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THE HERALD OUTLOOK Saturday May 13 the HERALD Japanese recruit scandal leaves business uneasy OUTLOOK is published each Saturday by the HILLS Home Newspaper of Hills A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited at Street Georgetown Ontario L7 Second Class Mail Registered Number 8772201 8778822 PUBLISHER STAFF WRITERS Ken Donna Kell David A Beattie EDITOR Brian MacLeod AD MANAGER Dan Taylor SNAFU by Bruce Beattie SPORTS WRITER Paul ACCOUNTING June Joan Man CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING Tain inv Salt Your Business Diane Scrvk The Recruit scandal in Japan is reverberating throughout the world leaving the countrys trading partners feeling uneasy Already Japans finance minister has missed two meetings of the Group of Seven industrial tries At the economic summit in Paris this summer Japan will be represented an interim leader What effect will this have on the talks No doubt the resignation of Prime Minister Noburu Takeshita casts a pail on the world economy If the Liberal Democratic Party that he headed begins to crumble Japan could be in for a period of dangerous instability Mr Takeshi resignation stems from his connection to the Recruit Co stock trading and political donations scandal None of the activity was technically il legal but the vast amounts involv ed sparked public outrage Mr Takeshita represented the internationalists within Japan continuing the global thrust of his predecessor Yasuhiro But strong nationalist forces within the country are opposed to the notion of freer trade par ticularly with the United States TRADE WAR LOOMS If these forces were to gain power the world could be swept away in a global trading war The effect this would have on the in flated Japanese stock market can only be guessed at One thing seems sure if the Japanese stock market were to collapse the whole world would feel it We in Canada would lose an im portant source of foreign invest ment both in factories and govern ment bonds A scarcity of foreign money would force up interest rates To a lesser extend Canadian exporters would be hurt American exporters would be devastated Japan already is on the United States hit list of countries that Americans say trade unfairly This is not surprising given that Japan runs a huge trade surplus with the United States American demands that Japan open its domestic market to more imported goods could play into the hands of Japanese protectionists sparking an allout trade war The Wests initial response to the Recruit scandal was surprisingly lackadaisical After all the LDP has ruled for the past 34 years No other party provides a workable alternative The people who argue this way did not believe Mr Takeshita would resign Now that he has they are scratching their heads ELECTION WOES The big question Japan faces now is who will win the general election in July 1990 Even within the LDP there are strong na tionalist forces at work Indeed hostility between the United State- and has beet growing for years as the Americans make increasingly more demands on the Japanese to change their buying habits So far with its strong currency and huge trade surplus Japan has been win ning the economic war Because the world has grown so interdependent though the health of nations is inextricably linked to their trading partners If Japan were to suffer a severe economic or political shock the whole global marketplace would be affected So far the irrepressible Tokyo stock market has held up well amid the uncertainty No one seems to doubt the world is safe for Japanese business Over the past year or so Japan has been under pressure from the other major industrial countries to assume a greater role in world leadership With no leader Japan will not be able to fulfil its respon sibilities as the worlds wealthiest nation What this means for global politics remains to be seen Berrys World Do you carry malpractice insurance Mindboggling numbers in latest blue book Ottawa A wise old editor once said that a read through the federal spending estimates is much like Alices adventure in Wonderland Things arent really what they seem Sometimes the obscure grows to huge proportions and the immense fades to insignificance The Treasury Boards latest blue books which outline the way Ottawa proposes to spend your tax dollars this year are no different Perhaps its those mind- boggling numbers billion in outlays in which tend to separate us from reality There are developments in the federal sphere that you could never guess by looking at the spen ding estimates which were releas ed a day sorry make that two after the budget Its not that the big numbers are so far off base Last year for ex ample the government predicted its spending for the recently ended 198889 fiscal year would come in at billion Latest estimates suggest the final bill will be billion Thats accuracy precisely the same as that popular brand of soap The way governments present the estimates however can be bewildering We are told for ex ample that Ottawa Is restraining itself this year by billion Yet the blue books show program spen ding thats total payout less payments on the national debt will in fact rise by billion But the fantasy really starts in the detail spelled out in volume after volume of department and agency booklets that would fill a box a metre long should one care for the full set POLICIES CHANGE You must remember that when the estimates are compiled the bureaucrats responsible