The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

THE HERALD OUTLOOK SattmUy Jane 1H the HERALD Outlook Elvis Droodge learns how to eat crow OUTLOOK Is published each Saturday by the HALTON HILLS HERALD Home Newspaper of Ha I ton Hills A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited at 45 Guelph Street Georgetown Ontario Second Class Mail Registered Number 8772201 STAFF WRITERS Ben Dummett SPORTS WRITER David A Seattle svoboda EDITOR ACCOUNTING Brian MacLeod JnneGlendenning AD MANAGER CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING Dan Taylor Tammy Salt NOTE There is no Eh is This type of conversation however Is one many MPs would like to have with John Crow The fullblooming red and yellow tulips on Parliament Hill had tem porarily banished the sombre thoughts of Elvis as he made his way from the Commons toward the Bank of Canada- There had been few happy days lately for the MP for Upper Elbow- Venison Tickle His riding had been hit hard by layoffs in the fishing and forestry industries The drydock hes counted on as a job creator had been axed by spen ding cuts Constituents moaned daily about tax increases and high interest rates But today he had had a stroke of good fortune During an early- morning jog along the Canal be met John Crow the Bank of Canada governor When expressed fears about in terest rates Crow astounded the MP by inviting him for a chat Was it the exhilarating day Or was Crow on a caffeine high he wondered As an MP from an outlying region knew interest rates had taken a heavy toll Builders and small businesses were feeling the impact A strong dollar boosted by the rates was hurting exports from his resource- based riding When high interest charges had increased Ottawas deficit more than expected the government had slashed regional development spending and cut back on unemployment insurance As the tally of jobless rose in Up per ElbowVenison Tickle fancied he heard a distant grumbling It was a fearsome sound much like that of an ap proaching earthquake OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS Now he has an opportunity to probe the central bank governor to see what Crow has on his mind and possibly to hold out to the folks back home the hope of better times ahead Hes have to he careful Central bankers are loathe to say flat out that interest rates will go up or down One has to make Interpreta tions Thats why journalists can reach opposite conclusions from the same set of remarks He enters Crows office After the usual pleasantries gets to the business at hand These interest rales John he begins some say you invite recession The important thing the governor replies is to avoid the inflation booms and busts that we have experienced before The Bank of Canada has taken these actions in a forehanded or timely manner to ward off the excesses the overshoots the overheatings that contain the seeds of their own inflationary destruction But cant we have lower rates in some parts of the country asks the MP My area is suffering greatly from your inflation- fighting in southern Ontario It is totally impractical Crow grimaces We have a unified financial market in Canada That means that funds flow readily from one end of the country to another and they are simply not going to stay in one place at a lower rate of interest when a high rate of in terest with equivalent risk is available somewhere else Is the remedy not worse than the disease presses Taxes have to be raised to pay a deficit that is riding because of your higher rates CONFUSING WORDS I do not think that in a more in flationary situation than we have one would get lower interest rates in the end by printing more money in an attempt tolower shortterm interest rates by increasing the amount of liquidity available to the relative demand for it Droodge knows that Crow speaks four languages He wonders which one the governor is using now He tries another approach You say one of the problems you are trying to correct is heavy borrow ing by businesses But arent high interest rates likely to hurt job- creating small businesses more while cashrich mergerminded big corporations lightly I do not find it very easy to discuss policy in terms of in dividuals Crow responds We have to took at broad economic behavior in terms of the effects of our policy But how do you know that you wont push us into recession Droodge asks desperately Can you guarantee your anti- inflationary policy will work We cant guarantee anything in this world Crow says enigmatically Droodge thought the governor was much like an an cient Greek oracle The MP leaves The azure sky does nothing to make him feel bet ter On the way to his office meets the bulbousnosed veteran MP HJ Stoneycroft Well Droodge Stoneycroft cries Does the Guv offer any relief from these damnable in terest rates thought of the oracle I think he said Donna Kelt Joan SNAFU by Bruce Three lines into his eye exam young Einstein had a realization The best places dont come cheap Your Business Diane Maley Thornton News The best places to live in Canada do not come cheap So far the real estate bust that has devastated Toronto and Van couver has been slow to spread to other regions raising the possibili ty that these two cities could suffer recession while the rest of the country remains healthy In Thunder Bay Ont for exam ple development is spreading out from the city centre at a breakneck pace And a few hours outside of Toronto people still are tripping over each other to pay and up for