The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
If, God forbid, your house burns down tomorrow, would you be willing to wait three years and four months for it to be rebuilt? Would you sit idly by for over 1,200 days while "the process" plays itself out and you could return home? None of us would accept this kind of treatment from an insurance company, but that is precisely what the Manitoba government did to the elderly residents who vacated the Hemlock Drive seniors apartments following a devastating blaze. Some background: The fire that ripped through half of the government-owned complex struck on June 6, 2002. Reconstruction did not begin until November 2004, and leases for the new apartments did not open until October 1, 2005. The government is no doubt brimming with excuses about paperwork and consultations and all that other "the buck stops somewhere else" gibber-gabber, but the point is that they failed our community. I bring this up now because Hemlock is the consummate illustration of a considerable problem dogging Flin Flon: the snail-like pace of our provincial government. We see this phenomenon time and time again in our city (and elsewhere). It has reached the point where our expectations of government expediency are so low that if they were a pizza joint, we'd be phoning in our orders six months in advance. Need another example? How about the province's much-trumpeted reclamation of our toxin-contaminated playgrounds. The government knew at least as early as July 2007 that much of our soil contains metal levels that exceed human health guidelines. But it wasn't until that fall, after the Winnipeg Free Press and opposition parties made hay of the issue, that they unveiled plans to lay down clean soil as a better-safe-than-sorry measure. It then took another nine months before the government formally pledged the necessary funding. Actual work at the playgrounds did not begin until the fall of 2008, and despite having the entire summer of 2009 to wrap things up, the province will drag the project out into this summer. I suppose it could have been worse. After all, it has taken provincial governments of all stripes 59 years to begin removing the toxic tailings left behind from a long-defunct mine in Sherridon, our friendly neighbours to the northeast. Meanwhile, our MLA, Gerard Jennissen, has several times spoken of the need to address what I call the "cottage drain," the custom of Flin Flonners moving out to the lake full-time, depleting our population and tax base. "It is an issue, there's no doubt about it," he told this newspaper in 2008. "It affects Flin Flon, it affects Cranberry (Portage), it affects a lot of places." Mr. Jennissen acknowledged that he did not have the definitive answer to this "issue," but he and his colleagues have had ample time to find and implement one, even if it is imperfect. It's not like there is a void of ideas out there. In the past, Flin Flon City Council has suggested a system whereby cottagers would pay a special fee to the province, which in turn would funnel the money back to adjacent municipalities. On the electoral front, it took the province seven years to abolish mandatory ward voting for school board elections. To a degree this was too little, too late, since by then half of Flin Flon had been shut out from the democratic process in two general elections and one by-election. Some of these delays no doubt stem in part from needless red tape and the inevitable pitfalls of a bloated bureaucracy. But the crux of the problem appears to be a lack of political will. Imagine Winnipeg lingering for three years while contaminated playgrounds are cleaned up. Picture their elderly population waiting nearly three and a half years for a major seniors' home to reopen after a fire. Envision half of all Winnipeggers losing their democratic right to vote for their school board and then watching year after year go by without seeing the situation rectified. Flin Flon is a small, northern community that is in the bag for the current governing party. If you don't think that affects when (and if) we are served by the government, then I've got a beach-side mansion in Florida to sell you. Just allow a few years for the paperwork to go through. Local Angle runs Fridays.
