Home life, Fifties-style (click for source)

We’re spending less time reading and socializing, and more time browsing the Internet and playing video games. So suggests a Statistics Canada study examining how Canadians use their time, quietly released last summer.

Adjusted for population growth, Canadians spent about four times as much time using their computers for recreational purposes in 2010 as they did in 1998. Though the gradual disappearance of the computerless household can be credited for part of this, so can a sharp rise (from 5% in 1998 to 24% in 2010) in the percentage of Canadians who spent at least part of the day puttering around on the computer.

Video games in particular enjoyed a meteoric rise over those 12 years, with the amount of time Canadians spent playing games — again adjusted for population growth — tripling between 1998 and 2010.

The biggest losers in this time-shift: reading and socializing at home.

Between 1998 and 2010, Canadians hacked 23 percent off their reading-time budgets and 15 percent off their socializing-at-home time.

Participation rates also tumbled, with the percentage of Canadians who spent part of their day reading books, newspapers and magazines dropping from one-third to one-quarter, and the percentage who spent time at home socializing with family and friends during the typical day dropping from 55 percent to 48 percent.

Television viewing took a smaller hit, the amount of time spent channel-surfing dropping by five percent between 1998 and 2010.

The effect can be seen in the nation’s bookstores and newspapers, both of which had a miserable first decade of the 21st century as demand for their products waned.

More time spent online is also poised to put more strain on Canada’s health care system in the future, with more time spent online being associated with higher levels of obesity and less Vitamin D intake, which in itself puts people “at risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and a lot of cancers”.

There were some bright spots, however.  Housekeeping, cooking and washing up took up less of Canadians’ time in 2010 than they did in 1998. We also got a little more sleep (13 minutes, or 3%, more per night in 2010 than we did in 1998).

The news was a little more mixed on the work front, with the average Canadian employee’s working hours being four minutes shorter in 2010 than in 1998, but the unpaid part of the workday — such as commuting — taking an extra eight minutes out of the day.

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.

In that spirit, here are a few favourite bits of good advice I still like to look over from time to time to put things into perspective. By posting them here, maybe they will help others in 2012:

• “Keep Calm and Carry On” – Government advice to British citizens during World War II

• “Whatever line of work you get into… make sure it’s something you love, something you enjoy doing. If you can accomplish this, you are bound to be successful.” – George Burns

• “One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!” – Former British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill

• “Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well find some way that is going to be interesting.” – Actress Katharine Hepburn

• “One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore faith in yourself.” – Actress Lucille Ball

• “The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy. I mean that if you are happy you will be good.” – Philosopher Bertrand Russell

• “Man is a rational animal – so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it.” – Bertrand Russell

• “Don’t get kicked out the back door. If you’re going to get kicked out, go out the front, with your dignity.” – Former Continental Airlines chief executive Gordon Bethune

• “Don’t worry about things that you have no control over, because you have no control over them. Don’t worry about things that you have control over, because you have control over them.”  - Mickey Rivers, former baseball player.

A happy New Year to all!

The View from Seven 2011 stats and factoids

Total visits to Dec. 30: 39,239 (mostly from within Manitoba, though there are “regulars” from around Canada and the U.S.)

Busiest Day: 409 visits on Sept. 1 (Canada’s analog-to-digital TV transition day, when a flood of visitors arrived wondering why they had suddenly lost their TV signals, using search terms like “No more TV in Manitoba what to do”)

The seven most-read posts of 2011 (to Dec. 30): 

1. Your Guide to Digital TV in Winnipeg and Southern Manitoba (5,652 visits)

2. The World’s Best Governments (1,171 visits)

3. Diner’s Digest lets you see health inspectors’ reviews of local restaurants (972 visits)

4. Transair: A Look Back at Winnipeg’s Hometown Airline (895 visits)

5. Winnipeg’s Housing Market: Out of balance, nice and tight, or vulnerable to rate shocks? (866 visits)

6. Several Manitoba communities set to lose service after Digital TV switchover (600 visits)

7. Northwest soon to become yet another YWG ghost (596 visits)

Top seven specific traffic sources aside from search engines (to Dec. 30):

