Council couldn't ignore voice of a public united

I was asking someone the other day what it would take to get thousands of protesters into the streets of Winnipeg, the way young students have been doing in Montreal and young Arabs did when they risked and gave their lives during their historic spring.

Then I answered my own question.

Losing a National Hockey League team a decade and a half ago brought thousands into the streets. But aside from that demonstration of civic pride and hockey mania -- and of course the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike -- I don't know of any other occasion when an issue moved us en masse, as one.

Until, that is, this week.

When an imminent city vote caused us to protest in a more restrained, yet no less passionate way.

Via email and phone.

It happened because city council was on the verge of trying to do something that offended the heart of the city, according to those who profess to care about the soul of the city.

City council, or at least about half of it, was about to take the first giant step in a process that would grant a hotel company the right to place a medium-sized water park in the front yard of what will be our signature architectural structure and face to the world.

That icon being the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

There were other, shall we say, contentious aspects to the proposed agreement. Among them, a sweet deal where the city would give the hotel operator $7 million in public funds, and the hotel company would pay the city $6 million for one of the most valuable tracts of land in Winnipeg. With the understanding the hotel company would let a set number of economically disadvantaged children in for free over the next 25 years. Mind you, the details of precisely how that would work were missing, as was most everything else in the proposed deal.

A deal that gave blind trust a whole new meaning.

So it was the water park became the rallying point for the resounding roar of "no." Not in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights front yard.

To the people's credit, it was a consensus of anger so rarely expressed in Winnipeg it arguably became the point of a blade that prompted the majority of councillors to agree to defer voting on the deal until they had more information and detail.

How did that happen?

The protest had been given added credibility and steam by the outspoken voice of council speaker Grant Nordman, whom fellow councillor Brian Mayes called "the hero" of the day. Actually, the hero's mantle could have been worn by undeclared Coun. Devi Sharma, because she probably would have been the deciding vote if the preliminary deal had got that far.

Over the phone Friday, two days after the vote was deferred, I asked Sharma how she felt while all this was happening.

"Are you asking me if I felt pressure?" she responded.

No, I was asking how she felt.

Whereupon she said she didn't feel any more pressure than any other vote.

Then she said this: "It was very evident to me we needed more information on this project."

So, given she believed council needed more information, I asked how would she have voted if the water park had been put to a vote.

"That's irrelevant," Sharma said, curtly.

"That's not how it unfolded."

I don't believe Devi Sharma didn't feel the public pressure, any more than I believe how she would have voted is irrelevant.

At least it's not to her constituents and other Winnipeggers who made their voices heard in her email and voice mail.

Which brings me to the true heroes of this story.

The people of Winnipeg.

The ones who emailed and phoned their councillor and, yes, stopped them in the streets to make their voices heard. The ones who were so outraged by the prospect of their elected representatives not listening to them they forced at least some of them to listen.

Enough of them.

But the water-park issue isn't over.

The hotel chain, I predict, will be back with the details city council should have demanded without the public pressure.

And if the public doesn't like what it hears and a majority of council does, I predict something else.

That the people will rise up again in our way, as we did in our own modest version of the Winnipeg spring.

There's a bigger meaning to all of this though, one that other Winnipeggers should get, but may not.

Protests can work.

But only if we care enough individually to care collectively.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 28, 2012 B1