Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - July 18, 2013, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A13 F LIN FLON - Where there's smoke, there's fire. But where there's a cottage blaze near Flin Flon, there won't be any municipal firefighters. As of July 1, the City of Flin Flon has stopped dispatching its firefighters to structural fires at the cottage subdivisions just beyond its borders. It's about fairness - and money. The city wanted each road- accessible cottager to chip in $ 300 a year, minimum, if Flin Flon was to continue battling fires outside its taxable jurisdiction. The cottagers - or at least the ones with whom city officials spoke - thought the price too high. And so the city- imposed deadline for a deal, Canada Day, came and went without any agreement. That leaves cottagers in a perilous position, despite the not- entirely- comforting assurances from Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship that it will respond to cabin fires " wherever possible." Conservation is trained and equipped more for forest and wildland fires than structural ones. And when responding to a structural fire, it says its firefighting efforts will be " limited to keeping a fire from spreading to nearby structures and forest." Some cottagers have taken to do- it- yourself fireprotection kits, complete with lake pumps, and there has been some talk of forming a cottage fire department as is the case at the Paint Lake subdivision outside Thompson. The worst- case scenario, unlikely as it may be, has become the elephant in the room: What if there's a major blaze requiring trained firefighters to enter a burning cottage to save lives? That could lead to unspeakable tragedy, not to mention emotionally charged finger- pointing after the fact. But the situation is far too complex to condense into black and white. For one, the North of 54 Cottage Owners Association, which represents area cabin owners, says it is not yet a legal entity and therefore can't sign fee agreements with anybody, including the city. Even if those cottage reps who turned down the fire fee had agreed to the city's terms, it's not at all clear how the new system would have been enforced, though there was some suggestion the province would be asked to step in. For another, cottagers may have a point when they argue Flin Flon's asking price of $ 300 per cabin is too steep. Ninety minutes to the southeast, the Town of The Pas has four separate fire protection agreements with surrounding cottagers, the costliest of which charges just $ 77 a cottage. For its part the City of Flin Flon felt it could no longer justify, in this time of budgetary anguish, its years- old practice of subsidizing fire protection for non- residents. Cottagers' insurance did not typically reimburse the city for the full cost of dousing a blaze, the city said, nor did it provide anything for the day- to- day operations of the fire department. The city said it also spent years trying to work something out with the provincial government on this file but got nowhere. Push inevitably came to shove. There are an estimated 400 cottages in the Flin Flon region, many of which are road- accessible and serve as luxurious year- round homes. The absence of a trained municipal fire department ready and willing to respond, even if it is 15 or 20 minutes away in Flin Flon, troubles people on both sides of this debate. The situation is unsustainable and dangerous. The city should never have filled the role of fire protection without ensuring its costs were covered. And the province, responsible for the Crown lands where cottagers live, should never have made cottagers rely on such a shaky system. Fortunately, there is still a chance we'll see an agreement. The province says it is interested in doing what it can. Many, perhaps most, cottagers still want a deal. And who knows, if need be the city may lower its asking price. Now that the city has put its foot down, I have a funny feeling a deal that was so elusive just a few weeks ago will materialize with haste. Jonathon Naylor is editor of The Reminder newspaper in Flin Flon. jonathon_ naylor@ hotmail. com 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Winnipeg Free Press Thursday, July 18, 2013 A 13 POLL �� TODAY'S QUESTION How many Fringe plays do you plan to attend? �� Vote online at winnipegfreepress. com �� PREVIOUS QUESTION Should the city give $ 10,000 to people who buy a new condo in the Exchange or along Waterfront Drive? YES 15% NO 85% TOTAL RESPONSES 4,010 Winnipeg Free Press est 1872 / Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 VOL 141 NO 242 2013 Winnipeg Free Press, a division of FP Canadian Newspapers Limited Partnership. Published seven days a week at 1355 Mountain Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba R2X 3B6, PH: 204- 697- 7000 BOB COX / Publisher PAUL SAMYN / Editor JULIE CARL / Deputy Editor D ECRIMINALIZING marijuana is the equivalent of opening the barn door wider after the horses all ran away to let out the last horse that decided to stay behind. As anyone in law enforcement will admit when they're out of uniform, the Canadian public made its decision about marijuana use decades ago and the law hasn't caught up yet. Many adults simply ignore the law and indulge in a puff or two at their personal discretion. More importantly, these adults and even the ones who don't smoke up from time to time don't see this activity as breaking the law. When a law has become that irrelevant to the lives of most of the adult population and when it's disregarded with open disdain, it's time to revisit the law. Residents will have 90 days to support or ignore an Elections B. C. petition starting on Sept. 9 that, if it gets signatures from 10 per cent of the registered voters in each electoral district, would ask the provincial government to consider passing the " sensible policing act." The suggested law would instruct police forces to stop enforcing the current laws