Category: opinion (Page 3 of 4)

Is there a plan?

16 March 2014 / Sean

The Daly Overpass isn’t getting overhauled this year, or next year most likely. The province announced on Thursday that the First Street Bridge is in dire shape and work on it will need to be completed before any work on the Daly over on Eighteenth Street gets looked at.

In Saturday’s Brandon Sun (March 15, 2014) the editorial questioning who knew what about the bridge, and when, is a good read. Whether or not there was some political gamesmanship is not the main point of this post, however the question does come to mind.

To me, it appears that the province is buying time on Daly because they are having a hard time getting a plan together. First clue? They still say the bridge needs widening. My feeling is that the people saying that have not actually looked at the bridge. So, let’s take a look.

Through the magic of what is Google Street View we can all look at the underside of said bridge. This picture is from Stickney Avenue looking south towards the “duck plant” building at the corner of Pacific and 18th. That my friends is a bridge that has already been widened. See those steel supports all the way along the left side? Those are holding up the sidewalk that is hanging off the eastern side of the bridge separated from the roadway by Jersey Barriers. That sidewalk is beyond the concrete supports that actually hold up the bridge. I’m no structural engineer, but my guess would be that those supports are at or near their design capacity while still supporting traffic.

My guess is that the province needs time to get a plan in order. A plan that requires expropriating land and demolishing a very large building. I cannot see how they avoid building another bridge beside the existing structure. To do that, they have to knock down the “duck plant” building and force the homeowners at Stickney Ave to move out. This is not going to be an easy task. Eighteenth Street northbound will have to be curved slightly east to meet a new bridge which means cutting through the mini mall parking lot at the corner of Pacific and 18th.

I frankly hope that I am wrong, but to the layperson widening this bridge does not seem possible; twinning will have to happen. I’d love to see someone investigate this further.

In the meantime, with no action on the Daly Overpass anytime soon, perhaps the city should apply for federal funding to help connect Hilton Avenue to 26th Street and send some traffic west, as mentioned in a previous post, “Is the Daly Overpass the Problem?”

Strange bedfellows

22 February 2014 / Sean

To an outsider, the Manitoba New Democratic Party would appear a strange beast. Unlike their federal counterparts, Manitoba’s NDP has actually governed for a large amount of time. The federal party has never held power.

So it comes as no surprise that the provincial party has a more pragmatic approach to governing, and leans more centrist than its federal cousin. This could really be seen during the years of Premier Gary Doer who often made decisions that appeared to be more in tune with federal Liberals or even Conservatives than the NDP. The Selinger government has moved back closer to the left, but some things still perplex me.

A case in point is the Manitoba NDP approach to crime. It is understandable to a point for when they came into power, Winnipeg had some crime problems that had to be looked after. Car theft and murder capital are not good titles to hold.

This brings us to last week. The Winnipeg Free Press reported that Andrew Swan, Manitoba Justice Minister, had urged the federal government to use the Nordic Model when it comes to the sex trade in Canada. It seems that the Manitoba party of the left is going down the road in lockstep with the federal party of the right.

I have voiced my opinion on this matter in two previous posts about federal Minister Peter MacKay and WInnipeg MP Joy Smith.

So now the provincial NDP are weighing in and it seems that they also fail to see what the Supreme Court was trying to say. The short version of the Court’s decision was that you could regulate but not outright ban the practice of sex work in Canada. To me at least, it appeared that they said that any outright ban on prostitution would fail when challenged in the Court.

“It should make any purchase of sex illegal, period. But we should decriminalize the victims of sexual exploitation, ” Swan was quoted as saying in the Free Press.

Now I do understand how this fits in with the NDP’s outlook that everyone should be allowed a certain amount of dignity in their life regardless of their economic abilities and that the poor and disadvantaged among us must not be allowed to be mistreated or victimized by others in our society. I share this outlook on life, and I do believe that people should be afforded dignity by their fellow citizens and by their government.

This is where the argument breaks down. How can you claim to be honouring a person’s dignity and then tell them that their personal decision to do what they choose with their body is not acceptable? You cannot give someone the right to determine their own future and then take choices away. Consenting adults have the right to make choices for and about themselves. As per Swan’s comment, yes we should decriminalize the victims of sexual exploitation, no one would think that’s a bad idea. His comment is actually meant to infer that all sex workers are victims of sexual exploitation. While many sex workers are victims, some are not, and lumping everyone together is disingenuous.

