Time to plan for The Bay’s next life

One Saturday afternoon about seven years ago, give or take a year, I was stopped on Donald St. in downtown Winnipeg by a forty-something woman who appeared lost.

“Excuse me,” she said, “Can you tell me where Eaton’s is?”

“Well…”, I started, hesitatingly. “They used to be right across the street, where the arena is now, but unfortunately they went out of business back in ’99.”

“Oh,” she said, frowning as she took a long, disbelieving look at the MTS Centre that now sits at the corner of Portage Ave. and Donald St. “I used to always like going shopping at Eaton’s whenever I was in Winnipeg.”

I could only assume that she was an occasional visitor from the United States, as it was virtually impossible for any Canadian of her generation to be unaware of the T. Eaton Company’s dramatic two and a half year downward spiral in the late ’90s, from entering creditor protection in February 1997 to the company’s collapse in mid-1999.

It wasn’t unusual for Winnipeg’s downtown department stores to draw shoppers from far and wide, not just from Manitoba and northwestern Ontario, but even from northeastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota.

For many Winnipeggers born before 1980, there were also the fond memories of childhood visits to the grand downtown department stores, both of which were comparable in floor space and assortment of goods and services to entire suburban shopping centres.

Among those born since 1980, however, that’s all just an older generation’s nostalgia for a way of life they never knew.

The downtown department store’s day, unfortunately, seems to be nearly done.

After a short-lived sales boost after Eaton’s closed, The Bay’s downtown store went into rapid decline.

The Bay now occupies just three of its six storeys — save for The Paddlewheel’s lingering, doleful existence on the otherwise deserted sixth floor — plus a basement, whose survival as a Zellers store is in doubt as parent company HBC phases its discount store subsidiary out of existence by selling its mall leases to Target Corporation.

Not everyone is convinced that HBC is committed to even keeping the downtown store open, especially now that The Bay’s Polo Park store, a mere five kilometres away, is the company’s de facto flagship store in Winnipeg.

What do we do with the huge department store at Portage and Memorial if HBC executives in Toronto decide to close the shop?

In Friday’s Free Press, retired judge and former provincial Liberal leader Charles Huband suggested that “[if] $7 million is available to establish a water park, there should be significantly more available to restore downtown shopping.”

“Governments should be prepared to pay a significant measure of that cost, subject to the condition [The Bay] be designed for continued use as a shopping centre,” he added.

Such subsidies are rightfully controversial. Department stores and water parks are not public services in the way that schools, libraries and community centres are; keeping The Bay going would be an open-ended commitment; and subsidies themselves are often most readily available to the politically well-connected, not equally to all.

HBC itself might be cool to the idea. Accept public funds in an open society, and you accept the political baggage and the public scrutiny that goes with it. Some organizations see that as a potential headache, and purposefully avoid government “support”.

There is also no guarantee that even the most generous subsidies will be enough to draw customers back to The Bay. In the U.K., whose cities are far more densely populated than Winnipeg will ever be, traditional downtown retail strips are increasingly full of empty storefronts as shoppers opt for web sites and suburban shopping centres.

A December 2011 report concluded that many of Britain’s “high streets”, as traditional retail strips like Winnipeg’s Portage Ave. are called, “are sickly, others are on the critical list and some are now dead.”

In the U.S., many cities similar to Winnipeg in size no longer have any large downtown department stores. In Des Moines, a city with a metro area population of 580,000, the venerable Younkers department store closed its 280,000 square-foot downtown location in 2005.

Like Eaton’s, Younkers left behind memories of a time when a trip to a downtown department store was a special occasion. (The chain survives in suburban malls across the Midwestern U.S. as a Bay-style upper-mid-market retailer.)

The former downtown Des Moines store, after sitting vacant for several years, is starting to be converted into a mixed-use residential/commercial building.

But all that remains of downtown department store shopping in Winnipeg-sized U.S. cities like Des Moines, Little Rock, Knoxville and Wichita is, typically, a couple of Dollar General and Family Dollar discount stores — roughly equivalent to Giant Tiger and The Bargain Shop here in Canada — with all the brand-name retailers being in the suburbs.

Given the troubles being experienced by downtown retailers in the U.S. and even the densely populated U.K., Winnipeg might soon look very much the same.

So, it might be worth hoping the best for The Bay’s downtown Winnipeg store, but preparing for the worst.

A good starting point would be to keep an eye on what’s going on with former downtown department stores being given a new lease on life as mixed-use buildings in places like Des Moines, Pittsburgh and Victoria, and to keep in mind that the best hope for keeping The Bay building standing and looking good at the corner of Portage and Memorial might be to accept that its retail days could soon come to an end.

H/T Bloomingdale’s Coming to Winnipeg?

Winnipeg Transit needs to be faster than walking if it wants to be competitive

How to get from Grant and Stafford to St. Vital Mall in a hurry on a Sunday afternoon (From Navigo; © Winnipeg Transit)

A mile is a long way in Winnipeg.

A mile separates the troubled Spence-Langside neighbourhood north of the Assiniboine from the swanky palatial homes that line Kingsway and Ruskin Row on the Assiniboine’s south bank. A mile separates entire social networks on opposite sides of high school catchment boundaries, which can make a difference in a city where high school cliques — and rivalries — survive well into middle age.

Despite the recent arrival of the new rapid transit corridor in Winnipeg, a mile is even still a long way to go by bus.

Take the following table as an example. It shows 12 random locations in Winnipeg within roughly a three-mile straight-line distance from Portage and Main. It also shows how long it would take to get to a location about one mile away as the crow flies at a random daytime departure time on either a Saturday or a Sunday.

