Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - June 28, 2012, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A12 EDITORIALS WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, THURSDAY, JUNE 28, 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 M ANITOBA Hydro has been watching its fortunes in the export market take a drubbing for some time now, but that has not swayed the Crown utility from an aggressive schedule for expensive new dams to boost generation. Now, as reported in the Free Press yesterday, Hydro is forecasting its export revenues over the next decade will fall dramatically. Premier Greg Selinger needs to ask an independent party to review the utility's capital plans. Those capital plans, including the Keeyask and Conawapa generating stations, have shot up, from $ 16 billion in 2008 to $ 22.5 billion last year, according to documents at the Public Utilities Board. Those costs, combined with Hydro's future export sales to the northern states, affect electricity rates of Manitobans. The information brings into focus the protracted dispute - centred around the demand by the PUB to see export contracts Hydro has signed with American customers - over the financial health of the Crown utility. The PUB believes Hydro understates the impact of a changing export market on its revenues and the effect on future electricity rates paid by Manitobans. The corporation says the PUB's method of calculating the future revenues and expenses is disconnected from reality. Hydro has now submitted forecasts that show it expects to earn $ 1.1 billion less than previously forecasted in the next decade from export sales and $ 4 billion less over the next 20 years. The declining returns result primarily because the production of new, cheaper natural gas from shale reserves is depressing the export price for electricity. The steep discounting of revenues into the next decades is worrisome. Hydro used to build dams to meet Manitobans' needs, but the Doer administration speculated the export market that once was a cash cow could pay for new generation that would be needed someday anyway. Contracts for long- term supply are not so assured anymore and the spot power market is looking pretty dismal. Nonetheless, the Crown corporation is forging ahead with plans to construct Keeyask and the massive Conawapa. The PUB believes alternative generation - turbines that use natural gas - could meet future domestic demand, allowing delay of Conawapa and the construction of the new Bipole III transmission line, saving billions of dollars. The Clean Environment Commission is to conduct a " Needs For and Alternatives To" review on each dam before it is constructed, but what Manitobans need is a review of Hydro's capital plans in their entirety. The PUB has previously suggested an independent panel do just this. Premier Selinger should take the revised revenue forecasts as the necessary trigger for just such an inquiry. I T is called the great divide and no time more clearly demonstrates it than when over 80 per cent of publicly educated Grade 12 students proudly march across stages to receive their diplomas in June. While this compares to a paltry 30 per cent graduation rate for on- reserve students, the point is not to bemoan this shortfall but to applaud the Seine River School Division for doing something to turn this situation around for aboriginal students in Manitoba. Theirs is a model worth studying. Michael Borgfjord is the Seine River superintendent but he didn't start out that way. He began his career as a teacher in northern Manitoba where, he says, there were many days when he felt like the student, given how much the community was teaching him. " It humbled me living on a reserve for four years," he said. It allowed him to see the inequity northern students face on an ongoing basis. Borgfjord is clearly passionate about seeing aboriginal students succeed but he's more than that. He is a game changer in our community and he is already making a difference. " We need to raise the bar and set it high, by not only focusing on literacy but by tracking how our kids are doing and using those results to further improve what we do next," he said. Ah, the word that makes so many educators cringe - measure! Yet that's at the core of the Seine River program, turf where so few others dare to tread. Each year, the province of Manitoba offers grants to facilitate aboriginal academic achievement. While divisions are required to report on how their share of the $ 7.5- million province- wide budget is spent, Seine River has chosen to base its reporting on academic outcomes. As Borgfjord describes it, Seine River has integrated the use of its AAA grant into their wider assessment strategy - a measurable approach that ensures every single elementary student is assessed on literacy. Results are cross- correlated by age, grade level, gender0 and by aboriginal self- declaration. What the leadership team has learned so far is fascinating. Though they don't know all the reasons why, what they have found so far is aboriginal and non- aboriginal students perform roughly on par with each other until around Grade 4. After that, literacy rates - reading and writing - for aboriginal students begin to falter. In other words, not only did the Seine River leadership team spot the fissure leading to today's great divide, but they are doing something about it. With funds from the AAA grant, they hired literacy specialists to target students who were beginning to falter in Grades 5 and 6. Not the usual type of aboriginal targeting where those falling behind are tracked into " cultural teaching," but a high- standards push on addressing the core literacy challenges facing so many disadvantaged students in Canada today. Without question, aboriginal education is a difficult thing to define. To some, it is synonymous with special education, which means placing identified students into " high risk" groups. This harkens back to the streaming of ages ago when the mantra was aboriginal children could only learn with their hands and succeed in an environment of their peers. To others, aboriginal education means arts and craft. Getting students to colour medicine wheels or make dream catchers and often pulling them from core literacy classes - the ones they most need to succeed in mainstream Canada today. By focusing on literacy and giving students access to aboriginal content directly integrated with Manitoba essential learnings for social studies, and via the treaty education initiative, Michael Borgfjord and the leadership team at Seine River saw beyond the superficial