Urban Reserves - Letter to Editor

Letter to the Editor

Star Phoenix

letters@thestarphoenix.com

Dear Editor,

A front-page headline ‘Urban reserves gaining acceptance’ (SP/Jan.19), was as misleading as the content of the story itself. Despite the blatant bias of support for race-based policies routinely portrayed in SP articles, the fact is that ‘urban reserves’ are race-based tax-free havens.

In this particular instance, The SP was applauding the opening of a new gas station on

22^nd street

. The problem is that due to ‘urban reserve’ status; this gas station is tax-exempt. Although the ‘urban reserve’ has agreed to a service agreement that will compensate the City of Saskatoon for municipal services (sewer, water, etc.); what is so highly offensive is the privilege of tax-exempt status which extends not only to gas and tobacco taxes, but to income tax as well - and it doesn’t stop there! ‘Urban reserve status’ comes with a gratuitous option to acquire an exemption from education tax simply by making a one-time payment (calculated by multiplying the current annual education tax by seventeen and one-half). This special deal is of course not available to non-Indians.

Simply put, the moral/financial obligation to support education will be permanently removed from the ‘urban reserve’ property; and that tax burden will be shifted to property owners who are not subject to such special race–based privilege.

The SP front-page headline should have more accurately read: ‘Racial ancestry plays ever-increasing role in Public Policy’.

 Jim Pankiw

Egalitarianism

As defined in the Oxford Concise dictionary: believing in or based on the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.

Egalitarians are opposed to governments giving special race-based privileges to ANY racial or ethnic group.

Currently all levels of government combine to give a plethora of race-based privileges to people of Indian ancestry - tax-free status, race-based hiring quotas, special hunting and fishing privileges, a monopoly on casino-gambling revenue, and special lenient sentences when convicted of a crime.

Anyone who supports the current apartheid type of special race-based privileges is a racist! Plain and simple.

Anyone who supports eliminating special race-based privileges for Indians (integrating them into society as equal participants with the same rights and responsiblities as anyone else) is an Egalitarian.

So what are you? A Racist or an Egalitarian?

Remember this undisputable fact: "It is not possible to discriminate in favour of someone on the basis of their race without simultaneously and unfairly discriminating against someone else" - Dr. Jim Pankiw