Again, from the Free Press article:

Swan said crafting a fair prostitution law is complex, but targeting demand will decrease the number of sex-trade workers who are murdered or go missing. And it will reduce the levels of coercion many young women face from pimps and sex traffickers.

This is where the proponents of the “Nordic Model” lose me. To recap, the Nordic idea is to target the customers, the johns, of the sex trade and make it illegal to pay for sexual services, but not to receive payment. This decriminalizes the sex worker but keeps the customer criminalized. The idea behind it is to reduce prostitution by drying up the demand. This does not make sense. It is already illegal to pay for sex and people still do it. The customer is already taking that risk today, decriminalizing the sex worker will not change demand.

I also do not understand why targeting demand will necessarily reduce the number of sex workers who are murdered or go missing. I do not believe that everyone who wants to pay for sex is a murderer. My feeling is that to lessen the number of prostitutes that go missing or get murdered is to have a place for them to work that would be safer. A legal brothel in my mind would be a much safer environment than the back alleys and cars that the illegal johns would still be hiding in. If parts of the industry remain illegal, then pimps and sex traffickers retain their power of coercion over their victims.

The only safer environment is a regulated legal environment.

I understand what is going on here. The NDP has traditionally been the party that most defends the rights of minorities, women, and the poor. Therefore, on the surface this seems to be the right position. Sex workers, mostly women, are often victims of sexual abuse, coercion, and outright violence up to and including rape and murder. I don’t pretend for a minute that this doesn’t happen.

Where I start to think differently is what the reasons are for the problems that women, and some men, in the sex trade face. To me a huge part of the problem is that society as a whole has a real problem with talking about and acknowledging sex. Slut shaming is almost like a national sport in much of our society. Who one has sex with, in or out of marriage, seems to be the concern of a lot of people who really shouldn’t be concerned about it at all. People assume that their attitude and feelings on the subject should be shared by everyone. There is a big ick factor when it comes to the sexual practices of others.

This is where things become illogical.

I consider myself a feminist. I believe in the equality of women, and that is how I lead my life and my personal relationships. I abhor anyone, male or female, who would put women in a secondary class or role to that of men. I don’t stand for it.

So it confuses me when people, many who claim to be staunch feminists, discount the choices of their fellow citizens who choose to do sex work. If an adult woman chooses to have sex with someone for money, without threats of violence or coercion, I find it completely disrespectful to tell her that she cannot do that to which she chooses. It is her body, her choice.

Our job as a society is to make it so that it is not her only choice. Someone can only make a choice freely when they see that it is not the only option. To do otherwise would mean that you were a victim of coercion. That is what is not acceptable, to not allow other choices. As a society we need to stop furthering policies that drive citizens into making desperate choices in the first place. All of that being said, if someone makes the choice to work in the sex industry, it is their choice and theirs alone. I am not going to pretend that I have the moral authority to tell them otherwise.

The other thing we need to do as a society is stop marginalizing those that would participate in a legal sex work system. That is really the crux of this. When it comes down to it, this is our society’s ever present practice of slut shaming. Large parts of our society see sex workers, present and past, as somehow broken people. Perhaps many are, but I’m not the judge of that. It is not my place to pass judgement on other consenting adults doing what they decide to do.

My feeling is that sex work is more dangerous because society would rather not accept that sex workers are people too. If we could accept that they are people who need protections from traffickers and murderers, then we would go after traffickers and murderers instead of pushing the industry to the fringes of our society.

But targeting traffickers and murderers directly would actually make sense.

As an aside, the Federal Government did actually start a Public Consultation on this issue from February 17 to March 17 on the Justice Department website.

http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cons/curr-cours/proscons-conspros/index.html

Fat Tax / Skinny Credit

21 February 2014 / Sean

The Government of Manitoba recently explored the idea of a “fat tax” for Manitoba, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

It seems that there is dubious evidence about whether a fat tax works or not. My guess is that it probably doesn’t, as even with the tax, many of the junk food items are most likely still cheaper than the items that people should be eating.

