Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - October 11, 2008, Winnipeg, Manitoba C m y k Page 11 Winnipeg free press saturday october 11, 2008 View from the West and beyond comment editor Gerald flood 697 7269 Gerald. Flood free press. M. Ca Winnipeg repress. Com a 19 i went to my local Library and took out All my Favourite books. I took out my childhood friends Henry Reeds babysitting service Little women and Toms Midnight Garden. I promptly put them unread into the Book return Chute. I went to the downtown Library and took out some of my More obscure favourites greens treaty on mothering and education in Lichts de schooling society and gattos critique of education. I went to the Cookbook Section and took out Favourite cookbooks the philosophy Section and took out old work books at one time somebody yes Favourite and returned them All into the Chute. Strange behaviour perhaps but my own quiet protest against current Library policy. In 2008, the Winnipeg pubic Library re imagined its orientation to culling Manitoba ass Book collection an understandable task in modern society. Who wants to read an old Best seller when a new Book has hit the Best seller list outdated tomes on atari computing or How to navigate the 1970s medical system May be dated and of Little Worth to the average Public. I also cull my books. At Home i dispense of the old psychology textbook that does not reflect current norms or the childrens Book that was really not that interesting anyway. Things cannot be kept forever. I make decisions based on the intrinsic Worth of the material. Will i use it again is it valid does it have historical or educational significance for my children would the experts in the Field use this Book can i get it at the Library my alarm and Odd behaviour Are not a response to the practicalities of culling books but rather to the discovery that books Are removed at the discretion of branches not through some Rubric of Worth but entirely on the basis of circulation. Books that have not been checked out in 24 months will be thrown out. Cd that have not been checked out in 12 months will be removed and videos not checked out in four months will be removed. As i contemplated this policy my mind turned to a variety of issues facing modern libraries. Circulation is Down. People Are buying books rather than checking them out. There is a greater emphasis on technology. Books and computer services Are taking More and More of librarians time. The use of libraries by civil society is evolving. Individuals Are seeking out different services with a greater demand for technology and internet services. With this said i Ponder the meaning and place of libraries in Public society. I think of libraries As the greatest Good. Libraries in my Ideal Are places of equity democracy and civil society. Within the Library the Young child can learn to read the new immigrant can discover what it Means to be part of our Canadian society and the idealistic student can read forgotten philosophers and hidden revolutionaries. When we remove books based on a logistic timeline rather than a More Complex analysis we make our society a bit More inequitable. We the educated Middle class go on Ebay and secure a hard copy of our Favourite Book and keep it hidden in our Home. In doing so we maintain our Access to information history Power and privilege. We become the carriers and protectors of topical institutional and societal knowledge. The poor the marginalized those who cannot buy books lose Access to this knowledge history and Power. In this loss they again become outsiders to a system favouring those who already possess. When we remove decent historical and important books from the Library system because they May be read Only every 30 months we make a political statement about who is important and who matters. Sheila Giesbrecht is a doctor of education with interest in local and equity issues. Sheila Giesbrecht under cover at the Library a tax grab that is going on some 739 Kilometres North of Winnipeg in the City of Thompson could affect your pocketbook. Four new tax bylaws including a new tax on restaurant meals and a property Transfer tax once considered Mere municipal fancy Are coming closer to reality. If the province approves the new taxes in Thompson watch your Wallet you May be next. Thompson City Council is asking the province for new two per cent municipal taxes on restaurant meals alcohol and hotel accommodation and a 0.5 per cent tax on land transfers. Of course that is Likely just the beginning. If the City gets these new taxes How Long before they Are increased municipalities have had the Power to pass such bylaws for More than 30 years but to Date no municipality has gone Down this Road. While Thompson can pass the new bylaws they have no Force until approved by the provincial government. Small businesses throughout Manitoba Are particularly concerned about the precedent set if the Manitoba government approves these bylaws. With approximately 200 municipalities in Manitoba one can Only imagine the chaotic and Patchwork situation that May occur if other municipalities emboldened by the City of Thompson decide to proceed in a similar fashion. As Well the municipal Revenue Grants and taxation act while providing a municipality the authority to pass bylaws related to the ones pursued by the City of Thompson does not explicitly Cap the tax rate being imposed. Again this will Only add to future problems in which some municipalities attempt to impose even higher tax rates than those under current consideration. If individual municipalities Are Given the Green Light to Levy new taxes the provinces efforts to reduce both the individual and business tax Burden will be seriously undermined. While one can appreciate the financial challenges some municipalities face in addressing the needs of their citizens taking an estimated $ 616,000 annually through new taxes from the local Economy is Short term thinking that will Only reduce Thompsons Long term competitiveness. While the amounts in and of themselves might appear minimal it is Worth noting that in almost every Case there already exist both provincial and Federal taxes on the goods and services. As Well in the Case of the proposed land Transfer tax the provincial land Transfer tax increased in 2004, Only exacerbating Thompsons planned tax. The goals of the new bylaws May be laudable infrastructure renewal Public safety and affordable housing but Given the current economic uncertainty and the efforts individual families Are undertaking to reduce personal expenditures the last thing needed is another reason not to buy locally. Does the municipality need the additional Revenue the province has through funding initiatives such As the building Manitoba fund