Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - June 01, 2012, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A12 EDITORIALS WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, JUNE 1, 2012 Freedom of Trade Liberty of Religion Equality of Civil Rights A 12 COMMENT EDITOR: Gerald Flood 697- 7269 gerald. flood@ freepress. mb. ca winnipegfreepress. com EDITORIAL T HE census breakdown of boomers and babies shows all of Canada is getting greyer, but the West has slowed its aging process since 2006. Nearly 20 per cent of Manitoba's population is younger than 15. All of this bucks a national trend that holds broad implications, especially for the country's social welfare programs. The East, with the bulk of the country's population, is getting older faster, with some provinces far above Canada's median age of 40.6 years. Meanwhile, most provinces west of Ontario have younger median ages. The fertility rate is rising, likely because the children of baby boomers are having children themselves now. Manitoba's story pretty much mirrors that of the West. This tracks with a rapid rise in immigration, which tends to bring in younger people. The West has aggressively moved to welcome newcomers through tailored provincial nominee programs that seek to match job skills with shortages in specific industries. Immigration is a recognized antidote for an aging population, an economic driver that balances the financial pressures on social welfare programs through greater returns to tax coffers. As bigger slices of the baby boom cohort retire, Canada can expect to see increased demand on health services and pension funds as fewer and fewer wage earners are feeding provincial and federal income tax coffers. The federal Tories have taken steps to relieve strain on old age security, but no government has had the temerity to cut the health services covered by medicare. Indeed, as medical science expands its horizons, the demand grows for greater access to the things that improve the quality of life for a population that is living longer. The West's growth is unlikely to balance perfectly the challenges posed by a rapidly aging East, where the bulk of the population lives. But the fact is that the rising immigration and fertility rate has helped put Canada among the youngest of the industrialized nations. The health of the country's vaunted social welfare programs depends on a good replacement rate for those retiring from the workplace. Western provinces have managed to get new immigrants into the labour force impressively quickly. All of Canada needs to concentrate on doing the same. B RANDON - Would Brandon's Keystone Centre exist if the province's new privatepublic infrastructure partnership rules had been in place when Ed Schreyer was Manitoba's premier? What would a risk and value- for- money analysis conclude if that project were being considered today? Those are questions Manitobans should be asking now that the Keystone is seeking a fresh infusion of tax dollars, and now that the Selinger government has introduced legislation that prohibits the province and municipalities from entering into P3s without first satisfying a number of requirements. One of those conditions is a detailed risk and valuefor- money analysis to determine if a P3 arrangement provides the best value for the investment of public dollars. The Keystone was established in 1971 through an agreement among the City of Brandon, the Province of Manitoba and the Provincial Exhibition of Manitoba, a private agricultural society. Under that agreement - one of Manitoba's first P3 arrangements - the provincial exhibition contributed 90 acres of land located in Brandon's south end in exchange for the province and City of Brandon agreeing to share equally in any future deficit incurred by the Keystone. Since opening its doors in 1972, the facility has incurred four decades of deficits, burning through millions of public dollars to cover operating losses, repairs and upgrades. The pace and size of the payments has grown over the past few years. In 2005, the Keystone received $ 15 million from the three levels of government to fund the construction of a large expansion that the Keystone's management group ( which includes representatives appointed by the provincial government) repeatedly guaranteed would make the Keystone profitable. It hasn't stopped the flow of red ink. Though millions more were spent on upgrades for the 2010 Memorial Cup, the Keystone is now demanding another $ 10 million from taxpayers for urgent repairs to the roof, air conditioning, pipes, pumps and other facility infrastructure. It is becoming more difficult - and more expensive - to keep up with the repairs and upgrades the aging complex requires. There is a strong likelihood that increasingly larger cash injections will be required over the coming years, with increasing regularity. Though the Keystone delivers significant economic benefits to western Manitoba, does it make sense for taxpayers to be continually shovelling millions of dollars into a facility that is capable of solving its own financial woes? The sprawling complex is surrounded by more than 80 acres of Brandon's most valuable commercial real estate. If developed properly, that vacant land could yield an income stream that would potentially eliminate the annual operating deficits and finance ongoing capital expenses. Keystone management stubbornly refuses to develop that land, however, preferring instead to continue to loudly bang its tin cup for more public money. After all, it's a strategy that's worked for four decades. If a strategy to wean the Keystone from public subsidies through commercial development sounds familiar, it should. Several weeks ago, the Red River Exhibition unveiled a plan to partner with a local developer to construct a retail and hotel complex, a 5,000- seat arena/ event centre, a 300,000- square- foot " Expo Centre" and a light- industrial park on its undeveloped land west of the Perimeter Highway. The arena centre will be capable of hosting agricultural exhibitions, concerts and sporting events, while the Expo Centre will be large enough to host major agricultural trade shows, conventions and exhibitions for which significant space is needed. Though the development would resemble the Keystone Centre in size, mission and capabilities, there is one critical difference - while the Keystone is funded by taxpayers, no public money will be required for the Red River Ex project. It will be entirely financed by borrowing secured by the Red River Ex land, which is some of the most valuable real estate in Winnipeg. If the Red River Ex can make its project work by leveraging the value of its property, why can't the Keystone Centre? Why should taxpayers continue to underwrite