Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - December 1, 2000, Winnipeg, Manitoba A10 Fryk 2000 editorials Freedom of Trade Liberty of religion Equality of civil rights downtown obstruction it seems but City councillors Are Actu ally looking at measures to make shopping downtown More difficult and Dis councillors this week have discussed a proposal to reduce the amount of surface parking so As to Force More people to take buses they also Are considering a proposal to increase the Cost of metered parking by reducing to 48 minutes from 60 minutes the amount of time purchased for both ideas Are so wrongheaded As to be breath for City coun cil milked the downtown by setting excessive tax rates based on wildly inaccurate with the result that retail operations fled to the the growth of which was encouraged by infrastructure expansion subsidized by the very tax loads that were killing the City Cen when the City Centre had declined to a Point that was obvious even to City modest and largely unimaginative efforts were made to reverse the destruction Council policies had brought Portage Avenue has been spruced a downtown development Agency has been tax incentives Are but for All Little has been done to address what Long have been the two primary reasons shop pers prefer suburban malls to the downtown ease of Access and free having done Little to address those key impede Council is now considering doing the oppo site making the problem worse by reducing ease of Access and increasing the Cost of ease of Access would be dim shed by a proposal to help Winnipeg transit by reducing parking lots downtown so As to Force More people to ride if the object is to get More passengers on then the answer is to reduce increase the fre Quency and Speed of and operate better some Effort is being made to improve the Quality of but councils consistent practice on the other key issues has been the opposite drive up which drive off which leads to cuts in forcing people to pay More for less bus service has already compounding that failure by forcing people to take buses that they already shun will Only Speed the flight to the suburbs and further harm there Are Many surface parking lots Down town 27 per cent of but the presence of cheap parking lots reflects the Lack of demand for the land for other the number of surface parking lots can be reduced by passing Laws prohibiting but a better approach would be to encourage developers to build on the and to do not people must be encouraged to go downtown by bus and by is not Content with one bad idea it also seeks to compound the problem by making Street parking More and to do it in the most convoluted Way the plan is to charge for 48 minutes of Down from one this which will Only frustrate is expected to raise about a City Council should not be chasing people out of the downtown for pocket it should retain its meters so As to fairly ration parking but it should Cut the Cost to a Bare mini perhaps 25 cents an increasing parking options and reducing metre costs Are the ridiculous plans to do the opposite should be the wheel turns Canadas Economy continued its robust growth in the third Quarter of this statistics Canada reported Gross Domestic product during the three month period increased by per indicating it should grow by an annual rate of per cent if the third Quarter Pace were maintained for a whole at that finance minister Paul Martin should have plenty of Money with which to keep the Liberal governments election the news from Washington was less Gross Domestic product in the grew at an annualized rate of just per cent in the third Quarter half the corresponding Canadian growth this reflected an abrupt deceleration in economic which the Commerce department attributed to reduced inventory investment and reduced Federal government Canada is at least As vulnerable As the to economic Martin has enjoyed seven years of steady growth in the Canadian inviting the Hope that growth will continue indefinitely and the tax Money will keep rolling the news of deceleration in the shows that the business Cycle still does that periods of rapid growth Are followed by periods of less rapid growth or even of if the Economy continues to canadians will quickly feel the effects and reduce the enthusiastic retail sales that sustained this country remarkable growth in the third while the Good times Martin should be reducing the debt of the Federal government at the quickest practical a time will come when the revenues will shrink and when canadians will turn to their government As an economic engine of last the less the government owes its when that Day the More help it can offer the t Ive been can Gning a11mcnwand waiter heal these sick elections voter participation is key to a healthy but two features of Canadas elec toral system work to discourage one disincentive is fairly the Deci Sion in 1997 to abandon enumeration in favour of a permanent voters it was taken to save about million out of an Overall Cost of million for each on just per cent of canadians exercised their the Low est among the group of seven industrialized countries except for the Canadian voter turnout is now 10 Points lower than in the 10 Points below 15 Points below Ger Many and 30 Points below what Price democracy working in tandem with the end of enumeration is the perverse effect of the firs past Winne Takeall electoral it leaves voters and regions who Back a losing often Only by a Small feeling disenfranchised under two one from each of the top two parties in a Riding but paid by elections Knock on every thereby increasing election find ing new voters and ensuring people who have recently moved get registered in their proper Riding and polling the latter is especially important Given the fact canadians Are among the most Mobile people in the the permanent voters list is supposedly kept up to Date by accessing a variety of govern ment data from health and Driver licence records to Federal income tax returns and motor vehicle it leaves a lot to be earlier this this newspaper reported that of the million canadians who turned 18 since the last Federal election in were not on the voters last year and earlier this elections Canada sent letters to some of but Only 25 per returned their in Early followup letters were mailed out and elections Canada embarked on a nationwide television Advertis ing Campaign to lure people