Note that in six of the 12 cases, it would be quicker to walk than to take the bus. In four more cases, taking the bus saves less than five minutes compared to walking. (A 25-minute walk is in fact good exercise, but a bit difficult with groceries on a cold, windy day.)

FROM	TO	READY-TO-LEAVE TIME	WALK TIME	TRANSIT TIME	BUS CONVENIENCE SCORE*
Kavanaugh at Dufresne	St. Boniface Hospital	2:01 p.m. Sunday	28 mins.	18 mins.	10
Daly at Beresford	Corydon at Hugo (dining, retail)	8:12 a.m. Saturday	35 mins.	27 mins.	8
Grant at Heath	Corydon at Wentworth (light retail)	3:21 p.m. Saturday	26 mins.	22 mins.	4
Admiral at Fife	McPhillips at Jefferson (supermarket)	1:58 p.m. Sunday	24 mins.	23 mins.	1
St. Matthews at Minto	Polo Park	3:57 p.m. Sunday	22 mins.	21 mins.	1
Young at Balmoral	Osborne Station	10:15 a.m. Sunday	21 mins.	20 mins.	1
Denson at Riddle	St.  James at Sargent (big-box retail)	10:09 a.m. Saturday	25 mins.	27 mins.	-2
Stapleton at Talbot	EK Pool	2:57 p.m. Sunday	29 mins.	32 mins.	-3
Brazier at Leighton	Gateway at McLeod (supermarket)	12:10 p.m. Saturday	27 mins.	34 mins.	-7
Cabana at Des Meurons	The Forks Market	10:27 a.m. Saturday	25 mins.	35 mins.	-10
Levis at Poplar	Munroe at London (retail)	4:48 p.m. Saturday	28 mins.	43 mins.	-15
Brunet at Drake	Autumnwood at Cottonwood (school, church, light retail)	1:31 p.m. Sunday	25 mins.	46 mins.	-21
* – Based on walk time minus transit time

Another factor which might discourage Winnipeggers from using the city’s transit system is that the system is not always intuitive to navigate.

Take the trip from Talbot and Stapleton to the Elmwood-Kildonans Pool on Concordia Ave. as an example. Winnipeg Transit’s Navigo trip planner shows five possible scenarios between 3:04 p.m. and 3:28 p.m. for the one-mile trip.

The five scenarios involve five different bus routes — the 43, 44, 45, 85 and 90 — leaving from three different bus stops. The most direct route is on the 90 – Concordia bus, which runs at inconvenient 75-minute intervals on Sundays. The most convoluted routing, on routes 45 and 85, require the passenger to literally travel north, south, east and west en route to the destination.

Now try figuring out the easiest way between the two points without Internet access. Much easier — and faster — to just keep walking north to Concordia Avenue.

When it comes to shopping and recreation, many Winnipeggers want to be able to get to locations within their own general part of town. Yet Winnipeg Transit seems to lack sensitivity to neighbourhood needs, with meandering bus routes that connect Corydon Avenue to faraway Garden City Mall more than 20 times per day, but not to the much closer Grant Park Mall; and South Tuxedo to South Osborne every 27 minutes on a weekday afternoon.

To be competitive with the car and even merely walking from one place to another, Winnipeg Transit needs more than just rapid transit. It needs a route system that is easy to navigate — straight lines along major thoroughfares, hub-to-hub nonstop routes, and even circle routes connecting various landmarks in a given area are good, meandering lines are bad — and it needs frequent service so that a missed connection doesn’t mean a wait of half an hour or more.

Who wants to be a Premier? Anyone? Anyone?

Five months have passed since the Oct. 4, 2011 Manitoba provincial election — the night on which Progressive Conservative leader Hugh McFadyen announced that he would step down after fighting two election campaigns at the party’s helm.

The chances of whoever succeeds McFadyen becoming Premier in 2015 are not too shabby. The best predictor of whether or not a government will get re-elected is its age. By the next provincial election, the NDP government will be, after 16 years, the second longest serving administration in Manitoba history.

The longest serving administration was the United Farmers-turned-Liberal Progressive dynasty which governed Manitoba (thanks to a gerrymandered electoral map) from 1922 to 1958 under premiers John Bracken, Stuart Garson and Douglas Campbell.

Though governments occasionally win one more election after celebrating their 10th anniversaries in office, no provincial government outside of the Alberta political aberration has survived 10 years in government and then gone on to win two more elections since the Newfoundland Progressive Conservatives won a fifth and final term in 1985.

Thus, you would think that any Progressive Conservative with ambitions for the premiership would view this as a golden opportunity.

Not so. Five months after Hugh McFadyen gave PC MLAs and party insiders the official blessing to begin campaigning for the leadership, no one has taken the plunge.

Nor is there much interest in the leadership of the provincial Liberal Party, which has also been up for grabs for five months. This, at least, is understandable. The only redeeming feature of the 2011 campaign, which saw the Liberals finish with one seat and slightly less than eight percent of the vote, was that it wasn’t “1981 all over again”, when the party won just seven percent of the vote and lost its only seat in the Legislature.

What is stopping people from reaching for the province’s top political job?

Part of it could be a sincere conclusion by would-be candidates that they lack the ruthlessness to go the distance. When genuinely nice people do make it to the top in politics, they generally end up regretting having taken the job (as Walter Weir publicly admitted after his 1967-69 stint as Premier of Manitoba) or have difficulty asserting authority over wayward MLAs (as Howard Pawley had at times during his 1981-88 premiership).

Or as former U.S. Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan described his dealings with various presidents over the decades: “Jerry Ford was as close to normal as you get in a president . . . There’s a constitutional amendment that I’ve been pushing for years without success. It says, ‘Anyone willing to do what is required to become president of the United States is thereby barred from taking that office.’ I’m only half joking.”

