Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - June 14, 2001, Winnipeg, Manitoba Focus a15 pm r in m 2001 think people before cars How do we make downtown More Friendly one Way streets Are not particularly so an examination is being made by downtown Biz whether it is feasible to revert some to two Way Kennedy and Edmon ton Are possible the idea is to make driving less con fusing and perhaps improve the tem per of motorists exasperated after missing a turn and forced to Detour for blocks to get on How ill served has the City been in the past by allowing traffic engineers and the marketplace to determine the design of the City development and real estate interests have wielded influence on the decisions of City coun cil right from the birth of they persuaded the car with Grants of and no taxes forever to place the railway through Winnipeg instead of a big mistake for we would have been much closer to Lake win after the Sec Ond world the traffic As it was called at the decided downtown streets had to be widened to make them one Way their View was they saw no Only downtown then was a Lovely Green place with Maples and Ash lining every Street in the very heart of the including Smith and the sacrilege inflicted by the authorities was a total of Trees were removed from 34 downtown blocks in a five year period ending in just to Speed the car no consideration what Soever was Given to its Impact on the How sad it is to look at it in Retro the transportation department had hired consultants from the United states to Tell us what to and their with Little understanding of the nature of our Prairie was one Way today there is a move in some cities in Canada and the to convert some one Way downtown streets to two Way Annitta executive director of Centre venture development agrees that one Way streets can be a hindrance to Speed encouraged they encourage Drivers to Speed through downtown rather than shop Kansas for wanted to make downtown More user Friendly and decided to eliminate some one Way the downtown business District of just Over one Square mile pro Vides jobs and has it is pertinent to note that downtown interests moving vehicles in an efficient manner should no longer be considered the sole the result has been the conversion of Sev eral one Way routes to two Way the journal of the Institute of transportation engineers says a Posi Tive result has been a reduction in Dis Tance the negative Impact was in the increase in congested inter a City of like Winnipeg followed big centres in one Way streets in the thriving downtown retail business declined with the Advent of suburban shopping malls and the devastation of a in the several streets were converted to two Way the business Community has found this so beneficial that it sought conversion of additional there is some Cost to including realigning signals and the slowing Down of says Ken manager of the transportation it is useful to cast a look at Down town Broadway to see How it has functioned compared to Portage a name originated by the Hudson Bay company to build an elite Community on part of its was something it was hailed As the first european style Boulevard in the in the barbarians wanted the Centre Boulevard stripped of Trees for Park a Public uproar stopped the Trees Are one reason Why Broadway is such a Friendly place where people gather for lunch on the which has turned its Back on the is a problem that the City and business Are trying to the message is to think of people before Bush should attend eur meeting with Kyoto bashing scientist there is a scientist in Den Mark that George Bush ought to take along to his first meeting with the leaders of the euro Pean Union in the swedish City of Goteborg there angry about president Bush decision to Welsh on the commitment to Cut its greenhouse Gas emissions under the 1997 Kyoto so a european scientist who thinks that the Kyoto Accord is use less is just the sort of person he Bjorn an associate pro Fessor at the University of is pub Lishing a Book called the sep tical Environ mentalist in which he argues that implementing Kyoto would be a huge waste of and that millions of lives would be lost to global warming that could otherwise be Lomborg says he is an environment and he has reached these conclusions after a massive fou year audit of official environmental Indica so Fly an executive plane Over to aarhus he likes a lot of and get Lomborg Over to Sweden to defend Bush position on the fatally flawed Kyoto while most of his fellow oilmen have retreated from their longheld position that there is no global warm and Bush even concedes that the United states is the largest emitter of manmade greenhouse he still refuses to meet the Kyoto goal for american emission cuts because it he damage the evade we recognize our responsibility to reduce our Bush declared last weekend but then explained Why his government was going to evade we also recognize the other part of the Story that the rest of the world emits 80 per cent of All Green House and Many of those emis Sions Are from developing countries which Are exempt from emission controls under that just what Lomborg is saying that since Kyoto does not impose cuts on poor countries like China and where emissions Are growing it will have a very limited effect on slowing global in not enough to make it Worth All the pain and Jose Huesca associated press Bush left walks past an honour guard with Spain prime minister Jose Maria Aznar in Madrid on what happens with the Kyoto pro says is that by global temperature will Rise by almost rather than by c if nothing is another Way of looking at it is that a temperature Rise of which would otherwise have been reached in is postponed under the Kyoto rules to far argues to take the trillions of dollars that would be spent on implementing the Kyoto cuts in the Rich and spend it instead on fighting poverty and Mal nutrition in the poor countries and on research into renewable forms of Energy such As solar Power and clean nuclear fusion if these technologies become economically competitive with Fossil fuels by the mid21st you could then Cut Carbon dioxide emissions steeply just before total catastrophe Lomborg argument contains a classic piece of political naivete the notion that there Are trillions of Dol Lars earmarked for implementing that can just be redirected to alternative Energy research and fighting world but while he is a Mere professor of George Bush is a Politi and he is expected to display the level of political sophistication appropriate to a multicellular everybody else at Goteborg under stands that Kyoto is just a a statement of nobody imag Ines