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2 - Orono Weekly Times Subscriptions $33.02 + $1.98 GST = $35.00 per year. No Refunds. Publications Mail Registration No. 09301 · Agreement No. 40012366 Publishing 48 issues annually at the office of publication. "We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Publications Assistance Program (PAP) toward our mailing costs." Wednesday, March 11, 2009 ORONO WEEKLY TIMES - 5310 Main St., P.O. Box 209, Orono, ON L0B 1M0 E-mail: oronotimes@rogers.com or Phone/Fax: 905-983-5301 Publisher/Editor Margaret Zwart Production and Display Advertising - Donna Anderson Wood Classified Advertising - Sue Weigand The Orono Weekly Times welcomes letters to the editor on subjects of interest to our readers. Opinions expressed to the editor and articles are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Orono Weekly times. Letters must be signed and contain the address and phone number of the writer. Any letter considered unsuitable will not be acknowledged or returned. We reserve the right to edit for length, libel and slander. If your retail or classified ad appears for the first time, please check carefully. Notice of an error must be given before the next issue goes to print. The Orono Weekly Times will not be responsible for the loss or damage of such items. Dalton McGuinty's "green" illusions on jobs By Kenneth Green Member of the Expert Advisory Panel Frontier Centre for Public Policy Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has run afoul of two fallacies which plague governments with his new "Green Energy Act." The Act, which does not have a defined price-tag, would supposedly create 50,000 new jobs, putting people to work building windmills, solar power plants, and bio-fuel plants. The Green Energy Act, he claims, will lead Ontario out of its recession and into a glorious future of clean energy. Now, everyone would love to end the recession, and enjoy clean, abundant, and affordable energy. But there are some hard realities that suggest Premier McGuinty's plan isn't the smartest way to do it. Let's review the reasons why governments cannot create jobs, and why labelling them "green" doesn't change the basic dynamics. Let's start with the fallacy that governments can create jobs. This fallacy was exploded all the way back in 1845, by a French politician and political economist named Frédéric Bastiat. Bastiat pointed out that the only way governments can create jobs is by first obliterating other jobs. Sometimes, they obliterate other jobs by diverting taxpayer money away from the economic uses the taxpayer would have pursued if they had kept their taxes. Other times, they obliterate jobs by imposing regulations that kill off one industry in favour of another. In still other situations, they impose mandates, such as using recycled paper to create an artificial market for recycled paper which reduce jobs in fresh-paper production. In the green energy case, they are doing all of the above: taxpayer dollars are being used to subsidize the renewable energy sector; damaging regulations are being implemented on the traditional fossil fuel sector; and mandates for the use of renewable energy are being issued, creating a false market in wind power at the expense of fossil fuel and nuclear power. Governments also invariably siphon off a good part of the money for "administration," creating civil service jobs that pay comparatively higher wages than the private sector for similar activity. Inevitably, government efforts to create jobs cost the economy jobs and, adding insult to injury, divert limited resources to inefficient uses, causing economic underperformance. Now, let's look at the second fallacy: call it "green" and, somehow, the fundamental laws of economics are suspended and we can all enjoy a free lunch and a utopian future of affordable, abundant and clean energy. Of course, the only way to arrive at this fallacy is by inflating the expected value of green energy activities over the expected value from a non-green alternative. In the premier's Green Energy Act, the expected value would result from a reduction of greenhouse gases related to energy production. There's only one problem: the amount of greenhouse gases that Canada could eliminate, even if the entire country simply shut down, is not sufficient to retard global warming in any significant way. Canada's fossil-fuel greenhouse gas emissions account for about two per cent of world emissions. Ontario's emissions are only seven-tenths of one percent of the world total. China, which is building a coal power plant every week, emits more than 10 times all of Canada's greenhouse gases, and shows no signs of curbing its appetite any time soon. Ontario's Green Energy Act will offer virtually no climate change protection or delay in warming, and no benefit to offset the costs of raising Canada's energy prices, raising the cost of goods and services, and rendering Canadian exports less competitive in world markets. The premier, along with others such as U.S. President Barrack Obama, has internalized the twin fallacies of job creation and a free lunch. He needs to undergo a reality check before he squanders limited resources and worsens the economic prospects for North America. Taking actions to raise the cost of energy using a fallacious job-creation approach and fallacious benefit claims will only exacerbate Ontario's suffering in the ongoing world economic downturn. Letters to the Editor Camp 30 - a monument to German Officers? Dear Editor: My father fought in WWII. My mother worked in GM building armoured vehicles, while German officers swam in an indoor pool. My aunts and grandmother worked in a munitions factory in Ajax while German officers socialize on the Bowmanville beaches. My father told me during 1944, he lost a gunnery soldier almost weekly, while the German officers played cards on the great lawns of Camp 30. So a monument to German officers is the order of the day, is it? For what else does it stand in honour of? I was but a child when all this was happening, but I do remember the talk long after the war ended by family and friends. Families with their husbands and fathers absent, brothers and sons who faced great peril, and all came home with scars, some bigger than others, some healed, some did not. And of course, some did not come home at all. There was no Highway of Heroes for the fellows, just a cablegram to the family, and the good people of the Canadian Legion. Yet all the while, German officers enjoyed theatre and concerts, a warm bed and three good meals. They lived better than many of the Bowmanville locals. In the summer time, the German officers went down to the beach with only a few armed guards and sometimes none. Canadian soldiers who accompanied the German officers were there to protect them from the locals. They say war is hell, but not at Camp 30 in Bowmanville. This is where council would like to spend a million dollars or so, every decade. Historians may visit the site, but I suspect the series of well-written books by Lynn Philip Hodgson and Alan Paul Longfield document matters very well. The Clarington Museum could take a small area in their Temperance Street facility and display the photos and even move some of the piles of dirt from the escape tunnel, if it is important, at a lot less cost to the tax payer. I write my concerns out of respect for those who served back then. Sometimes our youth forget and, it seems, so does our council. I suggest a well-placed plaque for our enemies of the day will be more than adequate. Bowmanville Camp 30 was not a Camp X. No, I for one am not in favour of building a shrine (or maintaining one) to those who holidayed at Camp 30, no matter what their rank. Bill Tomlinson Orono We would like to hear from you, our readers. Tell us your thoughts about local issues and current events. Send us your letters today! P.O. Box 209, 5310 Main St., Orono L0B 1M0 Fax: 905-983-5301 or oronotimes@rogers.com We covet your opinion!