1. One Man Committee (595 visits)

2. Anybody Want a Peanut? (428 visits)

3. Winnipeg Love Hate (368 visits)

4. Endless Spin Cycle (366 visits)

5. Progressive Winnipeg (293 visits)

6. Slurpees and Murder (213 visits)

7. West End Dumplings (175 visits)

Most Commented Post:   Your Guide to Digital TV in Winnipeg and Southern Manitoba (110 comments to date)

Best reader anecdote: “I enjoyed reading about Transair. Back in the 1960′s I was involved in rocket flights out of Churchill had have fond memories of flying their DC-4, CF-TAW, that was only 4-years younger than I. There were stories of passenger participation in the operation. I myself asking the stewardess about 10 minutes out of Winnipeg whether the flaps should still be half extended. She said she would go up front to check. Within 30-seconds the flaps were fully retracted.” (By David Evans, June 11, 2011)

Most memorable search terms used to find this blog: Centreventure is evil, Will Princess Charles inherit the throne and Where to fuck in Belgium

Moving to another country is a resolution that likely crossed many minds in 2011.

While 2011 was a fairly positive year here in Winnipeg, the best thing many of the world’s seven billion people can say about 2011 is that it’s almost over.

It was a year that brought several calamities: revolution in the Arab world, natural disasters in Japan and New Zealand and economic and political turmoil in Europe.

It ended with Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s deranged despot (and supposed golf pro), dropping dead and turning the fate of 24 million North Koreans, and every soldier in every army with a stake in East Asian peace, over to an inexperienced 27-year-old.

Though it’s unlikely that anyone in North Korea ever sees this blog, there has been a steady stream of visitors landing on this blog  by doing keyword searches for “best countries to live in” and “world’s best government”. This brings visitors to “The World’s Best Countries” (Nov. 17, 2009)  and “The World’s Best Governments” (Jan. 8, 2011).

Since there seems to be the demand out there for this information, I’ve decided to do a follow-up to the 2009 post, putting together a list of the world’s 20 best countries to have been living in in 2011 based on their rankings in four indexes:

• The United Nations’ Human Development Index, focusing on the basic elements of the good life, such as health and literacy.

• The Swiss-based International Institute for Management Development’s World Competitiveness Yearbook, focusing on economic fundamentals.

• Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, focusing on honest, open government.

• Vision of Humanity’s Global Peace Index, focusing on citizens’ physical safety.

The idea here is that the better a country ranks across all four indexes, the closer it is likely to have come to securing the best possible life for its citizens. Taken together, the lessons learned from these countries could be the basis of an instruction manual, How to Run a Country and Do a Good Job of It.

Perhaps these rankings will even help someone who resolves to get out from under their abusive or inept government find the country that’s right for them in 2012.

(Click to view in a new window)

Its roots lie in the ’90s, when the federal government began privatizing Canada’s international airports and the air traffic control system, replacing a taxpayer-funded air travel system with a user-pay model.

In many ways, it was a progressive move. No longer would low-income earners who rarely used the system have to subsidize frequent Business Class travelers. Airports and air traffic control, meanwhile, were free to raise funds without having to be as sensitive to political considerations, as was the case in the days when a small regional airport’s careless use of the public’s money could turn into a big headache for the federal Minister of Transport.

But it was also controversial. Somebody would have to collect the money from travelers. Either it would have to be the airports, by charging admission to the departure area, or the airlines, by adding extra fees to the cost of each ticket.

Eventually, the airlines were given the job of collecting the funds and passing them along to others.

This, in turn, raised the ire of passengers, who resented the fact that the sweet $758 fare to Paris escalated to $1,281 after all the taxes, fees and surcharges were added on.

