appears on kingdom to open doors to tourists the Providence journal said in an editorial on the mysterious kingdom of saudi Ara which May be Best known to through David leans 1962 movie Lawrence of has Long been closed to most non except for a Small visiting Gar Rison of american Oil journalists and Busi the who Deal with millions of religious believers performing the obligatory Hajj pilgrimage to have been reluctant to add other tourists to their but thanks to the saudi search for new business opportunities outside of exported in a modern age when openness and communication Are leading the Way to economic the Council of min the kingdoms constituent Assem has authorized the creation of a supreme Council for the main office will be based in the National Capi although the two islamic holy Mecca and will continue to be of limits to the country splendid coastal cities along the red sea and the arabian As Well As some of the mountainous resorts and ancient towns like May be open to adventurous travellers should find Many fascinating things and hospitable people in saudi one of the safest countries for Western visitors in the Middle but there Are caveats no real infrastructure exists to serve an influx of no Muslim westerners expecting Public tolerance for cultural and religious expressions of diversity May be unpleasantly shocked by saudi intolerance for displays of no Muslim sanctioned puritanical saudi Arabia operates according to strict codes of Public social and islamic sharia to most saudi arabian society will seem quaintly if not zealously Puritan the penalties for violations of saudi social observances can be As fatal As for transgressions of saudi saudi which has very Little offers Public limb amputations of persons convicted for minor Public physical and child the government publicly behead people convicted of pros Titu grand Public drug rape or in it is not Disney the is Between a half and a third the size of the Continental United it has mountains that Range feet As Well As the worlds largest Sand the rub Alkali the empty to the West of its desert the saudi Peninsula contains spectacular Escarp and a Chain of mountains running parallel to the red with its Pristine and clean with Oil the saudis have built some of the finest Golf resorts and boating facilities in the world along their saudi arabian new Effort to attract tourists might acquaint More Western ers with arabian and vice maybe we will not share each others Val but openness Fosters understand and sometimes Winnipeg free press Winnipeg free press est 1872 Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 vol 128 to 272 t 2000 Winnipeg free a division of newspapers division of Thomson Canada limited published seven Days a week at 1355 Mountain Manitoba b2x pm 6977000 a Manitoba Council Rudy email Nicholas Hirst Patrick editor ;