Much the same could be said of anyone wanting to be a Mayor, Premier or Prime Minister. Being a head of government is not for those prone to losing sleep at night because a decision they made will cause someone to lose their home or their reputation.

Another factor that could be inhibiting people from throwing their hats into the ring: the desire for a family life.

Being a party leader or head of government means putting one’s spouse and children second for years on end. Its impact was well summed up by Ros Hawke Dillon, whose father, Bob Hawke, was Australia’s prime minister from 1983 to 1991. In 2003, she explained to an interviewer why she always bought a father’s day card not for her father, but for her mother.

“Dad was there for the fun times but he wasn’t a hands-on dad,” she said, describing the years her father spent on his trajectory toward the premiership while the rest of the family tried to live a normal suburban lifestyle.

“She mowed the lawns, she fixed tap washers, she did everything.”

Politics leaves little time for mowing lawns and fixing tap washers. Even the Parliament of Canada web site cautions would-be MPs that they can expect to have “very little personal time” due to the demands of the job.

The demands are even worse for premiers and party leaders, who are never truly “off duty”.

Such a lifestyle has little appeal to newer generations who often witnessed their own parents’ marriages fail — the so-called “Generation X” born roughly between 1965 and 1980, and the “Millennials” or “Generation Y”, born between 1980 and 1995.

“Generation X’ers are seeking a greater sense of family and are less likely to put jobs before family, friends or other interests,” a 2005 article noted in response to concerns that it was becoming increasingly difficult to fill vacancies in universities’ medicine faculties.

“[Their] first loyalty tends to be to themselves than to any institution. While they may be deeply committed to their work, they are less willing to sacrifice than their parents were, less fixated on titles and the corner office, and less likely to ‘delay gratification’”.

Case in point: former WestJet CEO Sean Durfy. The first “Generation X” CEO of a major Canadian airline, Durfy stunned the industry when he unexpectedly resigned in 2010 at age 43, saying he wanted to have more of a family life.

“I realized quality time with my family was not there,” Durfy told Canadian Business magazine in 2011. “My young fellah didn’t really even know who I was. I stepped back and said, ‘All this stuff is not good. This is not a good place to be.’”.

“In most cases, it’s not the corner office or a large paycheck that drives Generation Y,” a 2006 article for a U.S. defense industry trade publication noted, “but rather, the opportunity to work for a company that fosters strong workplace relationships and inspires a sense of balance and/or purpose.”

“[Millennials] expect a work-life balance unlike what we have seen before,” IEEE Engineering Management Review observed in 2011. “Their teamwork and creative energy is typically not organized well. This generation has the potential to refresh the thinking and core passions that drive just about everything society does in a similar way that large demographic groups like the Baby Boomers continue to do as they now retire and leave the workplace.”

If academia, corporations, the U.S. defence industry and the engineering profession are feeling a pinch because a younger generation wants to make family more important in their lives, then why should it come as any surprise that it’s getting difficult for political parties to attract leadership candidates?

Times and values have changed. The growing number of people taking a pass on the possibility of governing the province suggests that our sclerotic political parties and tradition-bound parliamentary institutions are having difficulty keeping up. That will only make it more difficult to attract good people to public office in the years ahead.

Could an airline be soon cleared for landing at Brandon Airport?

Porter Airlines Dash 8 Q400 cabin (© GrumpyDiver; click for source)

More than a decade has passed since Brandon Airport hosted a major Canadian airline, but that hasn’t killed western Manitoba’s hope of eventually landing something better than a once-a-day air taxi service to Winnipeg and the occasional charter flight.

Brandon’s latest brush with a major airline was in 2001, when WestJet briefly tested out the market during the busier summer months.

Since then, Brandon’s odds of supporting a major airline usually looked grim. Air routes typically follow business and government traffic, and that all pointed toward Winnipeg: so close by that flying would save little time or hassle. (Red Deer, a substantially larger city, suffers the same problem due to its proximity to both Calgary and Edmonton.)

Brandon’s ties to other cities were too tenuous to support airline service.  The business travelers who were willing to pay a premium to stick to a schedule — what the airlines refer to as high-yield traffic — were few and far between. The price-sensitive leisure travelers who buy their tickets during seat sales — known in the industry as low-yield traffic — would happily go to Winnipeg to catch their flights if it meant saving $100. So why bother flying to Brandon at all?

Alas, Brandon’s odds of landing a much-wanted airline might be getting better, thanks to the energy boom in western Manitoba.

As long as Brandon had few economic ties to any city other than Winnipeg, the dearth of premium-fare passengers killed hopes of sustaining airline service.

Western Manitoba’s growing energy-based economy, however, holds out the hope that Brandon might eventually support nonstop service to Calgary, Canada’s energy and resource extraction capital.

This hope is based on what happened across the border in June 2010, when United Express launched nonstop regional jet service from its Denver hub to Minot, N.D. based on demand for better service to the heart of North Dakota’s booming energy sector.

Mining, oil and gas extraction was the star performer of the Manitoba economy in 2010, its contribution to the provincial economy growing 11 percent over 2009 levels while most other industries grew at the more typical two to three percent.

There are two other reasons for Brandon to get its hopes up.

The first is the recent installation of an Instrument Landing System, which is an important selling point with airlines. An Instrument Landing System, or ILS for short, allows an airliner to follow a radio beam straight in to the runway. This allows for a successful landing in low-visibility conditions, where an aircraft might otherwise be forced to make an expensive diversion to another airfield until the weather improves.

The second is the development of the Canadian-built Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 turboprop. This relatively new aircraft, which typically carries 70 or 74 passengers, can fly 2,400 kilometres (1,500 miles) nonstop. That’s more than enough to fly from Brandon to Calgary, with enough fuel remaining to divert to Edmonton or Saskatoon if they can’t land in Calgary for some reason.