Fare, taxes and surcharges for a Delta Airlines Winnipeg-Paris round trip in April, 2012

After years of complaints, the federal government recently announced that new rules are on the way requiring airlines to show the combined fare, plus taxes and surcharges.

But here’s what will be missing: all the little extras that the airlines have started charging for.

In fact, by putting pressure on the airlines to show the lowest possible fare in their advertisements in order to stay competitive with cross-border rivals, Ottawa might be perversely encouraging airlines to be more ruthless in extracting dollars from other sources.

An extreme example of this is Ryanair, which has become one of the world’s most profitable airlines by charging extremely low up-front fares, such as London-Rome for £16 ($26 Cdn.), and then hitting passengers up for more money later on.*

Some examples from the Skytrax airline review site include:

• One passenger returning to the U.K. from Gran Canaria was asked by a gate agent to put his bag into a metal basket in order to check its size. When it didn’t fit, he was told that he would have to pay a 40 Euro ($54 Cdn.) penalty.

• Another British passenger en route to Spain reported spending £48 ($77 Cdn.) so that his family could have “priority boarding” privileges — only to find that other passengers who hadn’t purchased the priority boarding option were allowed to barge past them.

• Multiple passengers noted that, if you don’t print off your boarding pass on your home or office printer, Ryanair will gladly print one for you — for   £40 ($64 Cdn.) per boarding pass.

Baggage allowance costs extra on Ryanair — ranging from £15 to £130 ($24 to $209 Cdn.) for the first bag, depending on where and when you fly and whether the fee is collected online or at the airport.

The excess baggage charges kick in, however, at just 15 kilograms (33 lbs.) Exceed this limit, and you’ll be charged an extra £20 per kilogram ($32).

Under Europe’s relatively tough consumer protection laws, it’s all perfectly legal.

Even U.S. and Australian airlines have taken to charging for extras that are still available at no extra charge on Canadian carriers in order to keep their up-front fares as low as possible.

Denver-based Frontier Airlines charges most passengers aside from frequent fliers $6 to activate the in-flight entertainment system, while Australia’s Jetstar charges $3 for a soft drink, another $3 for a chocolate bar, and $10-$15 to use their in-flight entertainment system.

Could Air Canada and WestJet go down that route?

It’s conceivable, if lowering or eliminating the free baggage allowance, free beverages, and free entertainment allowed them to show the consumer a lower up-front cost. After all, the new regulations would presumably only apply to fuel surcharges and fees that the airlines collect on others’ behalf — not to amenities and conveniences.

In fact, it might make sense for the airlines to do that. If someone buys a $500 suit at The Bay, will they throw in a cup of coffee at The Paddlewheel at no extra charge?

Not a chance. So, why should the airlines do so?

Ottawa needs a victory that will allow it to score points with consumers. Airlines need a low up-front fare to “hook” passengers — but still take in enough money to pay their bills. Eventually, something will have to give.

* – For more on Ryanair’s extra charges, see the following courtesy of the BBC’s Panorama documentary program.

Yes, it’s true that there has been a sharp rise in the national unemployment rate since the frightening Fall of 2008, when the sub-prime mortgage crisis evolved into a serious threat to the solvency of the banks to which millions of people had entrusted their savings.

Yet the crisis seemed to by-pass Winnipeg.

In the midst of the “greatest crisis since the Depression”, the city still boasts a better unemployment rate today than it did in the mid-to-late ’80s boom (when unemployment was in the 8% range), and remains far below what we suffered through in 1992-94, when Winnipeg was afflicted with three consecutive awful years of 10-11 percent unemployment rates.

Winnipeg's unemployment rate since the mid-'80s (© Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate, Univ. of B.C.)

Other Canadian cities haven’t been so lucky.

The following chart shows how the median total family income changed in 27 metropolitan areas across the country (28 if you count the Ontario and Quebec parts of metropolitan Ottawa-Gatineau separately, as Statistics Canada does below). In 13 metro areas, the typical family was worse off in 2009 than in 2008.