While thinking about this topic, it occurred to me that other factors besides a tax would affect what people would buy. The most likely culprits when it comes to making unhealthy food choices is that healthy foods are often more expensive to source and store for the retailer. Many processed foods also have the backing of large corporations and their marketing department. Retailers make more money on junk food, so the retailer promotes it.

So it occurs to me that it is the retailer that we as a society need to find a way to change. If you change the behaviour of the retailer toward featuring, promoting, and selling more healthy choices. If the retailer promotes more healthy foods, or makes more of them available, or even has them at lower prices, then chances are that the consumer ends up buying more healthy food choices.

So how do you do that?

My thought is that you do introduce a “junk food tax” but it applies to the retailer and the total amount of junk food that they sell. However, that alone would not do it, because prices would just raise across the board to cover the tax. What you do is also introduce a “healthy food tax credit” to the retailer. Essentially, you tax the bad stuff, and reward the good. The customer never sees the tax.

I don’t know how it would work, but if it gives stores like 7-Eleven a reason to promote healthier choices to its customers, I’d like to look at it.

Tense drive to the Tim Horton’s

13 February 2014 / Sean

We went to Elie on Tuesday.

It was supposed to be a trip to Winnipeg for an appointment that my spouse had made. Normally we would not travel on such a snowy day, but the appointment was important enough that we wanted to try to make it, and the roads were at the point where the trip looked reasonable for an experienced winter driver. The roads in Brandon by the time we left were okay and visibility was a few kilometers, the storm was to move further east ahead of us.

Well, things didn’t go quite as well as we had hoped, and by the time that we were halfway between Portage la Prairie and Elie we were basically in whiteout conditions. You could see about 90 metres in front of the car.

It was a little dicey, but the highway itself was still drivable, you just had to travel at a speed that matched conditions. By my own reckoning, that speed would have been about 60 to 70 kilometres per hour.

And no one was doing that.

So, here we are, our little Nissan Versa, hurtling down the highway at 8o km/h. I would have rather been going 65, but because of the other drivers on the highway, that didn’t seem safe either. I was confident in my ability to stay on the road and in the grip that my winter tires had on it, what was making my knuckles white was my nervous grip on the steering wheel while hoping that one of the idiots driving down the highway at 110 km/h in whiteout conditions was not going to rear-end us.

That is why I kept going 80… I shouldn’t have had to.

I just do not understand what people do not get about the concept of driving to the conditions. Nobody was. Not one other vehicle was travelling slower than us, we got passed by multiple vehicles.

And now we want to raise the speed limit on that highway to 110 km/h. Now, I’m not necessarily opposed to this. In fact, in the summer during optimal driving conditions I’d probably be fine with 115. Since most people I know go above the speed limit anyway, and the common speed on the Trans-Canada is about 110, I’m totally aware that the common speed on the route will become about 120. I’m okay with that, in the summer.

So, my suggestion would be that we do raise the speed limit on the highway to 110 during the summer, when it is safe to do so. However, keep the speed at 100 during the winter. Since we haven’t changed the signs to 110 yet, now is the time to consider this way of establishing the speed limit. Add a sign above the current 100 that says WINTER (NOV to MAR) and then attach the new signs to the side that say SUMMER (APR to OCT). Since we were going to have to create new signs anyway, the extra cost of this should be minimal.

Apparently drivers cannot regulate themselves to drive slower in the winter, so it seems to me the only safe thing to do would be keep the highway at 100 km/h, at least during those months. Sure, people would still overdrive conditions, but giving them even more rope to hang themselves with seems crazy.

Oh well, on the bright side, the Elie Timmies is open.

Failing grade for Conservative MP

4 February 2014 / Sean

As a former school teacher, I expect more from Joy Smith, M.P., so I’m giving her an “F” on her latest self imposed assignment, a letter to Amnesty International (AI) on their recently leaked proposed policy document on legalized prostitution.

It is obvious to me that she didn’t read the document, or that she has very poor reading comprehension skills, as her letter posted on the Huffington Post website completely misrepresents what Amnesty International is (allegedly) trying to say.