regarding the simple possession of pot and to make the rules the same as for alcohol - it can't be consumed while driving, being stoned behind the wheel could cost you your licence, and it can't be used by minors or sold to them. If the petition passes the 10 per cent threshold, the provincial government would also be asked for the federal marijuana law to be repealed or for B. C. to get an exemption, which would then allow the province to tax and regulate its sale, just like it does for booze and regular smokes. If the petition fails, however, it won't be because people don't want pot decriminalized, it will be because most people already think the law is ludicrous and ignore it. In other words, what's the point of decriminalizing behaviour the majority of Canadian adults already finds acceptable? This also makes the findings of a new study linking pot use to increased cancer rates interesting but somewhat irrelevant. The study by Dr. Russ Callaghan and two Swedish researchers only looked at heavy marijuana use in adolescence and young adult males and how frequently cancer manifested itself over 40 years. Callaghan is the first to admit tobacco and alcohol demonstrably cause much greater physical harm. Furthermore, it would be difficult if not impossible to find a test population that only smoked pot and didn't also use some or a lot of tobacco and alcohol in the past or at present. Some of the variables could be factored into the results but they could be significant enough to skew the results. Every Canadian adult knows smoking and even being around tobacco smoke is hazardous to health and costs the economy billions in lost productivity and all taxpayers through health- care spending. Alcohol consumption is more socially acceptable than smoking now but alcohol also comes with health ramifications, particularly from heavy use over an extended period of time, as well as the obvious risk drunk drivers pose to public safety. Despite billions of reasons per year to outlaw smoking and alcohol use, the government does not because it would lose a major source of tax revenue and nobody would follow the law anyway. Canadian adults have already worked through this logic but the federal and provincial government still have not. At least decriminalization of marijuana possession and use would allow more direct government control over its sale and consumption, not to mention the tax income. The current system simply makes lawbreakers out of a significant portion of the adult population and gives organized crime most of the business proceeds. The horses are out of the barn and they're not going back in but maybe they can still be found in the field and saddled up. JONATHON NAYLOR OTHER OPINION The Prince George Citizen Petition will give B. C. opportunity to decriminalize pot Firefighting for cottages withdrawn W ITH every passing day, the notion Stephen Harper could pack it in before the next election and let someone else try to keep his fractious party whole enough to hang onto power in two years sounds less and less far- fetched. Only a few months ago speculation the prime minister would not seek a fourth mandate in 2015 was the stuff that rainy day columns were made of. When I discussed a summer book leave with my editors earlier this spring, we agreed I would come back to the column front early if circumstances warranted. Back then I thought I was setting the bar safely high when I used Harper's resignation as an example of a such a circumstance. I still expect this column to be the last one I write for the Star until Labour Day, but the topic of Harper's departure is no longer academic. Most successful leaders tend to overstay their welcome. Some go into one campaign too many. Others wait to see the lay of the land closer to a campaign before hastily saying goodbye, only to end up forcing their successor to face the music without much time to make an impression. A rare few manage to take everyone by surprise, leaving before they are widely seen as a spent political force. Lucien Bouchard is a recent example. In early 2001 the then- Quebec premier stunned everyone when he resigned at the midway point of his second mandate. In contrast with Harper's Conservatives, Bouchard's PQ government was still riding high in the polls. But the premier could see the writing on the wall. The party was growing increasingly restless over his inability to come up with the so- called winning conditions for another referendum on sovereignty. Quite a few p�quistes felt that, under his leadership, the PQ had betrayed its progressive ideals. Many rued his ironclad rule on the government. With his base demobilizing, Bouchard knew winning another mandate would be difficult, regardless of what the mid- mandate polls suggested. There are more similarities than differences between Bouchard and Harper's current predicament and regardless of the prime minister's actual intentions as to his future, his position has been deteriorating extraordinarily quickly this spring. During the past few weeks, serious but also eerily familiar cracks in the party have surfaced. In the wake of the abrupt replacement of the prime minister's chief of staff, issues that should be have resolved behind closed doors are playing out in public. Some of them have festered into unfixable crisis. The resignation from caucus of MP Brent Rathgeber falls in that category. But the malaise is not limited to the back rows of the government. Jim Flaherty, Harper's long- standing minister of finance, keeps insisting he loves politics and his job. He sounds like he was either publicly campaigning to keep his central role in the shuffle on Monday or scrambling to reassure a jittery corporate Canada the noise coming out of Ottawa is not that of a government spinning out of control. Peter MacKay, who remains the leading figure of the progressive wing of the party, has threatened to leave if the terms that he agreed on to bring the Tories under the same tent as the