HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2019-09-26, Page 5Other Views
So what’s the big deal, anyway?
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
One of my biggest annoyances about
being a reporter is having to cover
people complaining about what other
people do with their own property.
Sure, there needs to be some rules about
what can go where (for example, we can’t
have a functioning cow barn pop up where
the Blyth Public School used to be) but, as
long as someone is following the rules, I’ve
always felt that complaints should fall on deaf
ears.
Why? Well because people have the
opportunity to have a say in how properties are
used when the properties are up for sale. If
everyone has the same opportunity to buy a
property, but choose not to, they can’t
complain about how it’s lawfully used.
Take, for example, the mansion at 514
Wellington Crescent in Winnipeg.
The building was slated for demolition in
June, however neighbours who didn’t want to
see it demolished (and had every opportunity
to buy the property so they could do what they
wanted to it) had the entire neighbourhood
nominated for heritage status.
The 110-year-old mansion is in an
exclusive neighbourhood and was set to be the
site of a multi-million dollar residential
development.
The company behind the renovation had a
building permit and was seven weeks into the
demolition process when the committee of
neighbours (who, again, had every opportunity
to buy and maintain the mansion themselves)
put a stop to the project.
As a result, the owners plan to sue the city
and will serve papers within a month.
The site was supposed to be home to multi-
family dwellings, and the owners themselves
planned to live there, meaning, in my mind, it
would be a quality project.
The property sat on the market for over a
year before it was bought, and, with the
purchase price and work done so far, over $2
million has been invested.
The lawyer for the developers say
interrupting development like this could have
a negative impact on future projects. If
developers can’t trust the city to honour
building permits, they may look to other
communities.
It seems that’s already coming to pas, as,
during meetings regarding the demolition,
other developers have commented on “the
tyranny of… [an] affluent minority”
disrupting the project.
Why does this matter? Well, we haven’t had
anyone stopping development in The Citizen’s
coverage area yet, but it won’t surprise me
when it does happen.
Whether it’s people objecting to trees being
legally removed from properties or neighbours
complaining about the perceived scourge of
“renters”, we have enough people in Huron the
County suffering from Not In My Back Yard
(NIMBY) disease that someone will try and
stop legal and needed development.
We’re in the middle of a housing crisis in
Huron County. The lack of affordable housing
is preventing people from moving to the area,
which, in turn is causing labour force
shortages at local industries.
Given enough time, this kind of problem
could see industry flee Huron County, the
same way the Winnipeg lawyer forsees the
metropolis losing development.
Instead of great new developments like
those happening in Blyth and Belgrave
welcoming new members of the workforce to
the communities, we will see industries
leaving for places in which they can find the
labour they need to succeed. Then we won’t
have a labour and housing crisis, we’ll see
property values plummet.
That probably won’t affect me much -
Ashleigh and I bought our home before the
huge housing boom in Huron County. Our
house has increased in value since we bought
it eight years ago.
Maybe our assessment will go down, but
taxes will go up to compensate for that, and
we’ll all end up paying more.
Those who have bought houses recently
won’t be able to sell them for purchase price.
As a community, we need to make ourselves
welcome to new development, not against it.
It could be difficult. Most humans are
hardwired to not enjoy change, myself
included. As a matter of fact, you could say I
have a genetic disposition to fear change, but
that’s a story for another day.
We need to be open to new faces, new
families and the new development that will
give them a place to live.
So the next time a development is proposed,
let’s try not thinking that all renters are
horrible people or that a new project is going
to ruin our quiet little communities.
Instead, look forward to having new friends
to invite over to dinner or to share a property
line, new cultures with new practices to learn
about and new homes to move to if you
outgrow your own.
Stow the NIMBYism and focus on being a
good neighbour. It’s the Canadian thing to do.
If that’s too much to ask, then buy every lot
around you and pay the taxes on them yourself
because that’s the only way you should ever
get to dictate the lawful actions a neighbour
takes with their property.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2019. PAGE 5.
(Black)face the nation
The saying has always gone that the
bigger they are, the harder they fall and
that was truly the case for Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau last week when three
instances of him wearing racist face paint and
costume were revealed to the world.
It began when Time published a picture of
Trudeau dressed as Aladdin at an “Arabian
Nights” party at a British Columbia school at
which he taught. In less than 24 hours, the
media found two other instances and Trudeau
had to fess up to past racist transgressions.
Here in Canada, the response has been split
essentially down party lines. Since these
instances all took place before Trudeau was
even a politician, many have pointed out that,
after what many find to be a successful first
term leading Canada, these discoveries should
change nothing. Conservatives, however, have
pounced, seeing this as the final chapter in the
book about Trudeau being unfit to lead.
Of course, among politicians hoping to
defeat Trudeau next month, criticism has been
amplified exponentially. Conservative leader
Andrew Scheer went in for the kill while
ignoring his own checkered past in which he
deemed gay marriage inappropriate. (While
Trudeau has apologized, Scheer refuses to say
whether he stands by those 2005 comments or
not.)
The most thinking I’ve done on this incident
has come after reading an article in the
Toronto Star, which said that if Trudeau wins
the election, his impact on the world stage will
be diminished.
Last October, as Jess and I traversed Europe
in the midst of messy Brexit activity, we found
tremendous respect for Trudeau and Canada.
We spoke to several Irish people who coveted
Trudeau as a leader in a world of Brexit goons
and U.S. President Donald Trump. That
respect was based on Trudeau’s inclusivity and
colour-, gender- and sexuality-blind policies.