Percentage change in median total family income between 2008 and 2009 (Source: Statistics Canada)

Why might some cities have been luckier than others?

I revisited an old data file I still have on my hard drive, containing as much data about 25 Canadian cities as I could download from Statistics Canada’s 2006 Census Community Profiles site.

When I entered the 2008-09 percentage change in each community’s median family income, and looked for correlations, an interesting picture began to emerge.*

• The “wealthier” cities took the biggest hit. The higher a city’s typical family income was back in 2005, the more likely that city was to be hit hard by events in 2008-09. Boomtowns such as Calgary and Edmonton, and “auto towns” like Windsor and Oshawa, saw family incomes drop between 2008 and 2009. Cities that were less affluent to start with came through the crisis in better shape.
   
  As higher-income cities tended to have more expensive housing markets, the 2008-09 crisis thus tended to be cruelest to those with the highest monthly mortgage and rental payments. There were also signs that the faster a city’s population grew between 2001 and 2006, the bigger the impact of the crisis.
   
  Note that this should not be taken as a defence of anemic income growth, as even those cities that took the hardest hit remained more affluent afterwards.

• Cities with larger immigrant populations tended to take a harder hit.This probably reflects the tendency for immigrants to flock to cities which are experiencing booms, and to be at a higher risk of being laid off when the economy goes sour.
   
  While continued immigration into Winnipeg from around the world continues to be a good thing — isolated communities in particular need an infusion of new people and new perspectives from time to time — this should serve as a warning that we should use the good times, while they last, to prepare newcomers now so that they have the skills and qualifications to survive a downturn.

• Health care jobs as a shock absorber? Cities with larger numbers of health care workers as a percentage of the local workforce tended to come through the 2008-09 crisis in better shape. Many of these jobs are secure right now thanks to an aging population, and well-paying to boot, so it makes sense that the larger their share of the workforce, the better the community is able to withstand economic shocks.
   
  It’s also worth noting that communities with larger numbers of people employed in “social science, education, government service and religion” — a number of these being university towns and/or smaller provincial capitals — seemed to come through the 2008-09 crisis in better shape, though the correlation is just shy of the cut-off I’ve used here.

* – Pearson correlations of 0.500/-0.500 or stronger. Based on 24 of the 25 cities in my data file, thanks to Statistics Canada’s inconvenient splitting of metropolitan Ottawa-Gatineau into two parts.

His candid observations for the benefit of his readers back home in Australia, from the “ghost town” feel of Winnipeg’s strangely empty streets to Osborne Village’s “cool” artistic vibe, is worth reading if you’re interested in getting a grasp on how outsiders view our city and what the “ideal” Winnipeg should be like. (A tip of the hat to James Hope Howard of Slurpees and Murder for bringing this to my attention.)

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.

I know — ideally, it shouldn’t still be there, but rather have been redeemed for a ballot at the polling station.

I admit it: I didn’t vote in the Winnipeg School Division Ward 1 by-election to replace former trustee Joyce Bateman, who was elected to Parliament as a Conservative MP in the May 2011 federal election.

In fact, very few residents voted.

Only six percent of enumerated voters actually cast ballots in the Nov. 26 Ward 1 by-election: 2,626 voters showed up in the ward covering Fort Rouge, River Heights, Osborne Village and Crescentwood, an area containing more than 25,000 households — and normally one of the city’s most electorally engaged neighbourhoods.

In a part of town that tends to spread its electoral bets — my federal MP, provincial MLA and city councillor are, respectively, a Conservative, a Liberal and a man whose family has long been associated with the NDP — it’s perhaps fitting that the Liberal-turned-Conservative Joyce Bateman has been replaced on the school board by the NDP-affiliated Mark Wasyliw.

Personally, I’ve voted in most election since turning 18, just enough years ago to remind me that I’ll soon be 40, missing just one provincial election along the way in a bout of cynicism.

