Mr. Speaker: Okay, question period has expired. Thank you Mr. Klassen. Next delegation is Jim Jaworski also in opposition to Item 1 of report ‘A’ of the Executive Policy Committee. Mr. Jaworski you have 5 minutes.
Jim Jaworski: All right. Good morning Councillors. Watch what happened to our downtown area, now that the under class have become the overwhelming majority of the people on its streets. We can now see a visible loss of professionals who are most likely to spend money at downtown shops than as for it on the streets that we have now. I used to remember twenty, twenty-five years ago when I was a teenager, when I visited downtown to go to the Library, to Eaton Place and to Winnipeg Square. Now we have a downtown mall, Portage Place, where the security guards wear bulletproof vests. The under class and unemployed use it as some sort of shelter from the elements and from each other.
Last couple of years there have been stabbings, shootings and people stealing others backpacks just outside the mall. There are scant, any middle class or upper class shoppers there. If I had a family I wouldn't even let my kids go to the mall. Truth hurts, doesn't it?
What makes Portage Place different from the other downtown shopping centres like Toronto's Eaton Centre or Vancouver's Pacific Centre is what it lacks here, rail rapid transit, a subway or SkyTrain, that's what. I’ve seen it and I’ve read it for myself. Perhaps it's time to consider demolishing Portage Place and putting in new ordinary retail store fronts that don't have a mall element. How does this fit into the proposals for extension to the Kildonan Corridor, widening of St. Anne’s Road and McGillivray. It does because not having an investment in mass transit system for Winnipeg you're, it does by, because by not investing in a mass transit system for Winnipeg you're jeopardizing the very economic well being of our city.
The so-called environmentalists who like to favour bus rapid transit, they say no, Winnipeg doesn't need the L.R.T. or subway, they say we can't afford it. But what they're really saying and this is anecdotal evidence, brought on for more than two years discussion on the new Winnipeg.com and Skyscraperpage.com, is that they don't want Winnipeg to grow quickly. It might hurt them in some way. Maybe they'll get stressed out and dream of living in the country with some scenery that's code for mountains or something like that.
Basically they're anti-urbanists and antiprogressive, the complete opposite of what they say their values are. The Wilson subway plan on the other hand was written a long time ago, yes, but it is still a valid plan for moving Winnipeggers out of the 1950’s and into the 21st century, as far as mass transit is concerned. How many of the Councillors have read it. It should be adopted as the plan for Winnipeg.
So in effect we really don't need another 300,000 dollar consultant study as to why people don't use the bus, we already know why. They're too slow and a B.R.T. does nothing but serve sprawl Ville which is what Waverley West will turn out to be.
An underground subway line running under the streets of Winnipeg would put back the life into downtown Winnipeg and help move commuters from other parts of Winnipeg to and from work. At the same time the shovels, at the same time that the shovels were to go into the ground for a Winnipeg subway, it would begin to pay for itself through tax increment financing where the value of land would increase tax revenues and that is something that government is always talking about, spreading the tax base rather than narrowing it. Our population would then rise within ten years from 615,000 to over a million, wow. Suddenly people would come to Winnipeg and say what a beautiful city you have and how easy it is to get around on your subway. The middle class would return to Winnipeg in droves. I leave it up to you to decide our fate. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker: Thank you. No questions. Thank you Mr. Jaworski...