I have to give her credit though. If not for her opposition to it, I would have never read Amnesty’s policy document, which is a well thought out and researched statement. It balances the rights of consenting adults to participate in activities that involve nobody else while still advocating that the state has a place to make sure that everyone involved is doing so of their own free will, without “coercion, threats, or violence”.

In Smith’s first sentence she goes off the rails, “I am writing to urge Amnesty International to reconsider its policy position, leaked to the public, which promotes the legalization of prostitution and the rights of pimps over the rights of victims of sexual exploitation.” The emphasis is mine, but it shows that she has not read the document. The entire point of AI’s position is to advocate for those who willingly choose sex work. They do not once advocate for pimps. The closest I can see is where they touch on laws like Canada’s “living on the avails” recently struck down by the Supreme Court.

The blanket criminalization of the clients of sex work, or of support functions such as
body guards and receptionists, has also proven to drive those engaged in sex work
underground, increasing the risk of violence and abuse. Where aspects of sex work
remain criminal, those engaging in sex work are less inclined to seek both routine care
and urgent protection. Moreover, the criminalization of “living off the proceeds of
prostitution,” while perhaps intended to cover those who exploit sex workers, has
been shown to apply to both help-functions (guards, receptionists, landlords), as well
as roommates, family, and even children.

This section is obviously aimed at the sex worker’s ability to procure safer work conditions for herself and the legal ramifications for those that may share any accommodation with her. It is not meant to be a defense of the coercion, threats, and violence of pimps, the entire document in fact seems to be about getting rid of the conditions that would enable pimps to flourish.

Ms. Smith goes on further to claim that AI’s position on individuals with disabilities is “highly offensive and degrading”” to the disabled community”. Here is the alleged offensive section.

Along similar lines, men and women who buy sex from consenting adults are also
exercising personal autonomy. For some—in particular persons with mobility or
sensory disabilities or those with psycho-social disabilities that hamper social
interactions—sex workers are persons with whom they feel safe enough to have a
physical relationship or to express their sexuality. Some develop a stronger sense of
self in their relationships with sex workers, improving their life enjoyment and
dignity. At a very basic level, expressions of sexuality and sex are a primary
component of the human experience, which is directly linked to individuals’ physical
and mental health. The state’s interference with an adult’s strategy to have sex with
another consenting adult is, therefore, a deliberate interference with those individuals’
autonomy and health.

Apparently Ms. Smith cannot face the reality that some disabled people, while having very real sexual needs, may not be able to find someone through typical avenues that may be able to help them fulfill those needs. It is a fact that in our society sex is not always an equal opportunity experience, and that some individuals may not have the same access to fulfilling their own natural sexual needs. Who am I to deny someone the fulfilling of their reasonable sexual desires with another consenting adult, just because that act may require an exchange of currency or other favours. It is in fact Ms. Smith who is highly offensive and degrading to those with disabilities as she somehow thinks that she is in the position to make their personal sexual choices for them.

Joy, it is none of your damn business.

As for her contention that Amnesty is abandoning victims, she again goes off on a tangent. She starts talking about under-age victims of the sex-trade. Repeatedly Amnesty International states that their policy is about consenting adults.

Amnesty International considers children involved in commercial sex acts to be
victims of sexual exploitation, entitled to support, reparations, and remedies, in line
with international human rights law. States must take all appropriate measures to
prevent violence and exploitation of children. The best interests of the child should, in
all cases, be a primary consideration and the state should preserve the right of the
child to be heard and to have his or her views given due weight in accordance with
their age and maturity.

They repeat this position multiple times throughout the document. Amnesty International is against the exploitation of children, there is no doubt about this. Ms. Smith’s blatant dishonesty about this fact is disappointing.

Even in her closing argument, Smith refers to a study that shows correlation between legalizing sex work and human trafficking. Even the authors of said study state in their conclusion the following:

However, such a line of argumentation overlooks potential benefits that the legalization of prostitution might have on those employed in the industry. Working conditions could be substantially improved for prostitutes—at least those legally employed—if prostitution is legalized. Prohibiting prostitution also raises tricky “freedom of choice” issues concerning both the potential suppliers and clients of prostitution services. A full evaluation of the costs and benefits, as well as of the broader merits of prohibiting prostitution, is beyond the scope of the present article.

