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Page 10 THE HERALD Wednesday February 1889 Deficit prominent in talks On The Hill With Garth Turner The guy in the yellow sweater was angry He stood up and stabb ed a finger across the room In my direction You people be said are to blame The working man gets a pay raise and then you people take it away and I want to know for what I haven been a politician long enough to consider myself one of you people but taking some heat for past tax increases is fair game when a Town Hall meeting is thrown open to the public My third one happened last Wednesday night in BurUngton and it was a good session with Mayor Bird finding time to at tend Even the man in the sweater was friendly when it ended I just had to get that off my chest he told me A lot of people have removed a lot of stuff from chests over the past three weeks After holding open meetings in Bolton Georgetown and Burlington Ive had the chance to speak with a few hundred more folks and feel really energized about the issues There were a lot of common threads in the hours of discussions One Ive written about here the deficit was probably the single issue brought up most And in all three communities people spoke out against the current policy of universal social programs The logic of sending a government che que to people who don need it escapes a lot of us In Bolton I heard people telling me theyd be willing to pay more taxes if they thought it would do some real good In getting the coun trys mortgage paid off In Georgetown there was real frustration at the pace of deficit reduction so far In Burlington people were encouraging the feds to look towards deep spending cuts rather than tax hikes and the point came up that with todays real estate prices the last thing the working stiff needs is less after tax income I can sure sympathize with that And my first choice for nuking the deficit is to have Ottawa reign in spending the middle class is pay big too much of the freight right now People in both Bolton and Georgetown wanted to hash over the Quebec language debate tell ing me in no uncertain terms that Premier Robert Bourassa is wrong to discriminate against the anglo minority They urged me to have the government speak more strongly in support of that group Immigration came up in a strong way in Georgetown and most peo ple seemed happy with changes made to the law which are tougher on refugee claimants In Burlington Id say second billing to the deficit was the en although this topic cer tainly up everywhere Per I was really happy to hear the S administration say last week that action on acid rain is coming soon thats a major policy shift But there is a great deal more to deal with like garbage Ive spoken with both Frank Bean chairman of Peel Region and Pete Halton chair man about the impending garbage crisis and feel a lot better after those meetings It seems the various levels of government are really working together to get us out of this mess and Ill do all I can to help We need recycling not landfill We need individuals to reduce the waste they and their families generate We dont need excessive packaging and disposable diapers which take centimes to break down Street Gill Wrapping For Our CENTRE 8779218 Gentlemen Shoppers DOUBLE DUTY PERM No Appointment Necessary Satisfaction Guaranteed CENTRE 211 Guelph Street Georgetown NOW ONLY with coupon I MARCH 1589 r ALL perms SAVE UP TO I I capon