The Q400 burns so little fuel per mile that, with the right mix of business and leisure passengers, a flight can be profitable with 40 passengers aboard. A 70-seat regional jet flying the same route, by comparison, would almost certainly lose money with only 40 passengers aboard.

Air Canada Express started using Q400s on eastern routes in 2011, with the aircraft likely to start showing up in the western provinces as older equipment is retired. WestJet is said to be considering the Q400 for routes that cannot be served profitably by their Boeing 737s, which seat 119 to 166 passengers, depending on model.

Even if WestJet orders the Q400, service to Brandon is no sure bet. The city was not even mentioned by CEO Gregg Saretsky when he recently rattled off a list of cities – all in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta or B.C. — that WestJet might eventually serve.

Nevertheless, things are looking better for Brandon and its neighbouring communities than they have been in a long time.

What kinds of head offices might be drawn to Winnipeg — and which ones won’t be so easy to snag.

Winnipeg came close to getting the big prize, but we couldn’t quite clinch it.

No, this isn’t about our disappointing loss to the B.C. Lions in last Sunday’s Grey Cup. It’s about the announcement in mid-November that the United Church of Canada wouldn’t be moving its head office to Winnipeg after all.

The lease on the United Church’s Toronto headquarters will expire in 2015. With that in mind, the Church was thinking that it might be able to “create a creative chaos” to revive their sinking fortunes.

The United Church lost more than 900,000 members between the 1981 and 2001 censuses, an average net loss of one member every 11 minutes.  Its market share dropped from 15 percent of the population in 1981 to 9 percent in 2001, part of this closely linked to immigration, and part of this just as strongly tied to the growing percentage of Canadians with no formal religious affiliation, such as those who consider themselves spiritual but not religious, agnostic, or atheist.

Had the organization opted for the “creative chaos” of moving its headquarters 1,500 kilometres to Winnipeg, it would have brought about 150 jobs to the city.

Winnipeg was a serious contender for a relocated head office, along with rival bidders North Bay, Ont. and Waterloo, Ont., thanks to competitive real estate costs compared to pricey Toronto.

It wasn’t to be, though. The Church found that moving to a new city would be both too expensive and too disruptive. With many staff being anchored in Toronto by children, parents, longtime friendships and their spouses’ careers, there was a very real possibility that many employees would resign rather than move.

This brings us to the first two points that a community should have on its checklist when considering whether it is viable to “poach” a head office from another city:

• Do the post-move cost savings justify the cost of actually moving? Winnipeg was competitive here because of its low office space costs, and possibly to an extent by its relatively low housing costs. These costs weren’t low enough to offset the cost of the move itself. Sometimes the cost-savings do add up: Exxon and J. C. Penney moved their head offices from New York to Dallas, Tex. in the ’80s because of the high cost of operating in the Big Apple.

• Are employees able to move? This depends on the composition of your workforce. A young workforce with relatively few family obligations is more likely to move than a middle-aged workforce, for which a move would mean uprooting their children from their schools, moving far away from aging parents and longtime friends, and disrupting their spouses’ careers.

As William H. Whyte’s classic 1956 book The Organization Man (revised and updated many times since them) points out, organizations considering a move must also consider the quality of life that they’re either moving to or away from, and the professional network available in a new town:

• By moving, are you asking people to give up a way of life they enjoy? “Even salary boosts often fail to achieve repatriation,” Whyte observed of executives transfered to California. “Once tasted, the California way of life dulls such appetites… When Shell Chemical moved its head office to New York from San Francisco some of its management group resigned rather than go along, and several who did go along eventually decided to go back. Another company recently located a lab on the Coast, it admits, mainly to hang onto talent it might otherwise lose.” (2002 ed., pp. 275-276)

• By moving, are you cutting people off from professional networks and career options? “On the other hand, there are some kinds of environments many people can’t be tempted into trying at all,” Whyte wrote. “This has been particularly evident in the postwar moves of entire headquarters to the hinterlands. Making a small town a way station on the executive route is one thing; making it Mecca, another. An organization’s creative and professional people usually will move permanently to a small town only if it is in striking distance of a large city and the professional contacts it affords. Similarly, almost any executive is likely to balk — for a while at least — if the town is so small that the influx of the company threatens a resurgence of the paternalistic company town.” (2002 ed., p. 276)

Note that from a Torontonian’s eyes — much less a New Yorker’s, Angeleno’s or Londoner’s eyes — Winnipeg is a small town. By way of comparison, a Winnipegger living in the far-flung (by our standards) Waverley West subdivision is as close to the centre of the city as a Torontonian living near the Yonge/401 junction,  a Los Angeles resident living in Los Feliz, or a Londoner living in Tottenham. That is to say, in an inner suburb if not in the heart of the city itself.

Other factors to consider:

• Would a move put a head office closer to the centre of the action? The Potash and Phosphate Institute of Canada moved its head office from Toronto to much smaller Saskatoon in the mid-’80s simply because Saskatchewan, not Ontario, was where the action was at in the industry.

• Would a move get a company away from political instability? Quebec saw a substantial loss of head offices over the years due to the threat of secession from Canada. Sun Life’s move to Toronto in the late ’70s caused an uproar in the province. Aviscar Inc., CP Rail, Zellers and Holt Renfrew followed in the ’80s and ’90s.

• Does a move put a company closer to a workforce with the skills it needs? Volkswagen of America announced plans in 2007 to move its headquarters from suburban Detroit to Herndon, Va., citing a better-educated workforce in Herndon as one of the key reasons for the move.

