I’ve always been a bit of a dreamer. I read about new technologies or about new initiatives in other places, and I think… why not here?
- Why can’t we bring our arts and cultural scene from surprisingly vibrant to surprisingly world-renowned?
- Why can’t we sell people on our Chicago of the North district that is more complete than anything you’d find in Illinois?
- Why don’t we take the industrial land on Point Douglas and use it as a showcase in innovative residential design, using resited historic houses mixed with new architectural styles?
- Why do we have the beginnings of a $350-400 million Human Rights Museum in a city languishing in poverty and economic divide, but no museum of architecture among what could be the best preserved collection of late 19th century skyscrapers in the world?
- Why are we not making piles of money off of alternative energy and alternative transportation when we have ALL of the advantages?
- Why do we need to look on the loss of Greyhound as a crisis with no hint of opportunity? There are dozens of innovations that could be used to create a better alternative to the current bus service, and not all of them would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
- Why are we still not reaching our potential as the cultural and governance capital for aboriginals and indigenous peoples from all over the world?
With the NDP leadership change, there is only a small amount of buzz about the shifting political landscape in Manitoba. The small number of comments I see on stories of provincial politics and leaders seems to show that Manitoba politics has been left mostly to the hobbyists, and that “mainstream” Manitoba tuned out years ago. Most of the people I grew up with in south Winnipeg never even heard that I ran for political office, since they didn’t read the newspaper articles or watch the news on TV during the spring by-elections. Some people I meet on the street in my neighbourhood know I ran for something, but can’t remember for what office or for which party. Most Manitobans aren’t seeing much reason to give provincial politics any thought at all.
I don’t think this is a sign of laziness, or a sign that people are too busy. I think it’s a sign that politics and politicians aren’t actually doing anything for Manitoba. We’ve had ten years of economic growth and increasing revenues, but no grand accomplishments. We’ve seen the rise and partial fall of Alberta and the troubles in Ontario, yet we’re not using our diversity and relative stability to move ahead of our neighbours… in fact, it’s likely that we’re falling further behind. We’re seeing a record deficit in Ottawa, yet no one seems to be mentioning publicly how this could affect the 3.5 billion in total federal transfers that we’re receiving every year (over a third of our revenues). Manitoba is mired in do nothing and status quo and good enough… and I know we’re better than that.
We need a psychological change in this province. We need to start realizing that we are squandering our children’s futures by our inaction. We are letting crime and poverty and hopelessness spin out of control, as we sit back and wonder why the government hasn’t fixed things yet. We are seeing our health care budget balloon while we notice very little improvement (and several big setbacks that have cost lives), yet we’re still letting our government use the same tired ideas that didn’t work ten years ago. We are assuming that the government is doing something about the environment even though we have no reason to believe they’re doing anything. We’re sitting by in small unorganized groups, waiting for the government to suddenly start changing the world for the better, which of course is something no government has never been able to do on its own. Why aren’t we getting together and making some of these changes ourselves? Why aren’t we looking at the innovations in other places, and demanding that they be considered here?
I don’t want my daughter deciding one day that she needs to move to another province in order to change the world. We have many strong advantages (human resources, cost of living, power and water, agricultural and industrial diversity, mineral resources) that can put us at the forefront of progress if we just open up our minds a little… and dream of something better.
It’s about time I started acting on some of these dreams.
Note: I’ll be finishing up my next big Jewel of Winnipeg whenever I have a chance – Assiniboine Park.
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