Canadian Alliance a decade ago are amended at a national convention. Jason Kenney - a key architect of Harper's majority victory but also a would- be aspirant to his succession - has been looking like an unhappy camper for all to see. If he is enthusiastic about the party's choice of a counter- offensive on the ethical and Senate front, he is hiding it well. Meanwhile, morale is low in Conservative ranks in both houses. Leaks are suddenly bringing sensitive internal party information to the surface. Harper may still be in full control of his PMO but it is less and less in control of the government and the political agenda. Unless that changes quickly, the prime minister will not remain the sole master of his political destiny for much longer. Chantal H�bert is national affairs columnist for the Toronto Star. M ONDAY'S federal cabinet shuffle saw the departure of one of the longest- serving immigration ministers in recent history. Since 2008, Jason Kenney has been the face of Citizenship and Immigration Canada. During that time, he has ushered in fundamental changes to Canada's immigration system and changed the immigration system to one that was focused on family reunification and individual immigrants to one that is now more employer- driven and enforcement- minded. The winners from the Jason Kenney era are employers and law- abiding immigrants. The losers include families with relatives abroad and provincial immigration programs. The biggest shift in Kenney's immigration policy was the virtual elimination of immigration categories allowing foreigners to immigrate here without a Canadian job or job offer. Before Kenney became immigration minister, most immigrants came to Canada on the basis of their foreign education and work credentials. While many succeeded in finding jobs, too many came here to find themselves unemployed and their foreign professional or trade credentials given little or no value. Today, employers choose immigrants. Almost all of today's skilled- worker immigration programs now require foreigners to have Canadian job offers or work experience. As a result, most immigrants now come to Canada with jobs. This focus on employer- driven immigration has resulted in a record number of temporary foreign workers entering Canada. Many of these workers come to Canada and apply for permanent residency while working here. While this is a good way to build up a skilled domestic workforce, there have been consequences. In 2012, Kenney announced Canada would unilaterally terminate immigration applications filed under the old skilled- worker program without assessing them. To foreigners who had applied to come to Canada in good faith and put their lives on hold waiting for Canada's response, this represented a betrayal. As well, the influx of temporary foreign workers has given rise to accusations some business have been using this program to drive down wages or eliminate jobs for Canadians altogether. The success in managing this program has been mixed. In April, the government climbed down from policies it had enacted in 2012 that allowed certain employers to fast- track temporary foreign workers and pay these workers less than the median wages paid to Canadians. Clearly, these changes were ill- conceived. If not, they would not have been repealed. While employers and workers have been the big winners in the Jason Kenney era, these changes have created losers. In 2011, Kenney froze the ability of Canadians to sponsor their parents and grandparents to Canada. When this system reopens in 2014, Canadian sponsors will face stricter financial criteria and a cap on the total number of applications that Canada will accept. Many Canadians who were eligible to bring their parents and grandparents to Canada in 2011 will not meet the new criteria. Other losers from the Kenney era are the provinces. Before Kenney, provincial nominee programs were expanding and the decisions on who would be the best immigrants for a province were mainly made at the provincial level. Under Kenney's watch, a number of policies have made it tougher for families to reunite using provincial nominee programs. Kenney's requirement that immigrants have a minimum amount of savings in the bank and his implementation of mandatory language testing for certain immigrants have made it tougher for some people to immigrate to Manitoba. This being said, it is tough to argue immigrants coming to this country should have some savings in the bank and should be able to communicate in English or French. Kenney's announcement last year cancelling the federal government's settlement agreement with Manitoba has also affected Manitoba. This settlement agreement gave Manitoba federal money to focus on made- in- Manitoba programs to help settle immigrants to this province. While most of this money is still being spent in Manitoba by the federal government, a casualty of the cancellation of this agreement was the closing of Manitoba's nominee application centre, which helped people in Manitoba complete immigration applications free of charge. In terms of enforcement, Jason Kenney has led the charge to deport criminals from Canada faster and to stamp out marriage fraud - marriages used by foreigners not for love but to enter Canada. On the marriage- fraud front, the goal to stamp out marriage fraud is laudable. However, some of the new laws brought into force may keep legitimate spouses out of Canada. Regarding changes to the law to make it easier to deport criminals from Canada, these changes are good. After all, if these people want to stay in Canada, there is an easy solution for them - don't commit crimes. R. Reis Pagtakhan is a Winnipeg immigration lawyer. CHANTAL H�BERT REIS PAGTAKHAN A Harper departure less far- fetched Kenney's winners and losers THE CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES Jason Kenney has been the face of immigration in Canada for five years. A_ 13_ Jul- 18- 13_ FP_ 01. indd A13 7/ 17/ 13 8: 32: 34 PM ;