I do not have any problem with the fact that Ms. Smith has an opinion that is opposed to legalizing prostitution in Canada, she has the right to an opinion. My problem is with the fact that she misrepresents the position of those who disagree with her. As she is a former science teacher, her inability to grasp the statements and facts in relation to this topic flabbergasts me. She has been given the tools to interpret what she is reading, yet fails to.

Fine, she doesn’t like prostitution, but that doesn’t mean that it should be illegal. Yes, we should have controls on sex work so that it can be practiced safely and legitimately in Canada, and Amnesty International said as much.

It is obvious that the Conservative Government of Joy Smith and Peter MacKay is about to foist on us a new prostitution law based on the “Nordic Model”, which aims to protect sex workers by criminalizing their customers. It does not take a brain surgeon to realize the inherent problem with this plan. Because the customers are criminalized, the sex worker must then go to the places where the customers are. This puts her right back in the dangerous conditions that the Amnesty document and the Supreme Court of Canada decision were trying to rectify. Any rational person will see after some thought that such an approach will end up back at the SCoC where it will again be struck down. The Court’s decision made it clear, at least to me, that reasonable laws that respected the sex worker’s right to ply his or her trade would be acceptable, but that those which put unreasonable limitations on their ability to earn a living would be struck down. This is not very difficult to understand.

Perhaps Amnesty’s opening paragraph puts it best:

Amnesty International is opposed to the criminalization or punishment of activities
related to the buying or selling of consensual sex between adults. Amnesty
International believes that seeking, buying, selling and soliciting paid sex are acts
protected from state interference as long as there is no coercion, threats or violence
associated with those acts. Legitimate restrictions may be imposed on the practice of
sex work if they comply with international human rights law (i.e., they are for a
legitimate purpose, appropriate to meet that purpose, proportionate and nondiscriminatory).

…We believe that a policy based on human right principles that values
the input and experiences of sex workers is the most likely to ensure that no one
enters or stays in sex work involuntary.

If Peter MacKay and Joy Smith could craft a law that would meet that statement, we would have something that would stand up to the Charter, therefore surviving legal challenge, and would respect the rights of all Canadians.

Peter MacKay’s potentially wasted opportunity

26 January 2014 / Sean

Sometimes you just see something coming. You see the potential for the best possible outcome, but somehow you know that the worst or something close to it is on its way.

This is the case with the current situation on Canada’s prostitution laws. Peter MacKay needs to draft new prostitution laws by next December, and it appears that he is just going to make it worse. This is all of a sudden an issue because the Supreme Court of Canada struck down large parts of Canada’s current prostitution laws back on December 20, 2013.

The three parts of the law struck down were:

Keeping a Common Bawdy-House
Living on the Avails of Prostitution
Communicating in a Public Place

Now, I’m no lawyer, and I will admit that the over 80 page decision was not closely read by me. However, I do understand that the crux of the SCoC’s ruling was that the three struck down areas were struck because they interfered with the “security of the person” guarantees of the Charter.

“The prohibitions at issue do not merely impose conditions on how prostitutes operate. They go a critical step further, by imposing dangerous conditions on prostitution; they prevent people engaged in a risky — but legal — activity from taking steps to protect themselves from the risks.”

It really isn’t that difficult of a concept. The Court basically said this: prostitution is not illegal in Canada, therefore passing laws that make it impossible to practice a legal profession fall outside the accepted provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Court deferred its decision for a year to allow Parliament to pass new laws to regulate prostitution. It was pretty obvious to me that by “regulate” the Court meant things such as where and when prostitution could be practiced. Passing an outright ban of any kind is obviously something that would go against the spirit of the decision made public on December 20.

So, where is MacKay on all of this? He has mused the last few days that the government is not looking at provisions against prostitutes; they will now concentrate on laws that target johns and pimps.

Targeting pimps I have no problem with. These reprehensible individuals are the lowest of the low in society and in practice serve no purpose whatsoever, other than to themselves. Theoretically they are there for protection but often end up being one of the most dangerous parts of the whole enterprise.