into getting on the How does the Cost of All this compare to the Cost of enumeration itself Hugh Segal of the Montrea based Institute for research in Public policy Rpp believes the permanent voters list misses out five to 10 per cent of eligible the electoral Roll used to include 90 to 95 per cent of the voting age that has now dipped to 85 per cent and May go lower As each new election is further distanced in time from the lists Start ing the is evidence that no enumeration has a Baleful political it tends to disenfranchise the the the Mobile and the it gives greater political Sway to the the the settled and there fore the More elitist segments of is this what we want in one of the election postmortem aired on Csc radio a Young firs time voter said she Felt disenfranchised by the Winner Takeall Ftp electoral sys if you dont vote for the winning your vote is its just thrown she she May not bother to vote Ftp Doest just turn off losing it turns off losing this begins a downward stimulating the creation of sectional parties who by their very nature Appeal to and exacerbate regional thereby increasing regional alienation and inter regional tensions and in the Rpp issued a paper by University of political scientist Richard entitled Canadian elections at the it warned that Ftp has been Cen trial to the fragmentation of Canadas political it was eerily prescient of mondays electoral democracy in Canada is Johnston Only the Liberal party seems poised to but its base for governance is its old the tories and the Are but its new the bloc quebecois and the Canadian Harbour Only an illusion of major party seem More and More reluctant to play the game at Ftp no longer excels at its supposed Forte clarifying lines of accountability and pro Viding for if alteration in continues Johnston proportional representation or would at least permit a More equitable expression of the votes cast on elec Tion while not necessarily under perform ing the current system in other Elizabeth May she wring this nonsense with the dimpled chads in Florida shows that the americans made a big mis take in 1776 when they dumped the British if they had kept the they could have conducted Messy electoral Battles Over the Choice of an administration and a pol icy without bringing the stability and continuity of the state into ques but they chose this nutty system they have and now they Are stuck with canadians kept the monarchy because it was this country faced a terribly divisive dispute Over the Choice of a capital City and referred the matter to Queen Victoria who chose by town on the Ottawa by town then grew into the City the rest of the country has Learned to resent almost As much As it resents there were republicans around Canada at the most of them but canadians could see that a Monarch who lived an Ocean away could do Little harm and could occasionally be As a canadians to this Day have a use Ful Queen Elizabeth proved her useful Ness once again a couple of weeks ago while she was watching her and oth ers shoot pheasant at their Sandringham coun try one of the retrievers picked up a wounded Bird and brought it obediently to her majesty who promptly picked it up and wrung its As any humane and Quick thinking person ought to do in those when the sunday newspapers printed the pictures of the Queen killing a pheasant with her own Bare the sunday people gasped opponents of blood sport Rose up in they would have preferred the Queen to leave the injured pheasant on the twitching and bleeding in its death the Queen turned up at Church a week later Wear ing feathers in her Palace officials told reporters that those were pheasant feathers which expressed the Queens response to the reports in the previous sundays i am proud of a Monarch who is not afraid to wring the neck of a wounded Bird and is equally unafraid to with a gentle the tabloids and committees that found her con duct Long May she wring americans could have such a Queen but they were too Clever and High minded for they had to have an elected the americans decided they were allergic to taxes and they imagined that Kings cause taxes so they got rid of their it worked after a l their taxes Are a Little lower than what we pay in Canada and lower than what the British instead of a pheasant killing they have inter squeezing Bill Clin you get what you pay they also have a Dis bad tempered Row Between the go reites and the who cannot agree whether election officials in Florida should Stop counting now that Bush is or keep count ing until Gore pulls this episode showed an aspect of americas democratic values that is not usually on the leading citizens Are exchanging abusive remarks through their lawyers and turning to judges to try to twist the electoral system and make it produce a favourable debate on the great Public questions has been sus Pended while americans try to figure out How to figure out who their next president will or figure out who has the Power to decide that canadians have the monarchy As an ultimate guarantor of legality and democratic honesty in the Choice of a As Long As governments win and lose elections and accept the she is free to visit Sandringham and wring the necks of wounded should a government try to pull a fast one and cling to office after losing an she might be x called on to administer a political coup de Grace through her Canadian rep the governor Gener knowing the politicians usually play they know that she remains above political they also know that she can act swiftly and Deci sively when americans have no such Guaran Tor because their head of state is a partisan figure mistrusted by half the country and chosen through an adversarial the result is the unbridled Machi Avellis and manoeuvring that the world has witnessed these last three which has nothing to do with the Public welfare and everything to do with cynical manipulation and desperation to canadians who think they favour abolishing the monarchy should pay close attention to the Florida Henani that is what they Are wishing on their Winnipeg free press Winnipeg free press est 1872 Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 vol 129 no 2 2000 Winnipeg free a division of newspapers division of Thomson Canada limited published seven Days a week at 1355 Mountain Manitoba r2x pm 6977000 a member the Manitoba press Council Rudy email rudy.r6dekop@freepress.mb.ca Nicholas Flynn Deputy ;