It’s the one gap in what has been otherwise a proudly inconsistent voting record. (I’ve voted for each of the three parties represented in the Legislature at least once, and for a similar number of federal parties.)

Now there’s a second, admittedly small, gap in my voting record.

This lapse comes just a few days after Elections Canada released a report examining why it’s so painfully difficult to get younger Canadians aged 18-34 years out to the polls or interested in politics.

Elections Canada records show that about 36 percent of enumerated 18-34 year olds turned out to vote in the May 2011 federal election. Factor those who were never enumerated at all into the equation, and the real turnout was probably much lower.

The single most common reason why younger Canadians didn’t vote in the federal election, according to the Elections Canada/R. A. Malatest telephone survey of 2,665 voters and non-voters: being “too busy” with other things.

I suppose that category adequately describes my own reason for not voting in Saturday’s school board by-election. Had I been sitting at home, bored, I probably would have spent a couple of hours reading up on the candidates, and then would have walked over to the high school to vote.

Yet, I was neither bored nor sitting around at home. A low-stakes school board election just wasn’t all that important; an opinion reinforced by the fact that the only signs I saw of a campaign were two brief on-the-street encounters with the energetic and affable Ben Shedden* and an irritating pre-recorded voice mail message in which someone whose name I’ve forgotten endorsed someone else whose name I’m not sure of — possibly Mark Wasyliw. (That goes to show how much attention I pay to this tacky campaign technique.)

All other candidates — and issues — were out of sight and out of mind.

Evidently, the other 94 percent of enumerated voters who never showed up felt much the same way.

But, as is often the case with open-ended survey questions, the “too busy” label only scratches the surface. It’s an answer the interviewer accepts without much further investigation before moving on. (With public patience for telephone polls and telemarketers becoming scarce, the interviewer has little choice.)

Scratch the surface, and you’ll find that when someone tells the interviewer that they were “too busy” to do something, it really means that it just wasn’t that important. If it had been important, they would have made time for it.

The “too busy” answer is simply a way of being polite.

How can politics and voting be made more important? There is no easy answer to that, as it is difficult to make people care about things unless you can show some kind of personal impact or tug at their heartstrings.

Few people give more than a fleeting thought to politics in their day to day lives. They’re spending most of their waking hours thinking about how to protect themselves against life’s uncertainties, solve their immediate problems, and scanning the crowd, looking (or at least window shopping) for a good set of genes or a good provider to mate with.

They sometimes care about other issues, but not that much.

In a previous era, politics fulfilled people’s social needs. In a small community, taking part in politics was a productive way of meeting people, and a welcome break from the monotony of small-town life and the isolation of farm life. In an era when political patronage was considered more acceptable than it is today, becoming involved in politics also made sense from a business and financial point of view.

Small-town life, however, is no longer the norm in Canada, as the nation continues to consolidate into 6-8 major metropolitan areas and their hinterlands. Public tolerance for political patronage has worn thin (and rightfully so), leaving the vast majority of the public, aside from those few with political aspirations of their own, with nothing to be gained by joining a party.

So here’s an idea: let’s recognize the “your vote is important” message for being the insincere flattery that it is. Most younger Canadians know when their vote is important and when it’s not.

Let’s toss out the idea that the key to getting more voters to the polls is through e-voting, a faddish idea that would put the integrity of the electoral system at risk. If people really want to vote, they’ll find a way of getting to the poll.

Let’s shelve the old argument that those who don’t vote have no right to complain. Few young Canadians fall for that kind of manipulation. They know that human rights law and their citizenship backs up their right to complain.

Let’s recognize that mass participation in politics is not always a healthy thing for democracy. Though high voter turnout tends to be a sign of strong levels of public trust in their institutions and each other, high levels of partisanship are signs of a more troubled society. Aside from the United States, most countries with high levels of party affiliation are undesirable places to live, usually due to the corruption and patronage that is likely making it worthwhile to take out a party membership to begin with.