approaches of medicine wheels to outcome- based learning. " In my opinion, we need to prepare all of our students for a post- secondary world which is why we have focussed on literacy," Borgfjord said. " Sometimes, all kids need is a push to excel to their full capabilities." Borgfjord is being modest because he and his leadership team are doing much more than that. In setting high expectations for aboriginal students, they're ensuring aboriginal students set those same high expectations for themselves. For this, they deserve far more than an A for effort. James Wilson is commissioner of the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba, a neutral body mandated to encourage discussion, facilitate public understanding, and enhance mutual respect between all peoples in Manitoba. B RANDON - In a city that has twice voted against a casino in the past decade, why would its city council be pushing ahead with plans for a casino? That's the question many Brandonites have been asking themselves following the announcement in mid- May the city has entered into a partnership with Tribal Councils Investment Group - a business organization representing almost all of Manitoba's First Nations - for the purpose of building a casino in Brandon. A strong casino supporter, Mayor Shari Decter Hirst refuses to call a third plebiscite on the issue. " We don't have plebiscites on whether Maple Leaf is coming to Brandon, or whether the Royal Bank should expand its facilities on 18th Street," she argues. " This is a business decision." Though Decter Hirst has assured Brandonites the casino issue would be dealt with at the council table, the casino partnership was announced without prior public discussion or vote by city council. It is not the only issue to be managed in such a murky manner by Brandon's elected representatives. Over the past several months, a number of important initiatives - including unbudgeted spending commitments totaling millions of dollars - have been announced by the city without any prior public discussion or vote at the council table. Each of those announcements raise serious questions about transparency, accountability and compliance with provincial laws relating to the manner in which municipal affairs are to be conducted. The casino partnership is the most troubling, however, because it defies the twice- spoken will of the public. Adding to that concern is a new downtown development plan adopted by council a few months ago which reduces the likelihood the casino issue will ever be discussed at a public council meeting. The new plan implicitly makes a casino a permitted use in the downtown's new " entertainment and shopping district," meaning no re- zoning application would be necessary for a casino to be constructed in that area. Not coincidentally, there is a large parcel of city- owned land in the area that will soon be available for development. As a matter of political tactics, the strategy earns high marks for expediency - it is a scheme that seeks to accomplish its objective by stealth, while minimizing public dissent. It loses far more marks, however, for its reckless shortsightedness. " They just don't seem to understand what ' No' is," says pastor John Reaves, a leader of the anticasino campaign in 2008. " Anyone that tries to force this, it's political suicide." Reaves is alluding to the fact the next municipal election is only two years away. Decter Hirst and the 10 councillors might be facing an angry electorate at a point in time when the casino can still be derailed by a new, anti- casino council. Another factor to consider is the casino plan must be endorsed by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs - something that is far from guaranteed. Indeed, Chief David Crate, the chair of the AMC gaming committee, told the Brandon Sun " This was not an election promise, or platform of Mayor Shari Decter Hirst. Now to state that ' the Brandon voters will not face a third casino plebiscite as it will now be a decision at the city council table' seems improper." What if Premier Greg Selinger is less willing to defy the plebiscite results and refuses to authorize the issuance of a casino licence for Brandon? He may not be prepared to risk Brandon East, the only NDP- held riding in Westman, on such an unpopular scheme. It is difficult to see how this gambit ends well for Brandon's mayor and council. They have taken a huge political risk, betting their political futures on a controversial scheme that seeks to deliver a result that voters have twice rejected. They might be the next thing Brandon voters reject. deverynrossletters@ gmail. com DEVERYN ROSS JAIMIE WILSON ' Cultural teaching' proves impediment to literacy Brandon voters ignored in drive for casino Frank Turner, Community Business Development manager with the Tribal Council Investment Group, Brandon Mayor Shari Decter Hirst and Allan McLeod, managing director and CEO of the TCIG, speak to reporters regarding a partnership between the City of Brandon and the investment group. Hydro inquiry required In January of this year, NDP MP Pat Martin sent a 950- word rant to the Winnipeg Free Press denouncing as a bad idea a plan to spend $ 100 million to refurbish the Arlington Street Bridge, charging the money would be better spent removing the CP rail yards, which the bridge spans. Who knows? Mr. Martin might have been right. Except that no one was talking about the Arlington Street Bridge, they were talking about the estimated cost of perhaps fixing the Louise Bridge far away over the Red River. Mr. Martin called to ask that the piece be withdrawn. " Wrong bridge," he said. It was classic Pat Martin, a. k. a. the mouth that roared, a man who never lets the facts get in the way of a sound bite. Mr. Martin's schtick no doubt has many fans, especially in the press corps, to which he unashamedly panders for reasons of self- promotion. But now, Mr. Martin finds himself named in a $ 5- million defamation suit for going robomouth over an Alberta robocall firm. He hopes to go cap in hand to raise $ 250,000 for his defence. The money is to be placed in a trust fund - donations, at least, will not be tax deductible, which would have been an insult to taxpayers of a different order than Mr. Martin's typical slurs. In the meantime, the prospect of there being consequences for loose talk has caused Mr. Martin to become, shall we say, circumspect. While no one wants to see MPs muzzled, there can be no doubt that his usual targets are relishing the schadenfreude of the moment. Robo- mouth, not A_ 12_ Jun- 28- 12_ FP_ 01. indd A12 6/ 27/ 12 11: 52: 11 PM ;