***UPDATE***
WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2007
EDITORIALS / PAGE A18
(On the left side of the paper)
Reasons goes on holiday
Writer ?
Premier Gary Doer jumped the gun by declaring that Manitoba would follow Saskatchewan’s lead and declare a February holiday.
The idea might have merit, it might be good for Manitobans and their economy – or not. Who knows? Certainly not Premier Doer who abandoned even a promised consultation process in a mad, election-year dash to get ahead of the parade – in particular the parade of leaders on the opposition side. In so doing he might have made some easy friends, but he outraged the business community, which rightly charges he acted in bad faith by breaking a promise to consult.
Study and consultation were the right things to do, the responsible things to do – the things that would have shown that Mr. Doer, better than holiday-happy Tory Leader Hugh Fadyen, appreciates the importance of business in a manufacturing province that is struggling to keep up. He could have honoured, as Liberal Leader Jon Gerrad has not, the pact business and labour reached to give significant time-off concessions to labour, but not a February holiday. He could have defended the integrity of the labour-business agreement from the understandable but capricious demands on Manitobans suffering through a cold snap. He could, as his government had promised 24 hours earlier, have began negotiations and allowed the holiday fever cool down as weather warmed up.
But the head of government for all Manitobans also is a leader of a political party. As such, Mr. Doer is frantically juggling possible election dates, desperately seeking the one most advantageous to continue to be premier despite a record of mediocrity on crucial files like the economic health of the province. The possibility that the most portentous date might come sooner than later obviously turned his head, as did the calculation that business would not be happy even talking about more holidays. So what did he have to lose by acting in bad faith other than his credibility?
And so Manitoba, which already depends on federal handouts to pay 37 per cent of it’s bills, a proportion that has increased steadily under Mr. Doer’s leadership, will get a holiday at a cost to the economy of perhaps $155 million – no one really knows, there was no time to work out the cost in the frenzy. Investors who might be looking at Manitoba despite its high taxes, its shrinking labour force, its Quixote policies and dependence, must now also consider a shorter work year and a government that will overnight sell business out for a few votes.
And so business gets shoddy treatment from Mr. Doer, but so, too, does every Manitoban who expects their premier to act responsibly, to look beyond the moment and to weigh more than his personal ambitions in deciding what’s best for a province that’s keeps slipping further and further back in the pack.
As premier, Mr. Doer remains a good, public-sector union negotiator – he leaves nothing on the table, even when cupboard is bare. Manitobans deserve better from their premier.
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WINNIPEG SUN
FEBRUARY 10, 2007
Screws can turn easier if an election looms
By TOM BRODBECK
Now that was a quick turnaround.
I told you Tuesday the Doer government would stand up sometime in the next 90 days and announce a new statutory holiday for Manitoba in February.
It was an easy prediction, knowing we're going into an election and that Premier Gary Doer's two main opponents -- Tory Leader Hugh McFadyen and Liberal boss Jon Gerrard -- were solidly behind the proposed holiday.
However, we didn't have to wait 90 days, or even 90 hours.
Two days after my prediction the Doer government confirmed the holiday.
And all of this is thanks to the folks at 92 CITI FM, who spearheaded the campaign and drove it to its logical conclusion.
Kudos to them.
The moral of the story is if you want something done at the government level, do it during the weeks and months leading up to an election and get the opposition parties on board first.
There's no time like election time to get politicians off their duffs.
If this were a year ago or even a year from now, it's doubtful we would be talking about a new holiday in February for Manitobans.
Chalk this one up to the power of the ballot box.
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Seems some New Democrats didn't like my reference to Gary Doer's lieutenants as "monkeys" this past week.
I wrote that Doer or one of his monkeys would announce a new stat holiday for Manitoba within the next 90 days.
Some folks thought that was a disrespectful way to refer to any elected official. They even want me to apologize.
Those same New Democrats may want to check the language of their own boss, Gary Doer, before they start calling the kettle black.
Doer referred to Hugh McFadyen as a "monkey" just last week at the NDP annual convention (I believe he also called Tories "knuckle-draggers," just for the name-calling record). Oops.
In fact, it's not the first time Doer has referred to elected officials as monkeys.
While he was opposition leader, he regularly referred to former premier Gary Filmon's cabinet ministers as monkeys.
After Filmon shuffled his cabinet, Doer would complain that Filmon is still the organ grinder and that he just shuffled his monkeys around. I was just stealing a line out of Doer's own playbook.
I'll make a deal with the aggrieved New Democrats out there. You get your boss Gary Doer to apologize to Filmon's former cabinet ministers and to McFadyen for calling them monkeys, and I'll apologize for calling Doer's lieutenants monkeys.
Deal?
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Downtown Winnipeg will be crawling with some 2,000 new Manitoba Hydro employees when the Crown corporation moves into its new digs on Portage Avenue sometime during the next year. It's going to be great for downtown.
But it won't come without a price for ratepayers.
Turns out, Manitobans are going to have to subsidize the cost of parking for these 2,000 employees to the tune of more than $1 million a year.
Hydro officials have confirmed each employee will be eligible for a new transportation subsidy of about $53 a month, or $636 a year.
They can put it toward their parking costs or use it to subsidize a bus pass.
That's a cost to ratepayers of nearly $1.3 million a year.
The deal is written in stone, too.
Hydro employees negotiated it into their collective agreement.
Can a similar deal for all other provincial government employees who work downtown -- including Manitoba Public Insurance staff -- be far behind?
By the way, I believe Hydro has filed for another rate increase this year.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by feepa
I'm still wondering where this SPP forum is. SSP is a wonderful place and all, but lets take a look at this SPP forum
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Everyone makes mistakes. No reason to be sarcastic it. Makes you look immature, since you clearly knew what I meant.
This is a thread about "Politics" not "Spelling" or "Grammer."
If you have things to say about the spelling errors, keep it to yourself. Thank you.
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That's just the way some people are around here.
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