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PAGE 4, WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 17,,1982, WHITBY FREE PRESS whitby Voice of the County Town Michael lan Burgess, Publisher - Managing Editor Thp lnI Wh ib q man mv i L-s l ý i ne oniy Vnit y newspaper indepenuently owned and operatea bY Whitby residents for Whitby residents. blished every Wednesday by M.B.M. Publishing and Photography Inc. Phone 668-6111 The Free Press Building, 131 Brock Street North, P.O. Box 206, Whitby, Ont. LESLIE BUTLER Community EdItor ELIZABETH NOZDRYN Advertising Manager Second Class Mail Registration No. 5351 ae idin o 55 Local governments squeezed between restraint and costs This week, Whitby residents were informed they will be paying more for hydro, electricity and regional government. The Whitby Hydro Electric Commission an- nounced a rate increase of seven per cent, and regional council projected a tax hike of up to 16 per cent. Ali this in spite of the Ontario government's call for restraint in government spending. It appears local. governments are caught in a squeeze be- tween spending cuts which ignore the reality of increased costs. If the Ontario government really believes infla- tion can be controlled by arbitrarily limiting wage increases and "strongly suggesting" that local governments reduce spending, it is a wonder they don't go ail the way by imposing both wage and price controls. To limit wage increases and put a ceiling on spending without doing anything to curb the rising costs of operating individual and govern- ment budgets is to address only half the problem. Perhaps the reason the province doesn't go all One man's meat is another man's poison, I suppose, and if you told someone in- the building trades that you had a wonderful weekend putting the siding on a tool shed, he'd probably think you were a bit dippy. l'Il just have to run the risk that there may be a few builders out there reading this. A recent Saturday was one of the best days in my memory. It was sunny with a few fluffy clouds in our part of Ontario. There was a nip of Fall in the clear air, and the hiliside on the other side of the swamp Was so brilliant with colour that it brought a lump to your throat. I stopped work for a moment every now and then, and drank it in, through my eyes, my lungs and my pores as well. I downed tools entirely every time I heard that distant gabble which meant that another "V" of Canada geese was about to fly south over my head. My son was helping me, and we worked out a pretty good system. I'd saw the planks and the battens for the back wall of the shed and he'd nail them into place. I was cutting faster than he could nail, so I worked on the detail stuff around the door at the front while he was nailing. When his pile of cut boards was getting low, I'd drop the detail work and grab the hand saw again. I treated myself to a new saw for this project, so the cutting was a joy in itself. If, there is a finer smell than that of fresh-cut new pine, I haven't smelled it. If there is anything more instantly grati- fying than nailing a new board, cut true, into exactly that right position, I haven't experienced it. Barring fire, that shed will be around longer than either my son or me. She's framed with four by six treated posts, sunk five feet into the ground and resting on concreted pads. Wind won't move her, and neither will the kind of earthquake we get in these parts, very rarely. It's a standing joke around our house that I would rather wait twice as long, and then pay twice as much for something good, something that will last, than satisfy the consumer instinct cheaply and quickly. Working in broadcasting is something of a disap- pointment for anyone who feels that way. You do something once, blat it into the ether, and it's gone forever. Building something, with your hands, and see- ing it and using it, you hope for years, is something else again. That's not news but that too is reality. the way and put both wage and price controls in effect is because history has proven them ineffec- tive in controlling Inflation. The Trudeau govern- ment's wage and price controls In the mid- seventies did very little to forestall the inflationary spiral at the end of the decade. There are just too many factors that contribute to inflation to expect to stop it in this country alone. If oil prices soar, the cost of living in this country will rise, despite wage controls. Whether or not wage and price controls work is a question most economists can't answer. But to do only half the job by limiting wages and spend- ing only seems to guarantee failure. It isn't hard to find the root of the hydro in- crease announced last week. Whitby Hydro was forced to increase the cost to consumers because Ontario Hydro raised its rates by 8.2 per cent. Whitby Hydro will absorb about 1.2 per cent of the increase, and the taxpayers and users will ab- sorb the rest. Ontario Hydro is a crown corporation largely supported by the Ontario government. Where are (LHAL'AG01/'7 D the calls for restraint in Hydro's operations? New multi-million dollar projects at Pickering, Darlington and Bruce B power plants continue to thrive despite the government's call for restraint in spending. And the cost of these projects Is borne by taxpayers who are expected to live with five per cent wage increases. Another aspect of restraint that is not often ad- dressed by the Ontario government is its effect on employment. The cost of reducing inflation is borne by the increasing numbers of unemployed. And it may be a small price to pay as long as you're not one of the 1.5 million without work. If Whitby Hydro and Durham Region are going to keep within the proposed f ive per cent spend- ing guidelines, it will take more than a financial wizard to balance the budget. With a 92 per cent rise in welfare payments ex- pected for 1983, it would seem impossible to keep government spending to only five per cent. Why the increase in welfare costs? Because more and more unemployed workers have run out of Unemployment Insurance Benefits. p I 72,IAIAJI', Government bureaucrats "speak in tongues" By W. ROGER WORTH Syndicated Columnist The simplest of questions are many times the most difficult to answer. But among the queries affecting the great issues of a troubled world, this one must be included: why is it that governments and their bureaucrat employees seem to take great pride in making life difficult for the rest of us? Like the lawyers, who always seem to speak in tongues, using words such as heretofore and hereinafter (along with assorted Latin definitions), the civil servants are developing a language all their own. Where three easily understood words will ex- plain a proposition, the bureaucrat will spend hours, it seems, searching for one di.fficult-to-un- derstand long word as a replacement. It's almost as if our government employees didn't want us to understand what they're doing. If we can't decipher the language, then we can't complain. Yet difficult language is only one aspect of a bureaucratic mentality. More important, perhaps, is the compelling need to make the simplest things complicated, It's hard to believe, but we now need booklets (governments make them available) to tell us how to fill out unemployment forms, how to apply for the baby bonus and how to fill in income tax for- ms. Answering simple questions on a simple form is not enough. The booklet tells us how to answer the questions. Along with the relatively new bureaucratic lan- guage and overly complicated forms, govern- ments have become keen on policy reversais in their efforts to keep us confused. In Ontario, for example, the government recent- ly changed the rules on what was exempt from the provincial sales tax. When changes were made problems arose. Civil servants are still contra- dicting each other on what should or shouldn't be taxed. Perhaps it is time our government leaders told civil servants to speak in a language the rest of us understand. It's also time they stressed simpli- fication, rather than complication.