Spending $5.3 million is neglecting Gordon Bell???

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/09/2011 (5441 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One of the more bizarre election campaign accusations I’ve heard in my 40 years as a reporter was Liberal leader Jon Gerrard’s claiming late last week that the empty field next to Gordon Bell High School is evidence that the NDP government ignores the inner city.

Gerrard was standing across the street from Gordon Bell, where he advocated hiring more truancy officers as his primary strategy to reduce high school dropout rates, combining that announcement with numerous accusations that the NDP has done nothing for inner city students for the past 12 years. He also accused the NDP of deliberately covering up dropout rates of as high as 50 per cent.

Gerrard said that figure came from a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report, though he could not say which high schools would be covered by that alarming figure.

The CCPA took exception to what executive director Shauna MacKinnon called Gerrard’s taking one number out of context. MacKinnon said the highest dropout rate in any CCPA report was 44.2 per cent, a 2006 Statistics Canada figure for Winnipeg’s lowest-income neighbourhoods based on the graduation rate of students who’d started Grade 9 in 2001. MacKinnon said that graduation rates have been increasing significantly in the inner city, and credited numerous government-backed programs such as Bright Futures, Pathways to Education, Urban Circle, off-campus alternative schools, and public school adult ed programs for getting young adults back in class and completing Grade 12.

To the cover-up charge, Education Minister Nancy Allan said that the province won’t stigmatize schools by publishing school-by-school graduation rates. She said graduation rates have increased from 71 to 82 per cent since the NDP took office.

So, judge the Liberal and NDP positions on that one, as you will.

That wasn’t the bizarre part.

Gerrard’s staff had not given him an accurate number of how many private truancy officers that city divisions currently contract, but that wasn’t the bizarre part, either.

 It was that accusation about the empty field being evidence of NDP neglect of the inner city that was the bizarre part.

I pointed out to Gerrard that the NDP paid $5.3 million to acquire the site for the high school’s long-awaited athletic field and green space, and asked how that was evidence of ignoring the inner city. The site had been for decades a former car dealership, and for the longest time Canada Post had planned to move onto the site.

Not to be thwarted, Gerrard said the government claimed the field would be ready this fall. “More neglect,” he said.

The government denies having made any such promise, nor could I recall its having done so.

In fact, the story I wrote that was published Dec. 8, 2009, which broke the news that the plan to acquire the field was finally a done deal, had this paragraph: “Allan said that the new field would become part of the Gordon Bell High School property after the deal closes Jan. 8 (2010). She was uncertain when the field would be ready for use.”

The government had produced the money for the site, bypassing the normal capital funding process — Winnipeg School Division had declined to put the field at the top of its priority list, sticking to new gyms for Queenston School and Kelvin High School. The feds were also involved with getting Canada Post to look elsewhere, with a lot of pushing from New Democrat MP Pat Martin.

The province turned over ownership to Winnipeg School Division in January of 2010, which is working with the school and community to develop the field.