Right in the centre - Wanted: more thinking and planning
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- Published on Thursday, September 14, 2017
Ken Waddell
The Neppawa Banner
I think it is a good idea that the City of Winnipeg and the Province of Manitoba are seeking to have Amazon locate a second home base facility in the city. It would be a good thing for the city and the province. It is a long shot, but as the head of CentrePort Canada said in a radio interview, it is a very good exercise. It is the same thing as the communities of south-western Manitoba banding together to try and land a soybean processing plant. Both are huge projects and they might not happen. However, the lessons learned in the process should give valuable insight into the capacity for projects.
Manitoba needs to be developed. We are no where near our capacity to produce food. How to get that food to export markets is quite another issue. We can’t even get food economically to our own people in Churchill or remote communities. Certainly CentrePort Canada is one key to food exports but we have a huge hill to climb when it comes to getting food to our more remote communities.
With all the needs for infrastructure for transportation, it is sadly amusing that the federal, provincial and City of Winnipeg governments are debating whether to put $10 million into an overhead walkway from St. Boniface to The Forks. Even more ironic, the sewer under St. Boniface Hospital is leaking raw sewage into the river. Oh, I get it. If we build an overhead walkway, then people can more easily see and smell the sewage as it leaks out into the Red River.
Who are we kidding except ourselves here? We are considering a promenade across a dirty river, all the while there is raw sewage going into it from St. B., from the U of M and from an unknown number of other spots in the city.
That the province and the federal governments are even considering such a project is disgraceful. There are towns and villages across Manitoba that have been or are under a boil water order and politicians are actually considering building a tree-top walkway over a dirty river. The Town of Rivers has worked a long time to get out from under a boil water order and that is to be celebrated. But Rivers certainly isn’t the only community that is facing very expensive upgrades.
The province is correct in helping the City of Winnipeg to dream the Amazon dream, good on them. That said, is there no one who can actually sit down and figure out that across Manitoba, our sewage systems are failing, our water systems need upgrading? Highways and railway crossings are in horrible shape. The rail line to Churchill is just plain broken. There is only half an overpass into the City of Portage La Prairie. Semi-trailer traffic is illegal on many of our paved roads because the bridges can’t legally carry a loaded B-train.
Manitoba needs more food production, more food processing and certainly more and better infrastructure. We don’t need elevated tax levels. We need an elevated level of thinking, planning and a better investment environment. When government departments don’t even update their contact lists for five years, and this actually happened recently, how can we believe they are even thinking or planning? Perhaps the Amazon caper or the soybean effort will show us how to overcome our weaknesses and actually grow.