Johns? This brings us right back to where we started. If you target johns, then prostitution will still be driven into the back alleys and underground where it currently is, and which the court clearly said is a situation which causes a prostitute to have to ply her trade in more dangerous conditions. Sure, you can make the brothel, the security guard, and the communication all legal, but if the customer gets arrested on his way onto the premises, then he won’t come to the legal premises. Prostitution will again be driven into the same dangerous underground areas that the Supreme Court said were unconstitutional because it forces prostitutes to work in more dangerous conditions because of the law.

Pass a law that makes being a john illegal, and we’ll be right back at the Supreme Court in a few years. It’s just a stupid thing to do, and by all accounts it looks like Peter MacKay is about to do it.

I think the part of this that annoys me the most is that a Conservative government could possibly be the architects of a really good law. They take the actual harms that surround prostitution very seriously. If they could actually just take the SCoC’s decision to heart and really understand it, they could craft a well thought out law.

But no, the official Tory stance seems to be, all prostitution is bad and icky. Peter MacKay said, “We believe that prostitution is intrinsically degrading and harmful to vulnerable persons, especially women and we intend to protect women and protect society generally from exploitation and abuse.” He didn’t say that that it is often degrading and harmful, or even mostly. He said intrinsically, at its core, prostitution is always harmful.

Look, I’m not going to argue that prostitution is some grand enterprise that should be honoured. I’m not going to pretend that vulnerable people, many vulnerable people, are not involved. What doesn’t help is marginalizing them even more. It also doesn’t help when all forms of prostitution are lumped together. Every time this topic comes up, someone points to child prostitution, as if we do not have laws on the books that already make it illegal to have sex with a minor child or teenager. The legalization of prostitution would not change this.

In fact, it has been my belief for years that if you stopped criminalizing the behaviour of what goes on between consenting adults, then you would have more resources to go after those who would prey on children and teenagers. They would also be easier to identify as they would be the only ones looking for sex outside the accepted legal channels. Equating consenting adults to those who would have sex with minors is essentially guilt by association; the two issues actually have nothing to do with each other.

It really comes down to the rights of consenting adults to do what they want with their own bodies and their own money. If you want to help vulnerable persons, make sure that their only economic option is not prostitution. Create a society that lifts vulnerable people out of their circumstances and make sure that no one turns to prostitution as a last resort. Fact is, some people who are involved in the sex industry are there of their own volition and have decided that for them it is a way to make money. I find it ironic that we wring our hands about this transaction between two consenting adults, but add a third person and a camera crew paying both participants and you have a perfectly legal transaction.

I guess the porn industry has better lobbyists than the prostitution industry.

To Peter MacKay: if you are actually really concerned about the livelihoods of our most vulnerable citizens, then adopt policies that make them less vulnerable, so that prostitution is not seen as their only option. Prostitution should be no one’s only option, but if they choose it as an option, I am not the moral judge to tell them different.

Mr. MacKay needs to actually understand what the Court has said. So far he has not.

Got out the stopwatch…

21 January 2014 / Sean

Today I decided to get accurate figures on the time saved by the 8th Street Bridge.

With my spouse driving, we started at the “top” of the bridge on Pacific Avenue. Our route was west on Pacific until we reached 18th Street, north onto the bridge, east onto Maple, south on 17th St N, and then east on Stickney Avenue to the northern foot of the bridge. Our return trip was west on Stickney, north on 19th St N, east on Maple, south onto 18th Street, over the bridge, right on to the Pacific loop that goes under the bridge, and finally east on Pacific to the top of the bridge again.

Today’s weather was less than ideal, with light flurries and somewhat icy streets. At no time did she get over 40km/h during the trip. Being around 11:20 AM it was also getting somewhat busy.

Our trip north took us about 4 minutes and 10 seconds. Our trip south took us about 5 minutes and 30 seconds. I’m fairly sure that under better weather conditions, that this trip would have been much closer to the 3 minute mark. Also, less traffic on the Daly Overpass would have sped us up on the return trip. The only way you get less traffic on the Daly Overpass going south is if you move the traffic elsewhere, since we already have two southbound lanes. This supports my argument of paying more attention to the west side of the city.

Later, in the spring, I am going to drive the route again to see what we get.

Regardless, even if it took as much as 6 minutes to get around, the time savings is not worth upwards of $34,000,000.

Do you think that the taxpayers of Winnipeg or Vancouver would find it fiscally responsible to spend this many millions to save maybe 200 people a 5 minute commute?