• Can you get to your customer’s offices — or to various parts of your corporate empire — nonstop? That was one of the reasons why Boeing moved its headquarters from Seattle to Chicago a decade ago: with company operating divisions (e.g., its Winnipeg operation) and its customers being scattered across the globe, it made more sense for Boeing to be based out of a global crossroads city like Chicago than in a less accessible city like Seattle.

Overall, Winnipeg will need to be selective about which head offices it goes after. A religious organization was a good try, though it would probably be better to aim for a company with a younger (read: easier to move) workforce. A major bank, on the other hand, is likely beyond our grasp for the simple reason that the Canadian financial industry — including the most talented people and the professional networks — are deeply rooted in Toronto.

A good starting point would be to look closely at the companies who hire people with skills already found in the Winnipeg workforce. For instance, there are small aerospace and health-related clusters that could be built upon.

Another important factor to look at: transportation links and proximity to where the action is. Winnipeg still has ties — threatened as they are — to agriculture, and good air access to Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Chicago and Denver. Beyond that, the connections are somewhat weaker.

But most important of all, it’s important not to get so caught up in the dream of making the “big catch” that we overlook the more worthwhile pursuit of growing the city’s small start-ups. Corporations can be extremely difficult to lure from their current hometowns if their employees have put down roots and if they’re located in the city where it makes the most sense for them to be located.

A small Winnipeg-based start-up, however, is more likely to remain based in Winnipeg if it grows to become a large firm.

Thanks, United Church, for taking a look at our city nevertheless. Your reasons for staying in Toronto are sound ones, and at least you won’t have to worry about being offended by our politicians’ creative use of the English language.

Fixing “Under-Educated Manitoba” could help ensure that Jets, Ikea are here to stay

“Stand with me on the top of the Union Bank building, Winnipeg’s new skyscraper, and take a look at the city. You had best pull your fur cap down over your ears and button your coon-skin coat tightly about you, for the wind is blowing a gale,” a writer named Frank G. Carpenter wrote in the Newark Sunday Call on Jan. 7, 1906.

“The air is nipping, but the sky is bright, and there is so much ozone that we seem to be breathing champagne. Have you ever felt so alive before?”

“Take a look over the city,” he continued. “It stretches out on all sides for miles. The new shingle roofs shine brightly under the Winter sun, and we can almost smell the paint of the suburban additions. Winnipeg is a grower.”

By 1992, the Union Bank Building’s condition seemed to symbolize Winnipeg’s deteriorating outlook. By the time the last tenant moved out of the increasingly decrepit building at the corner of William and Main that year, Calgary had long since displaced Winnipeg as the corporate capital of the prairie provinces, a necessary consequence of energy replacing agriculture, and services replacing manufacturing, as the west’s key job and wealth generators.

Buildings once occupied by regional and national head offices stood largely vacant. The provincial unemployment rate was 9.3 percent. The Jets were threatening to leave town, and would indeed do so four years later. The fading glory of the Eaton’s store on Portage Ave. portended the bankruptcy that followed just a few years later. Even the summer was a stinker, bringing one of the chilliest Julys in living memory, with 13 days of daytime highs of less than 20°C (68°F) — and the month’s warmest day only heating up to 26°C (79°F).

Nearly 20 years later, the city’s outlook is considerably brighter. The year 2011 brought the return of the Jets, construction continued at the strongest pace in decades, and the weather has been unbelievably good. The now-defunct Eaton’s chain will never return, of course, but the imminent arrival of Target and Ikea have many retail junkies excited. The main problem facing the local labour market is not unemployment, but skill shortages.

And, I originally forgot to mention, the Union Bank Building is coming back to life, with Red River College planning to move in.

Though it might feel as if the champagne days have returned, this is not a time to coast along, but rather to prepare as best we can for an unpredictable future.

Statistics Canada’s 2008 economic figures for each province should have sounded an alert that Manitoba’s current prosperity is perhaps a little too dependent on cheap borrowing (thanks, Bank of Canada, for the low interest rates!) and a tight labour market (thanks, Boomers, for retiring!) as opposed to solid long-term fundamentals.

In 2008, Manitoba ranked 10th among the 13 provinces and territories in workforce productivity — that is, the average economic value generated by every work-hour. This is an important measure of a province’s overall economic health, future prospects, and skill at getting the best out of its people.

This seems counter-intuitive, given that Manitobans are not particularly work-shy. In 2008, a larger share of Manitoba’s population was in the workforce than was the case in any part of Canada outside of Alberta and the northern territories. The British, whose press have complained for years about the country’s “long-hours culture”, devoted on average 50 fewer hours to their jobs in 2008 than Manitobans did, while the average American only spent about 20 minutes per day longer on the job.

So relax and enjoy your lunch hour away from your desk, and don’t go in to the office on Saturday if you don’t need to:  it’s not a lack of a work ethic that calls the sustainability of today’s economic optimism into question.

Rather, it’s in Manitoba’s traditionally weak education ethic that you’ll find the problem.

We have one of Canada’s lowest post-secondary attainment rates, which sends the message to businesses across Canada and around the world that “Manitoba” is not synonymous with “quality”, at least as far as the labour force is concerned.

In the 2006 census, we ranked 10th among the 13 provinces and territories in terms of the percentage of 25 to 64 year olds with post-secondary credentials in any form, whether it be a college diploma, university degree or a trades designation.

Only Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Nunavut ranked worse.

If Manitoba had achieved Nova Scotia’s fifth-place ranking — 61% of Nova Scotians aged 25-64 had post-secondary credentials, compared to 54% of Manitobans — prospective investors would have had 37,500 more skilled Manitobans to choose from.

And 37,500 Manitobans would have had a brighter future.