He became the first Prime Minister with a
gender-equal cabinet and worked to win the
hearts and minds of Indigenous communities
and LGBTQ Canadians. And, because of his
style, he was in-your-face about it, challenging
others to do the same. He once corrected a
woman at a town hall meeting, asking her to
use the term “peoplekind” instead of mankind.
It is this behaviour that weaves back to my
opening comment. If conservative leaders who
have been linked to racist, dog-whistle politics
like Trump or Maxime Bernier saw blackface
images dug up by reporters, many voters may
not be so surprised (though Trump has his own
orangeface thing going on). However, because
it’s Trudeau, he had a long way to fall from a
perch of inclusivity and progressive politics.
Going back to the Star piece, if Trudeau
wins, on the international stage, every time he
speaks about immigration, refugees, inclusion,
etc., he’ll be the blackface guy lecturing the
world on inclusion and abolishing racism.
There’s just no going back after revelations
like these. The genie, as our cartoonist Steve
Nease points out this week, rather ironically, is
quite literally out of the bottle with Trudeau.
This October, Canadians will have to decide
who they want to lead them. There are many
reasons why Trudeau can still be that person,
the same person he was during his first term,
but when it comes to international relations,
the world will see a different Trudeau.
The hotshot kid from the cover of Rolling
Stone is dead. It’s possible Trudeau can still
lead Canada, but the way the world sees him
will never be the same. He can’t be that brash
selfie machine serving up answers dripping
with chutzpah, because international leaders
will just see a kid with a collection of Aladdin
robes in his closet lecturing them on inclusion.
Azar Nafasi’s book, Reading Lolita in
Tehran had been sitting on my book
shelf for several years before I
recently took it down and read it. What struck
me about her account of trying to teach
English literature in Iran after the 1979
revolution was the silliness of some of the rules
of the regime.
Don’t get me wrong, there was nothing silly
about the revolution in general, where enemies
of the new regime could be rounded up and
shot without trial. Such was the inverted (and
perverted) logic of Ayatollah Khomeini that he
once declared: “The trial of a criminal is
against human rights. Human rights demand
that we should have killed them in the first
place when it became known that they were
criminals.”
The Iranian revolution was violent and
deadly, but at its root was the same sort of
notion of a country gone wrong as the “Make
American Great Again” (MAGA) campaign of
U.S. President Donald Trump and Britain’s
Brexit campaign. The revolution’s leaders saw
western influence as undermining the morality
of a proper Islamic state.
As part of his modernization of Iran, the
Reza Shah had banned the wearing of the veil
in 1936, though the ban was later relaxed to
allow women to wear it for religious purposes.
The Islamic Republic of Iran set out to reverse
all of the former royal family’s reforms,
including returning the permissible age of
marriage to nine, as originally set out in Sharia
law in the early 1900s, from 18 which the Shah
had set as the age when a woman could be
more capable of agreeing to marry.
The revolution was difficult and dangerous
for everyone, but it was especially onerous for
women, particularly for modern, ambitious
women like Prof. Nafasi, who had been raised
to be the equal of men. They were quickly
reminded that the return to the righteous old
days meant they had to live subservient to men.
Female students were penalized for
running up the stairs when they were late for
classes, for laughing in hallways or for talking
to male students. Unmarried men and women
weren’t allowed to touch, even to shake
hands.
This is where the rules became ludicrous. A
lock of hair that escaped from under a woman’s
head scarf could be considered an
unforgiveable temptation to men. One religious
student succeeded in having a female
classmate expelled from the university because
he claimed that a patch of white skin, barely
visible under her veil, was sexually provocative
to him. The onus was not on the male student
to just look away, it was on the women to avoid
anything that any male could possibly find
arousing.
I found this logic head-shakingly ludicrous,
but then I looked around and saw the same sort
of attitude of “it’s up to you not to offend me,
not for me to adjust” here in Canada. It’s at the
very heart of Quebec’s Bill 21 which bars
public servants in positions of authority such as
judges, police officers, crown prosecutors, and
elementary and high school teachers from
wearing symbols like a hijab, turban or
kippah.
Quebec has gone from a society that, until
50 years ago, was completely dominated by the
Roman Catholic Church, to one where the
separation of church and state is absolute.
However, the excuse that this separation must
be completed by banning people from wearing
these religious symbols sounds suspiciously
similar to MAGA’s attempts to return to the
comfort of a familiar past.
Bill 21 is the elephant in the room in the
federal election campaign. All party leaders
except Maxime Bernier of the People’s Party
of Canada oppose the bill, but they hesitate to
say they’ll interfere, not only because the bill is
popular in Quebec and they fear losing votes,
but also because they don’t want to poke the
sleeping bear of separatism.
But it’s easy to point fingers at others’
irrationality. To do some good, we must search
closer to home. For instance, I must admit to
some uncomfortable moments when I took in
Mark Crawford’s comedy Bed and Breakfast at
the Blyth Festival last week. The play tells the
story of a gay couple who start a bed and
breakfast business in a small town. It portrays
the couple kissing, as couples do, and even a
blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hint at a gay sexual
act.
My instinct, after seven sheltered decades,
was to be offended by these scenes, but I had to
give myself a little lecture and realize that if
these scenes had been between a man and a
woman, it would be no big deal.
As a society, we’ve done a lot of that sort of
using reason over instinct over the years. As I
watched the audience laugh at Crawford’s
jokes and give him and his partner Paul Dunn
(on stage and in life) a standing ovation, I
couldn’t help but think how much more open-
minded and accepting the Blyth audience has
become for such a play to be even part of the
season, let alone become hugely popular.
Keith
Roulston
From the
cluttered desk
Buy the property or zip your lip