I think not.

Over a year later…

31 December 2013 / Sean

The Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a year ago on December 14th.

I will agree with the crazy people. They are right, guns don’t kill people, people kill people; people who shouldn’t have guns kill people… with guns.

Why are the people who say that people are the ones that kill other people so against background checks? If you can’t do background checks EVERY TIME, how do you know which people to deny guns.

In Canada we seem to have figured this out. We have just as much gun ownership, but it takes up to six months to get a gun, and you have to prove that you are responsible enough to have one. We treat guns like cars… you need to prove proficiency before getting one.

Do we still have incidents? From time to time, but at nowhere near the rate of our southern neighbours. If I had to guess, most illegal guns involved in these incidents we do have come from south of the border, so the failure of one system is affecting the other.

Sandy Hook Elementary School no longer exists. Neither do 26 people who went there every day. They’re gone, and as far as I know, not in a better place. Their precious lives snuffed out because some gun owners, a small amount of gun owners, feel that a background check would go against their right to own a weapon.

What about the 20 kids that are dead? What about their rights?

All that is left there is destruction. No school, it’s demolished. Twenty children, six personnel gone. Countless families destroyed emotionally.

A year later it flabbergasts me how there has been little to no movement on this. I cannot understand how, with over 80% support for tougher gun laws, that the NRA has actually convinced most states to make gun laws less tough. That the legislators in Washington cannot see past the NRA bullshit to enact real gun controls, reasonable gun controls is beyond me.

I cannot believe that 20 dead 1st graders, horribly torn down by someone using a gun still has not forced the lawmakers to take off their blinders.

It’s insane.

Tomorrow I vote in a broken system

24 November 2013 / Sean

First Past the Post sucks. Sure, that statement may not be too eloquent, but it does sum up the current situation nicely.

In Canada, First Past the Post refers to a system where the person with the top number of votes in a field of candidates wins a simple plurality. Simply put, in a five candidate race, if four people have 100 votes each, and the fifth has 101 votes, the candidate with 101 votes wins the election, despite statistically having no significant lead at all, and having had been outvoted 400 to 101.

It’s a bad system, we need to change it.

Now people have differing ideas as to what can be done to fix this glaring problem with our system. There is constantly floated the idea of proportional representation (PR), where the percentage of the votes given to each party help determine the make up of a legislative house. While I see the desirability of such a system, the Greens would have more than 1 MP for example, I cannot get past the fact that there would be people in that house that could never win an election on their own, but because they were on a party list somewhere. Unless carefully done, the thing opens itself up to cronyism. Since cronyism is currently part of how our senate is appointed, by the Prime Minister, maybe PR could be part of senate reform.

As for the House of Commons, which is what we are voting for tomorrow in Brandon-Souris, Provencher, Bourassa, and Toronto Centre, my feeling is that we need to go to a preferential ballot system. Basically, move the post. Nobody wins the election until someone gets 50% of the votes plus 1 more vote. My favourite is an instant-runoff voting system.

Basically an instant-runoff ballot would look the same as an existing ballot, but instead of putting an “X” by your choice, you number them in order of preference (see Wikipedia* picture to the left). Basically you get to vote your conscience, even if your preferred candidate has no chance of actually winning, yet you also get a strategic vote, because your second, and third (4th, 5th, etc) are also recorded.

So, let’s look at how this affects the real world. Here in Brandon-Souris we have a five person race happening; Larry Maguire for the Conservatives, Rolf Dinsdale for the Liberals, Frank Godon for Libertarian, Cory Szczepanski for the NDP, and David Neufeld for the Green Party.

Now, as of today it looks like Dinsdale has 50% of the vote. If that is true and he was the first choice of 50% + 1 voters, then he would be the winner, election over. But let’s say for a moment that the race is 46% Maguire, 44% for Dinsdale, 7% Szczepanski , 2% Neufeld, and 1% Godon. In our current system, Maguire wins. Hey, 46% is a good number and we routinely elect entire governments on less than 40% of the vote and then comically call it a landslide victory. Now, for ease of numbers, lets say that all of Godon’s voters pick Maguire as their second choice. Another round is counted, and now we have 47% for Maguire, with the other three staying the same.