As a community becomes better-educated, the community starts to take on a more winsome image: job growth in the sciences takes off, the city’s arts and cultural community gets larger, more people start living downtown, and public transit use goes up (take note, urbanists).

An October 2011 Statistics Canada study even found evidence that an education ethic improves public health: 25-year old women with university degrees could expect to live four years longer than their friends who never finished high school, while 25-year old men with university degrees could expect a six-year advantage.

But it’s creating more jobs in the sciences, in particular, which could help Manitoba boom — and ensure that the Jets, Ikea and today’s young people will be here to stay.

A strong supply of people with scientific training is what separates the dynamic economies from the rest. It’s why, if you were asked to name Canada’s most successful or appealing cities, you’d likely name the ones with the largest number of science-related jobs as a proportion of the workforce: Ottawa, Calgary, Quebec City, Toronto and Victoria.

Percentage of local workforce in natural/applied sciences occupations (2006 census)

Science-related jobs can deliver big returns. Among OECD countries — excluding a couple of outliers — every dollar spent on research and development in 2006 was linked to an average of $17 in additional economic activity.

If you could spend $1 and get $17 in benefits from it, would you? Of course you would.

Research and development could be to Manitoba what oil is to Alberta and Newfoundland-Labrador, and what potash is to Saskatchewan.

But it requires easy access to people with professional training in mathematics, computers and information technology, the physical and life sciences, the social and behavioural sciences, and in management and administration.

That’s an area where Manitoba has long fallen short. We’ve traditionally been better at producing high school dropouts than scientists.

That has been changing gradually. Over the past 20 years, recent governments have recognized that the unusually large numbers of Manitobans with low levels of education are holding the province back. They buy less from local businesses, they pay less tax, and they are more likely to become dependent on social services.

Bringing an education ethic back to Manitoba needs to be Job #1 for the next few provincial governments.

This can be done in a couple of ways. One is by continuing the Healthy Child and Career Trek programs aimed at building ambition in young children. Another is by lobbying the federal government to continue allowing Manitoba to take in large numbers of immigrants. As immigrants are more likely to send their children on to post-secondary education than non-immigrants, the current immigration policies bring an excellent hope of achieving cultural change through demographic change.

We need to put as much passion into ensuring that 95 percent of Manitobans born in 2015 will graduate from high school on-time in 2033 — and that 75 percent will have completed some form of post-secondary education by their 25th birthdays in 2040 — as we did into bringing the Jets, Ikea and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights to town.

And we need to embrace the idea that successful cities and provinces are not necessarily defined by the stuff they have, but by how well or how poorly their people are educated.

Because if we don’t have big-city brains, it will be tougher for us to hold on to our big-city toys.

And if we reach these ambitious goals, perhaps someday a foreign correspondent will once again stand atop a Winnipeg skyscraper in the cold winter wind, marvel at how fast the city is growing and how prosperous it looks, and once again proclaim that “Winnipeg is a grower.”

QX 104, Ignite 107 seek stronger signals in Winnipeg

Have you been having trouble getting clear reception of QX 104 or Ignite 107 on your alarm clock radio or in the office?

Apparently the owners of those two stations have heard your complaints, and are taking steps to improve reception in Winnipeg.

QX 104 has been battling the fuzzies since it signed on in 1981 as CFQX 92.9, a small-town community station from Selkirk with little more than a fringe signal in parts of Winnipeg. A new, higher-powered transmitter and a move to 104.1 in the late ’80s allowed the station to reach a larger audience and possibly save the station from going dark.

Their equipment still wasn’t able to push a fuzz-free signal in office buildings and high-density neighbourhoods, so the station is seeking broadcast regulator permission to move from its current transmitter site just west of Selkirk to a new site near Oakbank, about 15 kilometres closer to central Winnipeg.

If approved, this should guarantee a reliable signal on even the cheapest of the city’s radios, as well as providing the Steinbach area with better coverage.

A transmitter closer to Winnipeg will leave some listeners in Gimli, Winnipeg Beach and other Interlake communities with a weaker signal.

QX 104′s request comes on the heels of Ignite 107.1 getting regulatory approval last month to upgrade its flea-powered signal.

The plan approved by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) will see Ignite 107.1 close down its 920-watt transmitter on top of Chateau 100 on Donald St. and switch on a new 100,000-watt system on Highway 2 between Oak Bluff and Starbuck.

This move will allow Ignite to offer a better signal on indoor radios in suburban areas, and expand its car radio coverage to Morden, Winkler, Portage, Stonewall and Steinbach. Indoor fuzziness might continue to be an issue in the downtown area and the eastern half of Winnipeg.

The station previously had a troubled history, once shutting down for a year due to financial difficulties, returning to air, and then continuing to bleed red ink  until it was sold to Golden West Broadcasting in 2008 for less than the cost of a Vancouver handyman-special bungalow.

Ignite’s move into the big leagues will reduce the city’s stock of low-powered microstations by one, leaving only 45-watt CJNU 107.9, 250-watt Kick FM 92.9 and  450-watt CKUW 95.9 continuing to operate at less than 1,000 watts.

Compulsory voting, E-voting leave root causes of low voter turnout unresolved

“Aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda,” goes an old Spanish saying. “Although the monkey dresses in silk, it is still a monkey.”

It’s a reminder that spin and cosmetic changes designed to mask an underlying structural problem ultimately cost a lot of money, but fail to correct the original problem.

We’re seeing some of that in response to the fact that only 57 percent of enumerated voters, or roughly 45 percent of the province’s voting-age population, turned out to cast ballots in the Oct. 4 election — one of the lowest rates in Manitoba’s history.

Talk since then of Manitoba needing compulsory voting or e-voting to boost voter turnout suggests that some people are ready to call in the tailor to start taking the monkey’s measurements.