that it is going to Stop climate change in its present but it was vital to establish that there is a global and that there is an International responsibility to address real world Clever idiots like Lomborg extrapolate the 1997 Kyoto agreement out to 2095 and find it but people who live in the real world realize that it will be renegotiated at least 10 times Between now and the scale of sacrifice people can accept is proportionate to the amount of pain they suffer if they do not and both will go up steeply Over today task is to Lay Down some of course most of the worlds greenhouse gases come from else but Over 20 per cent come from the which has Only four per cent of the worlds of the developing countries must accept emission controls but at the moment they Are still poor and their per capita emissions Are less than a 10th of the average Ameri do you want to condemn them to perpetual underdevelopment Bush is not entering a Den of Lions at european leaders Are deeply unhappy about his trashing of Kyoto and his destabilizing missile defence but Treyve already had their Hiss fit in Vot ing the off the in human rights commission last they have also already relearned the old lesson that defying superpowers never right or they break your in the face of con Gressis angry threats to Cut in fund they have gone into full so Goteborg will be a Den of Pussy cats for the european leaders will smile at listen respectfully and reply they will look for evidence that his More alarming poli cies Are just payback to the Industrial interests that backed his presidential and that he has some larger but they Are mostly people who have spent a lifetime in and know How things and care about the state of the world that their grandchildren will if they decide that Bush is a lost the Atlantic will get a lot letters to the editor the free press welcomes letters from they must include the authors address and Telephone letters May be letters to the 1355 Mountain r2x fax email citizenship test frustrating becoming a Canadian citizen takes hours of preparation and a hell of a lot of one needs to be pre pared to research the answers to the first 180 questions in the Booklet a look at Are All those answers important for ones lifetime skill so All canadians know the answers i spent a lot of my time trying to find the answers in the but i got so frustrated that i called the Cana Dian office to withdraw my Applina i thought i was going to have a Good time learning about Canada and its my future More i want to become a Canadian citizen because i am setting up a business becoming a Cana Dian Doest help at All with my Busi i think that the answers should be provided to better help applicants to study the those who have been living Here for More than three years should not have to take the frustrating but just take the oath and obey the Laws of the that really relevant to becoming a Canad an Ailton Ferraz Vieira Winnipeg Gas rate hike creates hardship i read in the free press that Centra gets fourth rate hike in 10 months june according to the description on the web the purpose of the Public utilities Board is to regulate a number of Manitoba Public utilities As in it certainly appears they seem to favour every rate hike that comes and this is not Only for the the Board does not seem to consider the welfare of the Public often struggling to pay the increase of the utilities it seems to consider worthy of a rate perhaps the Public utilities Board should consider the fact that Many families May have to pay the extra rates from their food or clothing Bud in a family with or with a limited this does Cre ate a Gladys Kusmack Winnipeg Bible ban plan simply intolerance it seems that once again Kristine Barr is initiating controversy from her position As Winnipeg school based on the article Bible Battle brewing june 600 or 700 parents of Grade 5 students in the division voted in favour of the free Bible program last year one letter and three phone Calls not in in some areas parents of Grade 5 Stu dents have voted As High As 78 per cent for this free service offered by Gideons of in the political this kind of Public support would be considered a in june when a similar motion to ban Gideon bibles was introduced by trustee Lionel More than Winnipeg school division Resi dents Rose up in protest by Way of phone Calls and then trustee Enid Gillespie made a Strong Case against the the free press reported on june trustee Enid Gillespie said the motion threatened the religious expression of All cultural adding she could not support girls of Muslim Faith Wear their veils in should we disallow it natives have their sweetgrass ceremonies at should we disallow that the bilingual hebrew school uses the should we disallow that the motion was i to quote Kristine completely shocked to see that in a society where tolerance and diversity Are to be we now see such intolerance that would once again legislate Book William Rempel Winnipeg entertainment can spawn lust in response to Cory Nicol debunking the notion that a pornographic movie viewer might accost one of her Chil Dren As they walk past the xxx store in order to get to the convenience i guess that i would have to agree adult video store not a threat june statistics show Well that when a child is molested or ravaged at it is usually by a male who is Well known by or very close to the the percent age of random attacks Are consider ably is Nicol demands arguments based on fact and not on consider that Over 95 per cent of molesters have had Little to heavy exposure to what started As entertainment turned into an obsessive lust towards women and children that All mothers James Wilder Winnipeg amnesty meeting bittersweet for the first i attended the annual general meeting Canada Branch of amnesty International in Regina with a Sweet and bitter feel Sweet in the sense that it is changing for the better As being geared to tackle the related human rights aspects of Trade and Environ quite bitter when i discovered that it is highly eurocentric and deliberately left out the Southern perspective such As the purchasing of the ramp uniform from Burma where the garment factories use forced labour so much so that Burma was kicked out of the International labour it is lamentable that amnesty inter in spite of being a Well known International human rights is like the multinational corporations and the United nations has to acquiesce to the whims and fancies of the burmese military Junta and Call the country Myanmar when that very name is synonymous with vast human rights Kanba Zawin amnesty International 19 Winnipeg doonesbury by Garry Trudeau know what Fuhai ;