Third round. Neufelds voters all picked Szczepanski as their second choice. Now we have Maguire 47%, Dinsdale 44%, Szczepanski 9%. Maguire still has not broken the barrier of 50% +1. Fourth round. Again, for easy numbers, all of Neufeld’s voters picked Dinsdale as their third choice, and all of Szczepanski’s voters picked Dinsdale as their second choice. In this final round the results become Dinsdale 53%, Maguire 47%.

Dinsdale wins.

Now, some will argue that it is unfair to Maguire because he originally had more votes than Dinsdale. Yes, that is a valid point. But it is also a valid point that with the choice of only Maguire and Dinsdale, more people prefer Dinsdale. What it in essence does is it forces candidates to appeal to more than their base to win an election. Sure, your base can get you a good part of the way their, but you need to broaden your appeal to actually get elected.

The other advantage of this system is that I think it is the easiest to implement. It requires the least change to our electoral system, and it has the least probability of needing a constitutional amendment to enact it.

This present system has produced huge “landslides” for the (Progressive) Conservatives and the Liberals while actually getting less than half of the population actually voting for them. It needs to end.

*graphic from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Preferential_ballot.svg

Where the Great Plains Begin

19 November 2013 / Sean

It is probably obvious that the name of this blog is in some way related to the Tragically Hip song “At The Hundredth Meridian”, but it is also a reference to where Brandon, Manitoba lies on the map.

So, why did I hone in on this? It actually goes back a few years. I was sitting in the car waiting for my wife to finish an errand that she was doing, when a story came on the radio about branding. Now, this is just after the horrific train wreck called Spirited Energy was introduced as a new branding for Manitoba. It did not go over well.

So, I’m sitting in the car and I’m thinking of the horrible job that was done “branding” Manitoba by an outside consulting firm, and I’m wondering if Manitobans could have done better. So I started brainstorming and it occurred to me that songs are usually a fertile place to look for such a brand. (To this day, if you play Stevie Wonder’s “A Place in the Sun” to a Westman resident over 40, they will think of Minnedosa).

So, I start thinking of Canadian and Manitoba artists and possible geographic references. The Guess Who come to mind, but “Running Back to Saskatoon” is hardly a song for Manitoba. Then I think of “At the Hundredth Meridian” by the Hip. Now, at first I’m thinking about Manitoba, but it soon occurs to me that this should be more about Brandon.

Why? Well, simply put, the 100th meridian west actually runs through Brandon. It barely hits the city, it’s right on the edge over on the west side, but it does run through it.

The above picture from Google Earth is approximately where the 100th meridian passes through the city. It crosses Victoria Avenue just beside the Governor’s Gate Apartments.

So, when the city was talking years ago about iconic signage, It occurred to me that maybe Brandon should create new signs similar to some larger centres. Regina (example below) is a good example. Do a permanent sign at each entrance that says:

Brandon
Where the Great Plains Begin

To me it seems like a much better slogan than “You belong in Brandon”; “Where the Great Plains Begin” is particular to Brandon.

The whole point is to promote something unique about your city. Seriously, “You belong in Brandon” could be changed to “You belong in Treherne”, or “You Belong in Boise”. There is nothing distinct there.

I have floated the slogan before, and I had some really good responses from a few people. The main detractors seemed to fixate on the point that there are areas of prairie east of Brandon. They are kind of missing the point. A great slogan doesn’t have to be completely true to be effective. We’ve all heard “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”; it’s not technically true, but it makes a great slogan. Besides, there is a lot of truth in saying that the Great Plains begin in Brandon. There are areas of prairie to the east, but it is west of the city that the prairie landscape seems to continue uninterrupted; east the prairie gets broken up by areas such as the Carberry Sandhills. Brandon is the first major settlement firmly situated on the prairie. Other arguments have said that the Great Plains refers to the American plains, a semantic argument at most, and not completely true. Some just don’t like the Tragically Hip.

Anyway, I’ve floated the idea in the past, and unfortunately it just didn’t manage to catch on. At the very least I would like to see a sign on Victoria Avenue telling people that they are passing over “The 100th meridian… where the Great Plains Begin”. Then we can at least lay claim to it for the future.

If Cozad, Nebraska (Pop 4000) can do it, I would think we can.