THE COUNCIL AND THE CANAL.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXX, Issue 14975, 22 April 1909, Page 6

THE COUNCIL AND THE CANAL.

It is very probable tjaat the City Council which is to be elected next week will be required to take an active part in determining the fate of the canal scheme. A majority of the members of tho Lyttelton Harbour Board, thanks mainly to tho antiquated method by which many of them are appointed, are opposed t-o the construction of the canal, and it will not bo surprising if they refuse to promote the legislation which would enable the will of the ratepayers in regard to tho undertaking to be ascertained. In that case the City Council, which, happily, is elected under a saner system, will have to take the matter up and obtain for the ratepayers an opportunity to say whether they are prepared to spend a large sum of money in making a waterway between the city and the sea, or whether they prefer to leave this enterprise for a later generation. Wo are satisfied ourselves that a very large majority of the ratepayers in the city and suburbs would cheerfully assume a liability as large as two millions sterling, if it were necessary, in order to convert Christchurch into a seaport, with all its attendant advantages, and we hope that at the approaching election they will remember how much their interests in this direction will bo affected - by the members they return to the City Council. It will not be necessary for the electors to subordinate all other questions to the canal question, as the large number of candidates gives them a choice of “ canalites ” of almost every conceivable municipal “colour,” but it will be necessary for them to distinguish between the candidate who supports tho canal as a great commercial undertaking, with infinite possibilities lying behind it, and the candidate who support,? it as a means of providing temporary employment for a number of men who do not care to go out into tho country for work. We are afraid that Mr Bartram, the Labour candidate who addressed the electors of the Central Ward last night, must be included in the second category. He frankly admits that he supports the canal only as a means of providing temporary employment for the workers. He has no sympathy with “ the visions conjured up by capitalistic orators of Christchurch as the commercial centre of tho dominion,” and he does not believe that a great harbour at Linwood would make the lot of the wage-earner one whit more happy. Mr Bartram, who appears to have talked good common-sense in regard to other questions, was accorded a “vote of confidence” at the conclusion of liis address, but we cannot think that his audience intended to endorse his straJige views on the canal. It would be positively dishonest for tho workors to'assist in saddling the community with a huge liability for tho construction of the waterway if they imagined that the only advantage the expenditure of tho money would confer upon the city and suburbs would be to relievo them of their surplus labour for the next nine or ton years. But wo have a better opinion of the workers. They recognise that if Christchurch wore? converted into a great commercial centre there would be no

need for the city to reproduce the undesirable conditions which Mr Bartram has observed in other parts of tho world. With the broadening franchise and with tho revival of public interest in local politics, we may confidently count upon tho workers taking a larger share in municipal government long before another decade has passed over our heads, and when they realise their own power and their own opportunity they will not be afraid to make their city really great.