And as the U.S. example shows, high levels of partisanship can make disputes much more difficult to resolve. In a healthy democracy, card-carrying party members should make up no more than two to three percent of the population.

Let’s allow the old myth that politics is so important that the vast majority of the population should be involved at all times — politics are important, but not that important — to recede gracefully into the past, and accept the right for people to increase or reduce their political engagement as it suits them.

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* – Had Shedden simply mentioned that he was the only education professional running for election — an angle I uncovered while writing this post — I would have made a conscious note to go out and vote for him. Unique qualifications do stand out — but only if the voter knows about them.

What if going to another country were as easy as locking the front door and stepping just down the street?

A relatively low fence separates these homes in Surrey, B.C. from a small playground across the street in Blaine, Wash.

...While this fence separating Tecate, Mexico from Tecate, Calif. sends a more firm message

Even in this age of increasingly intensive border security, it’s still possible to do that in parts of the world.

I’m not talking here about  the many border cities that face each other across rivers and straits, such as Detroit, Mich. and Windsor, Ont., Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmo, Sweden or El Paso, Tex. and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. I’m talking about cities and towns where an international boundary cuts right through the middle of neighbourhoods, creating such an invisible line that, if you were in a helicopter looking down, it would be difficult to tell where one country begins and the other ends.

That’s the reality in several communities around the world which through some quirk of history ended up being split in two by a line on a map.

Is it "Chuy" or "Chui"? Depends on what side of the street you're on.

One community that is almost perfectly split in two is Chui, Brazil/Chuy, Uruguay. The border between the two countries runs down the town’s main street, curiously known as Av. Uruguai (Uruguay Ave.) on the Brazilian side of the street and Av. Brasil (Brazil Ave.) on the Uruguayan side. The split resulted from a long-running dispute between the two countries, with the fate of Chui/Chuy becoming the focal point.

The 10,000 locals and the tourists who drop in to visit the town’s many Duty Free shops are reportedly free to wander back and forth between the two parts of town at will, with customs and immigration posts being located on the roads to and from town.

The Town of Putte: Where Belgium and the Netherlands are just across the street from each other.

A similar situation can be found in Putte, Belgium/Netherlands, where homes on the opposite sides of Canadalaan (Canada Ave.) face each other across the international border.  The abolition of border controls between the Netherlands and Belgium have made life easier for the residents of Putte, whose town was once best known as a smuggler’s haven — and a headache for both Dutch and Belgian border guards.

The town has been divided since the Peace of Munster agreement between Spain and the Netherlands in 1648, which identified the town as the dividing point between the Dutch-ruled Northern Netherlands (now simply The Netherlands) and the Spanish-ruled Southern Netherlands (now Belgium).

There's no longer a border guard stationed at the striped pole and hut in Valga/Valka -- but keep your passport handy anyway.

The twin towns of Valga, Estonia and Valka, Latvia were actually a single town founded under the German name Walk  in 1286. When Estonia and Latvia declared independence from the Russian Empire amid the chaos of the Russian Revolution and the end of World War I, both tried to claim Valga/Valka as their own. A British civil servant named Stephen Tallents was dispatched to help resolve the dispute, which dragged on for six months until the two countries agreed to split the town in the summer of 1920.

The Soviet years brought some freedom to wander back and forth between the Estonian and Latvian parts of town, with the two being little more than Soviet provinces. When Estonia and Latvia regained their independence 20 years ago, life became more difficult for Valka/Valga’s residents, who had to pass through border checkpoints to visit friends or to go to work.

It wasn’t until 2007 that residents were once again allowed to wander around town without clearing customs,  though prominent gold-coloured signs posted along the border still warn locals to ensure that they are carrying passports when crossing frontiers.

The Estonian Valga is the more populous end of town, with a population of about 14,000, compared to Latvian Valka‘s 6,000 residents.

“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.”