a waterfront cottage In a country as cold as Canada thats downright phenomenal Although the best spots are pure ly subjective by snooping around Ontario and talking to people elsewhere I have come to the con clusion that the best places to live In Canada are all a respectable distance from Toronto For jobs house prices and a style of living friendly to kids and dogs my personal favorite Is Lon don Ont a clean prosperous and cultured city of 300000 that is benefiting from the flight of businesses from Toronto Nearby St Thomas a bedroom communi ty offer the same amenities Close on their heels are KitchenerWaterloo a university town where the Mennonite market is among the best outdoor bazaars in the world Belleville and Peter borough all of which are benefiting from Torontos ex cesses Not all the good spots are in On tario Victoria a perennial favorite Is still high on the list Dartmouth is gaining on more expensive Halifax a 20- mintfte drive away St Johns Nfld too has charmed visitors with its European flavor VALLEY LIFE For writers painters and academics Wolfville in the heart of the Annapolis Valley- is a favorite spot complemented in Western Canada by the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia Com munities such as Vernon and offer a laidback lifestyle at prices that are reasonable by Vancouver stan dards A surprise on the national land scape although not to those who have been there is with its striking setting and strong sense of community If money no object the scene shifts a bit closer to Toronto with Caledon Port Hope and Cobourg looking mighty attractive all within an hours drive of the city Another expensive but pretty spot is a short drive from Peterborough and Port Hope SOME BARGAINS Zeroing in on southern Ontario the best buys would seem to be Woodstock a small city in the cen tre of an agricultural area not far from Stratford and Picton in the heart of beautiful Prince Edward County Southern with a hankering for cottage country would do well to forget Muskoka and start exploring Lake Erie Turkey Point near Simcoe is a particularly nice spot Lately with talk of recession or worse in the air more people are looking for a few acres in the coun try if worse comes to worse they can plant potatoes and sit out the depression so the thinking goes Try as one might though it is hard to find cheap farmland anywhere in Canada The best bet for those with a gloomy view of the economy is to look for a small piece of land far from Toronto or Vancouver nor thwestern Ontario comes to mind although the growing season is short And remember pay with ADVERTISING SALES Valols Craig Teeter Stacle Roberts PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT Dave Hastings Supt Annie Wilson CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT Marie Shad bolt PRESSROOM FOREMAN Brian Alkman PRESS ASSISTANT Stonewalling will succeed Queens Park Derek Nelson Thomson Nn Strvici appears Solicitor General Joan Smith will keep her job This will send out interesting signals to other members of the Liberal government As most people are aware by now Smith visited Lucan Ontario Provincial Police detachment in the middle of the night to check on allegations of police abuse of a son of a family friend She claims to have been misled into believing the parents were unavailable although she met the father in the parking lot of the police station and still went inside She says she did this because two police officers had seen her in the parking lot so as a courtesy and to assure them that I had no in terest whatsoever in affecting anything in the course of justice she continued in She spoke only of the allegations of abuse summers advent and some casual things and left she told the legislature here Later after a further tale about police brutality she checked again with the OPP this time by phone She did all this knowing that the solicitor general as the minister in the government responsible for the police forces of Ontario must maintain an arms length relation ship with daytoday police activi ty As OPP spokesman Bob Guay said later Its unusual that a minister show up at a detachment It is perceived by investigating of ficers as pressure when shes on the scene The executive director of the On tario Police Association Richard Houston said I dont think there was any intent to influence the system of justice but there was certainty poor judgement involved in her going down there Yet remarkably Smith not only continues to insist her conduct was proper but that shed do it again and for anybody not just people who know her Leader Bob summed it up succinctly The question here is judgement and standards and I might add double standards CANNOT DISTINGUISH The people of this whole pro vince are going to have to bear some responsibility for having a solicitor general who cannot distinguish between the right thing to do and what was clearly the wrong thing to do in terms of a private response to a particular issue he added Premier David Peterson who thought the issue serious enough to ask for a secret report on the inci dent doesnt agree Nothing serious enough happen ed at the police station to warrant Smiths dismissal from her job he concluded And thats that Petersons stonewalling will suc ceed in the sense that Smith will stay in her position until a cabinet shuffle later this summer But the overall message it sends to other Liberal cabinet ministers and wouldbe cabinet ministers on the back Jbeneh has to be somewhat mixed at best