To the Editor:
We do not know yet whether the proposed gun legislation will pass. But we do wonder how politicians can promote a bill that is obviously unenforceable.
There will be a lot of guns that will not be registered. What is the government going to do about these unregistered guns? In the first place they have to find them.
They could fine or imprison a few hundred gun owners, but what to do with half a million? And the only way to find these unregistered guns is to issue search warrants and search the premises.
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But issuing individual search warrants is impractical, so the solution would be to issue the police blanket warrants that would enable them to search any premises.
This would create a police state. That would be hard to explain to the rest of the world.
What if they were to find half a million unregistered guns?
The cost of taking this many people to court, and fining them, would be prohibitive, and if the majority of them refused to pay the fines, we have no jails to put them in. Do we build more jails or concentration camps for the offenders?
Canada is one of the most law-abiding and safest countries to live in.
Are our political leaders trying to destroy that image?
The Meech Lake Accord destroyed the Mulroney government. Gun legislation could do the same to the ChrŽtien government.
– J. R. Clayton,
Killarney, Man.
Go, Jack, go
To the Editor:
I read with amazement the remarks that Mr. Jack Messer, SaskPower president, made (Western Producer, Aug. 10) when he announced that SaskPower planned a rate increase.
He said that industrial customers were subsidizing the residential and farm consumers.
And he added that farmers are complacent and will accept it.
This is typical of the man to whom the present government of Roy Romanow has entrusted the management of SaskPower. An attitude of “kick-them-while-they’re-down” at a time when farmers are getting knocked from every angle – loss of the Crow, bugs and now electrical rate increases.
This closed-mind posture is one of the reasons Saskatchewan is a depressed province in the area of industry and population.
First of all, Mr. Messer seems to be out of touch. Stats Canada states in its June 1995 statistics that Saskatchewan residential customers are paying 8.65 cents per kilowatt hour or 75 percent more for electricity than industrial consumers who pay 4.94 cents per kwh.
Our rates have increased 11.8 percent in the last three years and now Mr. Messer proposes to raise them another 7.75 percent in the next three years – a whopping 191Ú2 percent in six years.
Mr. Messer had a golden opportunity to streamline the operations of SaskPower and save money for the taxpayers. Late in 1993 with much fanfare and prodding from the public, they called for 25 mw electrical co-generation demonstration projects from the business community.
Co-generation is waste products produced by industry such as pulp mills that is generated into electricity. Their surplus power can be fed into the provincial power grid.
In February 1994, this project was abruptly cancelled by SaskPower even though the agencies involved had to shoulder the cost of preparing the projects.
Mr. Messer stated later that SaskPower would have to shut down generating facilities if they took on any power from co-generation.
What a lost opportunity to create more jobs and save money through this type of conservation!
Then recently again, Sask.Power cancelled another project, this time a wind power demonstration that was to establish renewable energy alternatives, a system now in use in Alberta. Again this would have created more jobs.
Instead, SaskPower still insists on spending the taxpayers’ money on projects such as the $40-million 230 kv transmission line between Condie (Regina) and Queen Elizabeth (Saskatoon). With no new customers in the north and a declining population, the logic defies scrutiny. The facts that SaskPower already has a deficit of $3 billion and borrowing on the project would directly impact on all taxpayers don’t even cross their minds. …
SaskPower needs a restructuring, starting with the removal of Mr. Messer and six vice-presidents. This would eliminate the need for a rate increase and provide the added benefit of sparing the Saskatchewan taxpayer Mr. Messer’s acrimonious babbling.
– Vi Fuchs,
Dilke, Sask.
Incentive rates
To the Editor:
The major grain companies, including Sask. Wheat Pool, have been explaining to us that incentive freight rates at high-capacity shipping points were the reason for abandoning branch-line small elevators.
Now, before the process of building the inland terminal system and “rationalizing” the rail system is complete, the railways are cutting back on incentive rates! What a surprise!
And the grain companies are crying (“Lower discounts may hurt handlers,” Western Producer, Aug. 10) that they may now have to cut back on plans for inland terminals, as they may now not be cost effective!
Whatever gave them the illusion that the same incentive rates would continue, after the railroads had their branch lines closed?
As with other corporations, the railways have only their “bottom line” to determine all decisions, so why would they continue to offer incentive rates after their purpose had been achieved?
Sask. Wheat Pool, and other companies blaming the railways for forcing them to centralize their facilities, may now be seen as using the railways as scapegoats to cover their own agenda of increasing profits by reducing the number of delivery points they were operating. It is a pity that the producers had such an ineffective voice as these changes were taking place. …
– Fred J. Grant,
Glenbush, Sask.