are grasp ing at the future unaware of what sudden twists and turns of policy might come their way A prime case in these estimates is spending by the Defence Depart ment Finance Minister Michael Wilson announced in his budget that the military was facing cuts of 27 billion over five years The raw numbers tell us that in fact defence spending is expected to rise this year by million to billion Yet elsewhere we are told the cuts for the current fiscal year will be million How is this apparent contradic tion explained Its like this After the defence white paper came out in the government decided to raise military spending by an annual rate of two per cent after inflation is subtracted for the next years The cabinet review ed that policy and has opted to reduce the funding originally planned the documents reveal The impact of this decision on the 198990 defence budget was a reduction of 575 million in the amount originally anticipated for that year the blue book says So you see the government is cutting back on its intentions to spend not its spending a little like saying I just saved myself a lot of money I was going to buy a Jaguar but decided against it NO COMFORT While this approach to spending has a Wonderland quality thats not likely to comfort the people of PEI who are about to see their armed forces base and 1200 jobs disappear But even this has an air of unreality Nowhere in the estimates is there a sign of the proposed cuts at 14 military bases Indeed the blue book lists spending of million this year on an armed forces mess at Summerside with a further 766000 next year Moreover one of the most high- profile cuts in the budget was the nuclear submarine program Yet million sits there in the estimates bold as brass for spen ding on project definition for the subs Thats in addition to million spent last year The reason these items are there apparently is that the government In a- panic binge of lastminute slashing trimmed the bases back and axed the subs The estimates were printed two weeks before they were released too late to change the books Result A gap between the truth and fiction Allow me one last grim example of how the estimates diverge from reality The defence book also con tains figures for Coast Guard rescues They reveal that the Coast Guard expected last year and anticipates this year to save 916 per cent of those who find their lives at risk at sea Unfortunately for mariners the most recent actual save percen tage was per cent And that dear Alice is the estimates Wonderland ADVERTISING SALES Jeannlne Valois Craig Teeter Roberts PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT Dave Hastings Supt Annie Susanne Wilson CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT Marie Shadbolt PRESSROOM FOREMAN Brian PRESS ASSISTANT Lee Nowhere to go for Quebecs Anglophones Ottawa Stewart MacLeod Newt Sendee The anglophones who are deserting the Liberal party of Robert because of its language policy have a rather uni que problem they have nowhere else to go In any other province if Liberals become disenchanted with their leader or party there are always acceptable alternatives usually the Conservatives or New Democrats But in Quebec there is no provincial Conservative party And to credit the NDP with offer ing a realistic alternative would re quire a gesture of irresponsible generosity There is lor all practical pur poses only the Parti Quebecois whose founding objective is to lead the province out of Confederation and whose language policies are if anything even more unacceptable to the angles So while Premier might be sad or even depressed about los the support of so many voters hes unlikely to be pushing any panic buttons Come voting day many of Quebecs non- francophones might cringe in the process but they really dont have much alternative to the Liberals An interesting exception may be in Mr Bourassas own riding of St Laurent Inspired by the Alberta election in which the Tory govern ment reelected while its leader Don Getty was defeated some are busy plotting a similar strategy Its undoubtedly a long shot but nonetheless the Equality Par ty is going to make an effort to unseat the premier OTHER RIDINGS The new party has also set its sights on other select ridings but so far there is nothing to suggest a breakthrough In virtually all of the ridings its going to be a twoway battle between the Liberals and Parti And according to all the opinion polls the Liberals now enjoy a com fortable lead But it could be interesting lo watch St Laurent one of the relatively few Quebec ridings where nonfrancophones are a ma jority and where the Equality can didate is likely to be an impressive and eloquent francophone writer Jacques At a recent meeting in the riding the Equality party attracted more than people and there was no shortage of enthusiasm about try ing to defeat the premier What the new party stands for is freedom of choice on language and education Says party vicepresident Tony Kondaks Our platform stresses freedom of expression in the private sector allowing fran cophones Immigrants access lo the same civil right ol freedom to choose education in either of ficial language that anglophones have The party also opposes the Lake accord and the not withstanding clause in the Con stitution Although it gels most of its sup port from nonfrancophones it is not an exclusively anglophone par ty Not surprisingly some of its members have been known to ex press rather extremist views par ticularly on the language issue