the Keystone's losses and capital expenses, when it refuses to mitigate those losses by following the example set by the Red River Ex? More important, if the new legislation applies to new P3 arrangements, shouldn't the new rules also apply to existing P3s wanting new public money? Those are questions the cash- strapped Selinger government should consider before pouring millions of additional tax dollars into the Keystone. Deveryn Ross is a political commentator living in Brandon. deverynrossletters@ gmail. com B RISBANE - Computer games are exhilarating, absorbing and possibly addictive, but if you were an intelligent eight- yearold, would you eschew Super Nintendo's Star Fox for a yo- yo? It's a question parents across the western world might ask themselves as they indulge in periodic bouts of angst about today's kids being robbed of a " classical" outdoor childhood. The latest round of nailbiting in Australia was sparked by a visit from New York author Lenore Skenazy. Skenazy, who has coined the term " free range kids,'' is not so much about banning computer games as encouraging kids to get outside and take physical risks such as climbing trees - an activity that has lost its allure since the advent of Gameboy. To many parents, the villain is no longer the television set but the computer game, which serves as a modern- day Pied Piper, luring kids from childhood's sun- dappled fields into the darkness of the virtual Xbox world. There's nothing new in this - French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau was banging on about the need to get kids into the fresh air in his book Emile three centuries ago. And every generation bores the next with tedious and often confected reminisces of daring, fresh- aired childhood adventures that left Enid Blyton's Famous Five resembling a bunch of stay- at- home pansies. Parents routinely tell libellous fabrications to their offspring but the generation now in middle age can rightly claim with unchallengeable authority: " Things were different in my day." Those of us born in 1970, for example, may still harbour bitter regrets that Sony was putting the finishing touches to Playstation just as we exited childhood. From that technological marvel, the array of kids' entertainments has blossomed to the point where a six- yearold effortlessly commands 1,000 times the computer power that put Armstrong on the moon. And who among us, if transported back to childhood, would squat contentedly in the dirt with our little satchel of marbles rather than confront the dark realms of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon ? Those who advocate tree climbing don't get it. We only climbed trees because of a lack of alternative entertainments. Why endure the tedium of a hot Saturday afternoon fiddling with a rusted, unreliable gokart when one can recline in the air- conditioned confines of one's bedroom playing Indianapolis 500 ? Why confront the frustrating task of creating a sling shot out of discarded lumber and rubber bands when the Angry Birds app provides a reliable structure, complete with a field of pigs as targets? Cowboys and Indians? Try Rome: Total War . It's a more sophisticated depiction of violent combat, less physically draining and can be played while sipping a chilled glass of, say, Pepsi. Where is the hard data to back this curious belief that outdoor activity builds self- esteem in the young? As a veteran of a rural childhood, I have abundant first- hand field evidence that exposure to the natural world can spark anxiety and feelings of inadequacy in a small child. Climb a tree and you will fall and injure yourself, hunt for guava and you risk the fatal bite of a taipan snake, build a canoe from rusty corrugated iron and you'll surely be cut to pieces by those jagged edges and contract tetanus, before drowning in a flooded creek. More fervent advocates of a classical childhood insist boys learn marksmanship and the manly arts of the hunt to build character and selfreliance. And, upon reflection, it is true my one outdoor boyhood adventure that produced a fleeting surge of self- confidence involved a firearm. Stealing an older brother's air rifle to spend an afternoon massacring native fauna sparked in me a joy I've rarely experienced in my adult years. A sin to kill a mocking bird? I killed a tree load of Kookaburra but, sadly, suffered a fierce parental backlash, which only reinforced a natural inclination toward diffidence and timidity. If I'd spent that day indoors playing God of War II, I may have grown into a more self- assured adult, and those unfortunate avians could have chirped on. The past is another country and often a less pleasant one. Maybe we just envy these kids their computers and their 21st- century childhoods. Michael Madigan is the Free Press correspondent in Australia. He writes mostly about politics for the Brisbane- based Courier Mail. MICHAEL MADIGAN DEVERYN ROSS T HE 50- year sentence levelled against one of the world's most infamous traders in blood diamonds, Charles Taylor, shocked many in the international community. The jail term imposed Wednesday by the International Criminal Court effectively declares you don't have to personally coordinate a gun- running supply line to be very, very guilty of the carnage wrought by the rebels or regimes that buy them. Most were betting Taylor, the former president of Liberia who fed the murderous rebels of Sierra Leone, would see some jail time, but the five decades he now has to contemplate his misdeeds is amongst the heaviest for war crimes convictions. The ICC's first conviction of a former warlord holds real implication for the many other brutes the court is waiting to call to account. That includes, most immediately, Thomas Lubanga, the convicted former rebel leader in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but also Saif Gadhafi, the son of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who led summary executions of civilians as protestors rallied courageously in the streets, eventually deposing the 42- year Gadhafi regime. Saif Gadhafi is not likely to meet the ICC's judge any time soon - the new rulers in his country want him to meet justice Libyanstyle - but the remarkable conviction of Taylor and the jail term are powerful warnings of international reckoning for dictators and warlords who carry out atrocities against civilians. Mr. Taylor's conviction has given new relevance to the international war crimes tribunal; his sentence is a clarion, reverberating loudest for those in Syria, Darfur and similarly brutal, repressive states. 50- year sentence The West sets example for the East Time P3 arena carried its own weight Why play marbles when there's Xbox? A_ 14_ Jun- 01- 12_ FP_ 01. indd A12 5/ 31/ 12 9: 24: 05 PM ;