Category Archives: Politics (MC Archive)

Politics columns that appeared on Jason Menard’s previous Web site, Menard Communications.

Retail Freeze – It’s Cold Enough, Thanks

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By Jason Menard

To think, just a little while ago there were discussions about a commercial land development freeze. It’s nice to see that Hyde Park’s heating up, but we’re certainly feeling the chill out in the South-Least!

Yes, those of us in the Pond Mills/Glen Cairn and surrounding areas can only shake our collective heads in disbelief as the city’s talking heads lament the saturation of market share in the Southwest and North part of the city, while our neck of the woods gets left out the discussion – again.

Our city planning and commercial development is totally out of whack, choosing to cater to the whims of the more affluent and trendy areas, than servicing regions that are woefully under-served and undervalued.

Southeast London is a wonderfully diverse region filled with people and families that span a myriad of social and cultural spectra. We feature a mix of well-to-do and not-so-well off. There are new families living close by those who have sown family roots in the area over a quarter-century ago.

Yet instead of appreciating our region, new developments – whether they’re cultural or economic – continually head to the same locations. So forgive us if, while you’re debating where to put yet another Wal-Mart or big box store, we come up with a few colourful suggestions as to where to stick it.

The argument can be made that the Southeast end of the city can rightly be called the gateway to London. With easy access to the 401 off of Highbury Ave (the old 126) the area appears to be ripe for exploitation. There’s an existing market clamouring for support, new developments such as Summerside that would relish the idea of local shopping convenience, and even smaller towns such as Dorchester whose residents would appreciate the shorter drive to retail opportunities.

Instead, we’re stuck with an eyesore of a retail space that’s a shopping centre in name only and that’s never given the area an opportunity to prove itself. The east end of Commissioners Road is a hit-and-miss retail environment with no firm anchor to which to tether. If those other regions of the city are too spoiled with riches to welcome a new retail development, then simply ride that gift horse to our neck of the woods – we’ll be glad to find it a home.

In addition to affluent families, the southeast end features a number of families requiring financial assistance. These families would relish the opportunity to have a worthwhile retail opportunity within walking distance. If our vaunted city planners cared to think outside the box a little, they’d see that any commercial development – whether it be a big box store, movie theatre, or even a large-name restaurant – would draw patrons from surrounding regions and stimulate economic growth and development in the area.

In other cities, large-scale retail operations like Costco, IKEA, and Sam’s Club prefer a location next to major highways. Save for the original Costco, all of our big box retailers have been placed in the less-accessible regions of our fair city. And yet an area just minutes from the highway remains neglected.

The concern for our community is that instead of being a place where people stay for generations, it is rapidly becoming just a stepping stone to other areas of the city. Instead of establishing roots, new families are setting up shop for a couple of years, only to move to other better-serviced areas.

The potential is there. New ownership at the Pond Mills Centre and a rezoning of the land on the South East corner of Commissioners and Highbury may mean that development is on its way.

It’s time to start treating the Southeast end of the city more like a gateway to London than its doormat. We need to find an answer to developmental tunnel vision — there’s so much more to London than just Westmount and Masonville.

2005 © Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

Sticks and Stones May Break Our Bones…

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By Jason Menard

I wonder, do Shriners hospitals offer a cure for thin skin?

In a desperate bid to keep by an official with the Shriner’s Hospital in Montreal, many people in the City of London have bristled at the fact that London was referred to as a less-than-cosmopolitan city. Suddenly some of the more notable talking heads in the city are lobbying missives back as if the entire Montreal region had been involved in this, instead of one, misguided individual.

The fact of the matter is that London isn’t cosmopolitan. It’s stuck at a crossroads and is in danger of being overwhelmed by inertia.

I have spent almost equal amounts of my life in both London and Montreal, and I’ve seen the good and the bad of both. I had to laugh when I read some of the comments that were made in an attempt – puerile as it may have been – to boost our city’s own fragile ego. It was almost as if we were back on the schoolyard, resorting to “My dad can beat up your dad.”

Sure, driving to work in Montreal would take me an hour – if I chose to take that route. But the commuter train and other methods of public transportation got me from one end of the island to my downtown office in 15 minutes. Conversely, it takes me 10 minutes to drive to work in London, but would take over an hour by bus. Considering we’re the Forest City, I’d have to say chock one up for la belle province.