sharing vat revenues and a myriad of other municipal Grants been quite generous toward municipalities. Also lets remember that the Federal government now fully rebates the get charged to the purchases of goods and services by a municipality. Perhaps municipalities should look for Cost savings in existing budgets to fund new projects rather than asking for More from taxpayers. Another big Issue for Small business is the Impact increasing new municipal taxes will have when it comes to the Burden of tax compliance. The Canadian federation of Independent business estimates that the tax compliance Cost in Manitoba is $ 420 million. The average tax compliance Cost of the smallest business 0 4 employees was Over eight times higher than businesses employing 50 to 499 employees. Two of the factors contributing to tax compliance costs were found to be the amount of paperwork and different rules across different jurisdictions with 65 per cent and 30 per cent of respondents respectively indicating they were both a major Factor. With an average Small business owner in Manitoba already devoting 13 Days per year to Complete the required paperwork allowing for the introduction of new and multiple collection and reporting requirements threatens to diminish the provinces red tape reduction efforts to Date. Crib surveys have consistently shown our members do not support municipalities having the authority to Levy new taxes. Almost 90 per cent of our members rejected this authority in our August 2007 tax competitiveness Survey with Only eight per cent in support. Allowing the City of Thompson to create the first municipal restaurant meal tax in Canada the Only municipal land Transfer tax in Western Canada and a stand alone alcohol tax is contrary to the goal of tax competitiveness and should be summarily rejected by the province. Consistency of the tax system is a critical component of a provincial Economy. The Thompson precedent threatens this consistency and threatens the finances of every business and consumer in Manitoba. Shannon Martin is the Manitoba director of provincial affairs with the Canadian federation of Independent business. Shannon. Martin crib. Ca. Nix Thompsons taxes Shannon Martin Thompson City Council is asking the province for new two per cent municipal taxes on restaurant meals alcohol and hotel accommodation and a 0.5 per cent tax on land transfers. I t became a classic example of a techno utopian prophecy gone awry. The notion of the paperless office which dates Back to the 1960s, sounded plausible enough. As computers began to spread and display technology improved it seemed obvious that More and More documents would be written distributed and read in electronic form rather than on paper. Filing cabinets would give Way to hard disks memos and reports would be distributed electronically and paper invoices and Purchase orders would be replaced by electronic messages whizzing Between accounts departments. What actually happened was that global consumption of office paper More than doubled in the last two decades of the 20th Century As digital technology made printing cheaper and easier than Ever before. Not even the Rise of the internet stemmed the tide. The webs billions of pages provided a vast new source of fodder for the worlds humming printers. Although e mail did away with much paper based correspondence some older Technophobia Bosses insisted on having their e mails printed out so they could scribble their responses in pen for their secretaries to Type in and Send off. Yet the prediction seems to be coming True at last. American office workers use of paper has actually been in decline since 2001. What changed the explanation seems to be sociological rather than technological. A new generation of workers who have grown up with email word processing and the internet feel less of a need to print documents out than their older colleagues did. Offices Are still far from paperless but the trend is Clear. So does this mean that other apparently discredited technological prophecies might also Benefit from a similar reversal of Fortune a closer look at the ones that have staged comebacks suggests three ways in which they could. The paperless office shows How a sociological shift can make the difference although the technology did not change very much its users did. In some cases however straightforward improvements in technology turn things around. A Good example is the internet itself. The prognostications of the Dot com Era were shown to be extravagantly wide of the Mark when the Bubble burst in 2000 01. But Many Dot com business models had been predicated on the wide availability of broadband internet connections which for regulatory reasons spread More slowly than expected. As broadband grew Many predictions made during the Boom about the value of online advertising and the volume of e Commerce for example came True after All albeit a few years late. A third Way in which seemingly moribund technologies can be revived is through an external Shock. Perhaps the Best example is the electric car. The dream has always sounded promising Oil will not last forever after All but the reality consisted of Odd looking cars with limited Range. A plunge in the Oil Price in the late 1990s and the cancellation of the ev1 by general motors in 2003 seemed to sound the death Knell for electric cars. But growing concern about climate change worries about Energy Security and a Spike in the Oil Price have since effected an astonishing turnaround. Car makers Are now racing to build gasoline electric hybrid vehicles and these Are widely seen As Steps on the Way to All electric ones. If social technological and external factors can make supposedly discredited predictions come True what technology might be next in line for a revival video telephony is one possibility. It has never lived up to its depiction in science fiction films even though millions of people now carry Mobile phones capable of video calling. Just As supermodels sparked a trend for carrying Small bottles of Mineral water around perhaps a celebrity endorsement or a sudden teenage craze will trigger a wider social shift that prompts people to use the technology. Similarly technical breakthroughs May yet revive the fortunes of fusion Power which has been 50 years away for decades and Hydrogen powered cars which Are perpetually 10 years from mass production. As for external shocks concern Over climate change is already prompting some environmentalists to rethink their opposition to nuclear Power and genetically modified crops. Make an electronic note to yourself remember the paperless office and never say never. The economist paperless offices and other technological prophecies a 19_ oct 11 08_ Grey. Ind a11 10/ 10/ 08 8 52 21 pm ;