Compulsory voting certainly does get voters out to the polls. In August 2010, 81 percent of voting-age Australians turned out to elect 150 members of the country’s lower house of Parliament, under the threat of a $20 Aus. ($21 Cdn.) fine for unexcused no-shows.

This came shortly after Belgium’s compulsory June 2010 elections, in which 89 percent of registered voters turned out to vote on the threat of fines starting at 50 Euro ($70 Cdn.)

E-voting is still in the experimental stages worldwide.

But compulsory voting and e-voting both have a flaw: these changes assume that the distaste that many Manitobans feel for politics is unwarranted.

Their distate for politics is, in fact, perfectly legitimate. For a generation that grew up in a world where diversity, choice and individuality were next to godliness, the political world has little to offer.

Experience shows that cajoling people to vote does not build a better or more respectful relationship between the political world and the rest of the public.

A 2005 survey of 1,393 Australians for the World Values Survey found that only 34 percent of Australians had “a great deal” (4%) or “quite a lot of confidence” (30%) in Parliament.

When the same question was last asked in Belgium in 1999, only 36 percent of the 1,830 Belgians polled expressed confidence in Parliament (3% “a great deal” and 33% “quite a lot”).

This was comparable to the 38 percent of 2,036 Canadians, asked the same question in 2006, who expressed confidence in our own Parliament (4% “a great deal” and 34% “quite a lot”).

There is further evidence that compulsory voting in particular is no magic cure to voter apathy:

• A 2010 discussion paper from the Study Center Gerzensee in Switzerland found that “compulsory voting increases the share of uninformed voters, thereby making special-interest groups more influential” which “thus receive more generous rents under compulsory voting…. Compulsory voting may thus well lead to policies that make even less privileged citizens worse off.”

 

• A 2003 Elections Canada report examining foreign compulsory voting systems found that any compulsory voting scheme must be backed up by the will and the resources to fine and/or prosecute non-voters: “[C]ompulsory voting does not really have any effect unless penalties are stipulated for electors who decide to abstain. A merely symbolic obligation is not sufficient.” This could become controversial if these fines fall disproportionately upon the poor, as they inevitably would, or if people avoid the possibility of being fined by simply refusing to be enumerated.

 

• A 2008 study of enforced voting and political awareness by three political scientists at the Université de Montréal found that “avoiding forgoing money cannot be assumed to be a sufficient motivator for getting [voters] to learn more about politics,” thus casting doubt on the idea that compulsory voting will lead to a better-engaged public. The study involved two groups of students: “half the students were required to complete two surveys; the other half were also required to vote.”

As for e-voting from the comfort of your home or a public computer, the risks to the integrity of the electoral process are downright alarming, as one report on Estonia’s experiences with e-voting noted:

“E-voting brings along many concerns of fraud and privacy associated with remote balloting, including the risk that voters who do not cast their votes in the privacy of a voting booth, may be subject to coercion, or that voters have the opportunity to easily sell their vote. During the last elections in Estonia some vote-buying incidents became public and the problem has been blown up in mass media. This is partly the reason why the e-voting concept suggests that the re-voting should be allowed. The fact that voter has always a possibility to re-vote, even in the controlled area on elections day, can minimise the number of manipulative attempts.”

Those interested in improving voter turnout rates here in Canada would be well advised to take a closer look at Sweden, where more than 82 percent of the voting age population showed up at the polls in the 2010 parliamentary election — the third consecutive election in which turnout was higher than it was at the previous election.

What’s remarkable about Sweden is that it’s all voluntary. No one in Sweden is compelled to vote.

Even the young turn out to vote. In 1998, 74 percent of Swedes aged 18 to 22 years turned out to vote. This was considered alarmingly low by Swedish standards:

“A fall in 1998 started a debate about declining voter participation in Sweden. The problem was considered especially serious since the average turnout was even lower among first-time voters: 74 percent for those aged 18–22. A lack of confidence in politicians or politics as a means of changing the world was advanced as possible explanations. Established political parties also reported, and still report, a declining interest among young people in becoming politically active. At the same time new groups and organizations with a strong political message are gaining support, mainly from young people.”

Some notable differences between Sweden and Canada:

• Swedish MPs are seated according to the multi-member constituencies they represent, not by party. This reinforces the concept that MPs are expected to work (and even socialize) together across party lines.

 

• Sweden’s parliament is elected by proportional representation to a fixed, four-year term. Since there is no threat of a snap election, and since special interest groups cannot cause large-scale political career terminations by mobilizing small numbers of voters, party discipline need not be as militaristic and kowtowing to politically crucial subgroups need not be as obligatory as it is elsewhere. In other words, there’s more latitude to tell the truth.

 

• Swedish culture has a solid “moderation in all things” ethic and a strong egalitarian mindset. Therefore, attack ads and appeals to narrow groups of voters to the exclusion of others are considered even more distateful than they would be here.

New Zealand has also been successful in getting voters out to the polls voluntarily. Nine of their past 10 parliamentary elections saw 75 percent or more of the voting age population turn out to vote. (Why voluntary turnout is so high in N.Z. remains a bit of a mystery, but it’s worth looking into. Perhaps it’s related to New Zealand being a small and isolated society with a remarkably open and honest system of government.)

But don’t hold your breath waiting for anyone in the political game to look overseas for inspiration and then act on it. It’s much easier to just dress the monkey up in silk.

Inside the New YWG

We were supposed to be passengers — but we acted like tourists.