London remains a medium-sized town with big-city aspirations that have been saddled with small-town thinking. For many years, the city has been considered bush league – and it’s evidenced by the fact that so many people feel the need to be over-protective of our accomplishments. One would think the JLC is an entertainment Mecca on par with Madison Square Garden considering the amount of times it has been trotted out in defence of this city’s cultural standing.

So instead of resorting to playground antics, maybe we should sit back and take a look at where this city is – and where it can go, if we let it!

We can be proud of our world-class hospital facilities – including the incoming Shriner’s Hospital – and the fact that we have one of the most respected education institutions in all of Canada thanks to the University of Western Ontario. We can hope that the vaunted JLC will serve as the start of a vital downtown revitalization. We can pride ourselves in the city’s beauty and relative safety.

But still that inertia remains. I recently spoke with one of this city’s radio voices, who shares a history with me in that we both attended Western and both left London for a number of years, only to return. And, despite the cosmetic changes like building changing names and stores changing ownership, we were both struck with the same idea – not much has changed in the past 10 years.

That social inertia seems to have gripped this city, and needs something to tip it over the brink. Does this city decide to turn the corner and modernize? Become aggressive in its approach to attracting new and dynamic industries? Or do we continue to be led by an Old Boys’ (and Girls’) network that doesn’t want to rock the conservative boat we’re on. Do we accept the status quo and be content?

The opinion of outsiders towards London can be summed up in one word – pleasant. Of course, that’s if outsiders even have an opinion of us. Like it or not, despite how self-important some Londoners feel, the fact of the matter is that we’re barely a blip on the cultural and social radar of the rest of Canada. So are we happy with this, or do we want to move forward and become a vital component of the country?

The Shriners offer an interesting metaphor for this city. On one hand, you have the traditionally older Shriner population being looked to as a key component of this city’s growth. But perhaps the focus should switch to the kids they are looking to help. A Shriners hospital works to give those children hope for a brighter future.

The choice is up to London. It’s great for a city to have the enthusiasm and potential of children, but it’s embarrassing for us to be acting like them.

2005 © Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

Hell No! We Won’t Go

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By Jason Menard

Here’s a phrase that should be familiar to the strikers and protesters who have been dominating the headlines lately: “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more.”

However, instead of being a rallying cry for us to get behind the oppressed workers, it now is a mantra echoed by the disenfranchised masses who are tired of having their needs held hostage for the betterment of someone else. It is painfully clear that the art of negotiation is one craft that’s in dire need of refining.

In what’s becoming an alarming trend, unions and protest groups have become so myopic that they have managed to do the one thing that seemed unpalatable to any of us left-leaning folk just a few short years ago – they’ve got us rooting for the big guys.

Whether it is teachers holding our kids’ education for ransom, tobacco farmers impeding traffic on major thoroughfares, or even millionaire hockey players rolling the dice on labour negotiations and crapping out, the majority of us are firmly on the side of the employers.

So the greater public, who generally struggle to make ends meet and put a little extra away for a rainy day, sides with The Man, while those with whom we would normally have the most affinity receive little to no sympathy. To review: an unholy alliance involving the School Board, the Government, and Billionaire Big-Business Owners are the good guys. But hard-working teachers, farmers living on the edge, and regular guys who are playing a game we’d give our right arm to play are on the biting edge of our venomous words.

And why is that? Because today’s unions and protest groups have neglected the most important part of public relations – the public.

It is our nature as humans to root for the underdog. The better part of our socialist tendencies comes out in support of the worker, and our natural inclination is to side with them. However, what unions and protest groups have done is taken the battle outside of the boardrooms, moved it beyond the picket lines, and brought it right to our doorstep.

How’s my son doing in school? I don’t know, because there are no report cards to follow his progress. And that’s just the tip of the work-to-rule iceberg. What comes next? No homework, nothing beyond the black and white in teaching? Well, who is really suffering? Not the administration, not the teachers, but our children who are losing valuable education time as pawns in this squabble.

Perhaps you’re one of those who likes to honk in support of strikers and protesters as you make your way to work. But, with highways clogged with vehicles barricading the route in the name of protest, you’re more likely to be honking out of frustration than fellowship. And let’s not get to the hockey players. Really, they’ve botched the public relations aspect of their negotiation from the get-go.

