Right in the centre - Famine mentality
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- Published on Thursday, September 15, 2016
By Ken Waddell
Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press
Famine mentality is a new phrase for me. I just heard it in the past few days. I have heard of poverty mentality and I think it’s nearly the same thing. Poverty is something that should not exist in Canada nor should it exist in anyone’s mindset in this country. In other countries, it probably shouldn’t exist either but I don’t know a lot about other countries. I have only travelled on a very limited basis in Korea and the United States. But Canada I do know and western Canada I know pretty well. I know Manitoba and western Manitoba very well.
Poverty mentality says that there are limited resources that must be spread over too many people, so some will always fall short of food, housing or services. It’s a pervasive mind-set with numerous people ready to accept the premise. It’s sad, it’s mind-numbing and it’s crippling. It’s also false.
We have almost unlimited resources. We have sun, rain, land, technology and smart people. What we don’t have is enough can-do attitude. If we are in fact short of food, then why do so few people grow a garden? If we are short of housing, then why do so few invest in housing? If we are short of services, especially medical services, then why did we let the NDP government disallow private investment in health care for 16 years.
I have never been in a situation where I couldn’t have done more with what I had at my disposal. I doubt there is a person who couldn’t say the same. We can always do better, it just takes a little more thought, a little smarter work. If there’s a will, there’s a way. We seem to be missing a lot of will when there are so many ways to meet our needs.
So let’s look at food. We could double or triple our food production in our gardens, or should I say our lack of gardens, in Manitoba. We may have a short growing season but the amount of food we do grow, could grow and the amount we leave to rot on the ground is astounding. Grass is nice and flowers are nice but you can’t eat much grass directly in the human diet.
How about housing? We don’t have a shortage of housing in Manitoba. We have a lack of housing policies. In Neepawa, we could have more apartments in our decaying core area. All it would take is to amend one Town of Neepawa policy that requires that apartments have 1.5 car parking spaces per apartment. The theory is that apartment dwellers will have 1.5 cars and the on-street parking has to be left for business owners and business customers. Occasionally, we have a parking congestion problem in Neepawa, but I have never in 46 years had to park more than a block from where I was wanting to go. Many towns would like to have a parking problem. In most rural towns, even in the busier ones, you can get a parking spot and there are times when you can shoot a cannon down main street and not hit a person or a car. One stupid policy in Neepawa stands between more affordable housing and not having adequate housing. On this issue, basically our town council has insufficient foresight, imagination or fortitude.
Services are sadly lacking in the health care field and yet we spend 40 per cent of our provincial budget on health care and countless billions in private money on things the province doesn’t supply, such as drugs and both physical and mental therapy. Our Minister of Health Kelvin Goertzen said last week, “If we don’t change how we do things soon, by 2030, there will only be two departments of government left, health and finance.” Think about it folks, 2030. That’s not far away, only 14 years. The babies born this year will just be going into high school when that happens.
Goertzen put out the challenge that we have to look at private investment in items like MRIs and CAT scans. I think we need to go a lot further than that. We need to allow and encourage private investment in many aspects of health, education and other government provided services.
Many potential innovations and development are hampered by dumb rules. I cited the parking issue above. Here’s another one. It’s not related to health or education but every level of government has dumb rules that seem to make no sense at all. This one happens to be another planning rule. If you have a commercial building in a rural town you can build right out to the property line both front and back. If it’s zoned as an institutional building it has to have a 20 foot space between the building and the back alley or rear road. Who dreamed up all these dumb inherited rules? Better yet, why don’t those with the authority to do so, change them?