I had the good fortune recently to receive an invitation to be one of more than 1,000 Winnipeggers to participate in Saturday’s dress rehearsal for the opening of the new Winnipeg airport terminal. After checking in on the lower level, I waited anxiously for my group — Wave 8, denoted by our blue folders — to be escorted into the new terminal building to assume our randomly assigned mock identities. My job was to play the role of “Pam McDavidtest”, departing for Thunder Bay on WestJet 4855 and returning on a flight from Toronto.

First stop was at the WestJet check-in kiosk to collect my boarding pass. Even though I’m usually fairly proficient with a check-in kiosk, a WestJet agent helped me with the task, clearly having as much fun as I was.

Unlike the old Winnipeg airport terminal, where each airline had dedicated desk space, the new terminal appears to offer much more flexibility to reassign counters from one airline to another as needs change, as indicated by the monitors above each check-in station. At the same time, each kiosk can be used to check in for any of the four major airlines serving Winnipeg — Air Canada, WestJet, Delta or United.

A couple of things stand out about this area. First, the washrooms are not particularly easy to find, as they are concealed behind the check-in counters and located at the far end of the hall. Second, Winnipeg has clearly learned from other airports the importance of placing the bulk of restaurants and amenities in the secure area of the airport (à la  Minneapolis/St. Paul). This will avoid the common complaint heard about many other airports of there being little in the way of food or beverage options post-security.

After checking in, it’s time to head off to the left and go through security. The security machines haven’t been set up yet, so the real test of how well the system works will be when the terminal opens for real on Oct. 30.

After clearing security, the one thing missing (or perhaps just not installed yet) are departure monitors if you want to reconfirm your flight’s gate or departure status. Turn left toward Gate 7 and check the monitors near there if you need to. Or if you need to put your belt back on and refill your pockets, there’s a little lounge area  you can retreat to, out of the way of other passengers.

Here we are — checked in, cleared through security and now at the gate. At the old Winnipeg airport, you almost expected to run into Dracula from time to time thanks to the ’60s-style Brutalist architecture which kept outside light to a minimum. By contrast, the new terminal has floor to ceiling windows, allowing in plenty of natural light.

Departure area amenities include a convenience store, a T.G.I. Friday’s, a Gondola Pizza and a Tim Horton’s outlet near Gate 9.

The carpeted floors might be a bit of a challenge over time, as carpets need more intensive maintenance to keep in good condition and to prevent bubbles from forming in places where the underlying glue has become ineffective.

One thing I was glad to see was that the departure lounge wasn’t littered with blaring TV sets. This will be a welcome change from the usual noise-polluted airport experience, and is reminiscent of the “quiet airport” policy enforced by some New Zealand airports.

Let’s take a quick look at the washroom while we’re here. No sign here of any mischievous family-values politicians giving new meaning to the phrase “making a connection”.

Let’s backtrack to the other end of the terminal, where we find a boarding area equipped with movable glass walls. Based on the closed corridor separating arriving and departing passengers, it appears as though this will be the boarding area for flights departing to the U.S. Like many other major Canadian airports, Winnipeg offers U.S. Customs and Border Patrol pre-clearance, permitting most flights from Canada to arrive at domestic gates in the U.S., freeing up the scarcer supply of international gates for other aircraft.

Alright, let’s go down to the baggage claim area with its distinctive polka-dot lights. Very nice indeed.

At about this point, I threw caution to the wind and slipped past a “Do Not Enter” sign and found myself in the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) secondary inspection area. A few of us checked out the inspection desks and the tiny interrogation rooms where you’ll end up if your inspection goes really badly.  But I don’t have any pictures to show you, unfortunately, as a CBSA officer walked in and pleasantly asked that we refrain from taking pictures in that particular area, even though it’s still very much under construction.

Though I’ll be the first to admit that the relationship between CBSA and the travelling public has been strained at times from both parties’ point of view, I still adhere to the idea that Rule #1 for any traveler should be Don’t screw around with Customs and Immigration. So, no photo.

Finally, it’s time to leave the terminal via the lower-level Arrivals hall. Hotel shuttle pickups are just outside the door — but there’s no sign yet of where Winnipeg Transit buses will stop. (Or will that be upstairs, at the departures level?)

Overall, an attractive and easy-to-navigate new terminal that will give travelers much of what they’ve come to expect from an airport.

Did Carlton St. shooting prompt Air Canada to remove crews from downtown Winnipeg?

An interesting post from “Longhauler”, seemingly an Air Canada crew member, on the Airliners.net Civil Aviation discussion forum. The shooting he is likely referring to is the Sept. 19th shooting on Carlton Street, about 350 metres from the Radisson Hotel.

Air Canada recently announced that its crews would no longer be staying at the hotel for security reasons.

No this decision came from the Corporate Security department of the airline. This large department is always doing “risk assessment” everywhere Air Canada flies. Not just for aircrew safety when away from base, but also for passengers and aircraft.

 For example, a few years back, there was concern about Tel Aviv. As a result, aircraft and crew were laying over in Cyprus, then shuttling back and forth to pick up and drop off passengers. These types of risk assessments are continually done everywhere worldwide Air Canada flies.

 In the case of Winnipeg, if I understand correctly, the final straw was a murder in the parking lot of the hotel during daylight hours. Combined with continued concern from police reports, the risk was considered too high.

Thus, the decision to pull crews from downtown Winnipeg likely wasn’t driven by the availability of a better deal at the Sandman Hotel or to make some kind of point on the eve of a provincial election — just by the desire to protect the airline from lawsuits and operational problems.

Love or hate Air Canada’s crews and onboard service, you have to at least applaud their safety-first mindset, without which the airline wouldn’t have gone 28 years without a fatal accident. (The most recent fatal accident: the June 2, 1983 DC-9 fire in Cincinnati.)

* – See also Jean Leloup’s thoughtful post on Winnipeg’s pros and cons from a Calgarian’s point of view.