What to do with the Lieu?

That's a terrible blog title. I know. I apologize. Sometimes I can't help myself. It's an illness, really.

The subject matter of this particular post is the job known as Lieutenant Governor. The ceremonial head of state of our province, if you will. Cutter of ribbons and rubber-stamper of bills. One of 11 representatives of the Crown in Canada. This seems excessive to me. Are there really that many ribbons to cut?

Bruce Owen points out in Saturday's Free Press that this position is due to turn over this summer. Now is a good time to review alternatives. The Manitoba L.G. costs Canadians about a half-mil each year: $105k salary, $332k staff, benefits and other expenses, $25k for upkeep of the residence, and probably a bunch of other stuff like travel, etc.. Plus I would guess that a healthy pension comes with the job. We're probably looking at over $5 million in cost for all 10 L.G.s in Canada each year.

So here's what we do: Screw the L.G. Don't appoint anybody else. Instead, pay some ambitious brainiac University student $1000/month to rubber stamp the bills from the Legislature. The Leg only sits for, like, 20 days a year anyhow. That's a pretty good gig for a student. Take an oath to the Queen, spend 30 minutes a week signing bills, attend the odd function, get some decent dough and a unique job on your resume. Knock out the summer months when nothing happens, and we have our L.G. for $8000 a year. In the unlikely event of a provincial governmental crisis, the Governor General could be summoned to help.

Now, what to do with the mansion that is the official residence of the L.G.? It sits on the ground of the Legislative building so you can't just rent it out to some guy. How about knocking it down and building a sweet condo complex? haha. Just kidding. Easy , there, heritage nuts. We're not going to knock it down. Really about all it can be used for is a museum of some kind. But what better place for a museum about the history of Manitoba government than at the Leg? You can tell the story about the building of the Legislative building, and the beginnings of the province including the rebellion and all that. In other words, you can take 80% of the crap that would be going into the new 'Interpretive Centre' at Upper Fort Garry and put it here instead. UFG can instead have a more modest interpretive centre incorporated into the one of the buildings in the faux fort.

So there you go: I just saved us millions of dollars and freed up some valuable real estate right in front of your eyes. Of course, I'm just dreaming here. There is no way this is going to happen. I have also come to the realization that I need much more interesting dreams. Ones with dinosaurs and naked girls. Maybe I'm eating the wrong things before I go to bed...