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Editorial: More ways to skin a cat
Commentary by Joe McWilliams
for South Peace News
Rules and regulations are important for running things efficiently. Unfortunately, no set of rules anticipates every eventuality. People are left out, or ill-served, because the lines that are drawn always leave somebody on the outside looking in.
Such a case is the one of a family who live out on the Old Smith Highway. They live a lot closer to Slave Lake than Athabasca. Yet they are in the Aspenview School District, and thats the jurisdiction that is responsible for busing their high school kids.
The High Prairie School Division isn't responsible, and isn't willing to make concessions to the point of going outside its boundaries.
If the boundaries changed, they'd be right there.
So, HPSD is technically correct in this case.
The boundaries and rules associated with them were set up with all good intentions. But somebody is not well served and falls through the cracks, as the saying goes.
In another case, a local business that to any reasonable person appears to be doing no harm whatsoever, is forced to shut down or relocate because of zoning restrictions. Again, the rules were set up for very good reasons. Good planning demands the division of a municipality into zones. Different activities are allowed within different zones, and the rules are designed to maintain order, safety and so on. Its all done with the best of intentions, according to long-standing precedent.
But no set of rules anticipates every situation, and well-intentioned people face onerous expenses in complying.
This is the world we live in, for better or worse. To go without rules or to have them but fail to go by them is foolish. On the other hand, some flexibility in their interpretation ought to be possible. With enough good will, acceptable compromises ought to be possible in most disagreements.
Discretion in the enforcement of the rules is, and always will be a factor. There's no way of getting around it. Hopefully common sense prevails in most cases.
It takes effort, though, and in some cases a financial commitment. Money doesn't grow on trees, but when judiciously applied, it can help plug some of those cracks.
A good example of this is the system of outreach schools established in the 1990s in Alberta. Lots of kids were dropping out of school for all kinds of reasons. They were not following the rules and fell by the wayside.
Thanks to a few people with a vision, and (finally) the provincial funding to support that vision, outreach schools were set up. Lo and behold, significant numbers of these kids who wouldn't follow the rules turned out to be willing and able to succeed under the alternative circumstances of the outreach school.
The system of vocational centres (that turned into AVC and then Northern Lakes College) is another good example of an alternate route to success.
As the saying goes, there really is more than one way to skin a cat.
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