So what’s the common thread? Each of these groups has chosen tactics that inconvenience the very people whose support they are trying to engender. Public opinion is an exceptionally strong component of any successful negotiation, and big businesses will do whatever it takes to avoid the backlash brought about by negative press and negative public sentiment. However, by alienating the very people that these groups should reach out to, they’ve effectively strengthened their adversaries’ positions and exhausted whatever goodwill the public may have felt at the start of their conflict.

The worst part about this is that the majority of us initially agreed with the employees’ positions. We know teachers are underpaid for the service they provide and should be better compensated for their preparation time. We know that a farmer’s success is precarious at best and we would like to see our government support them better. We know that there’s a big pot of money out there for hockey players and they’re entitled to their share. But, through their lack of political savvy and abuse of the public trust, these groups have separated the issues from their protest.

What it comes down to is that protest and negotiation must enter a new age. We are a much more media-savvy marketplace, and strong-arm tactics that negatively impact us don’t work. Unions and advocacy groups need to be more creative in developing strategies to get their message out, because the public is more accessible than ever. Use humour, appeal to our sensibilities, use all the resources our multi-media world has to offer, but don’t use tactics that are designed to inconvenience us.

In today’s world the old tactics no longer work. The message tends to get buried when all you want to do is shoot the messenger.

2005 © Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

Right or Left?

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By Jason Menard

What’s this country coming to? Lately our country’s political map displays all the form and reason of an Escher print! Like an ambidextrous drunkard, we’re having trouble differentiating our rights from our lefts.

On the one hand we’ve got Belinda Stronach throwing support behind gay marriage, while our Liberal party continues to waffle on the subject. Who knows what phoenix will arise from the ashes of Sir John A. MacDonald’s PC party, and is that really Ed Broadbent back on the radar?

Buckle up Canada – with an expected election just around the corner, we could be in for a wild ride.

Whatever happened to the days when you could define people by the colour of the electoral signs on their yard? Blue meant right, Red meant left, and Yellow meant you were probably out hugging a tree! But now, we’ve encouraged and fostered a hyphen-obsessed political landscape that can leave your head speaking.

We’ve got Liberals jumping to the right, Tories dancing to the left, and other parties desperately singing their own tunes trying desperately to be heard over the din of the allegedly different, but vaguely similar song played by the big two. Candidates no longer define themselves by party focus – because most parties don’t have a defined focus. You have your social-conservative candidates on one side mingling with the fiscal-liberal hopefuls – their party colours only separated by the slightest shades of gray.

On the other hand, you’ve got those on the other end of the spectrum, either proclaiming themselves true blue and longing for a return to a more conservative past, or lamenting the loss of social concern and caring that was the hallmark of Liberal parties of days of yore.

So where does that leave the voter? More and more we’re finding our electorate swinging faster than Benny Goodman on uppers. And for a country that has long identified its political leanings based on party politics, this new dynamic can be frightening. But, believe it or not, this new reality can – and will – work out in our favour.

Perhaps we are now entering a time when political upheavals won’t be the grand tidal waves of the past, washing one party out of power just to return that party to prominence years down the road when that initial tide ebbs. While the party system is too strong at this time to do away with, we seem to be now entering a time when our elected Members of Parliament will have to be accountable to their own ridings – a shocking concept!

What politics should be about is electing the person who most effective combines the wants and needs of his or her constituents with the greater good of the country as a whole. I once was a party voter, believing that my ideals meshed with the philosophy espoused by one or another federal party. But due to the changing dynamic of our political landscape, that type of thinking is outdated – and adjusting to the new reality requires effort on all our parts.

No longer should we ignore the election process and simply vote for our traditional party. Now it behooves us to go out and learn about each candidate in our riding, and vote for the one who best fits our needs. On a macro level, the party differences are so insignificant for the most part that it’s at the micro level – the constituency – where the greater variance takes place. And it’s on that variance from which we should determine our vote.

Now, obviously it would help encourage this new voting dynamic if we had a strong alternative party – either from the left or the right – to provide a legitimate alternative to the Liberal juggernaut and to combat voter apathy. Many choose not to vote if the conclusion seems foregone.

Yet this upcoming could be the most exciting yet! In addition to the new faces in new places, we’ve got a chance to truly effect change on our own level. We’re arriving at the dawn of a new era in Canadian politics — but just don’t try to follow the traditional maps to get there!

2005 © Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved