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

Home Newspaper of Halton Hills Established Nuclear power is on the move A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited Guelph Street Georgetown 3Z6 Ontario DAVID A BEATTIE Publisher and General Manager BRIAN Editor Phone 8772201 DAN TAYLOR Advertising Manager Page THE HERALD Wednesday June 1989 Give it teeth If the new Aggregates Act is passed by the provincial government there are hopes of a better future for like Halton North Our riding which contains a good chunk of the Niagara Escarpment has some of the busiest quar rying activity m Ontario Halton North Walt Elliot saus The Act is supposed to tighten the rules for aggregate producers Apart from gaining in royalties for the riding the act promises to force aggregate producers to submit a site rehabilitation plan to return quarries to nor mal once quarrying is complete We wont know for a few years but its absolutely im perative that the act has teeth Its that lack of teeth that has caused those who are fighting the Acton quarry landfill proposal so many headaches The previous owners of the quarry apparently had filed a rehabilitation plan but they sold the quarry and licence to United Aggregates and burned all the papers leaving any rehabilitation plans in ashes Now amidst forgotten promises of restoring the quarrys natural state we have a proposal for a massive garbage dump Weve had enough of promises We want to see these ag gregate producers stick to their plans We want to see our government protect our environment Count your Loonies Editors Notebook Brian MacLeod Hooray Lets call July 3 a na tional holiday We can dance in the streets smile at our bankers wave wads of cash at gas station atten dants and actually start counting our Loonies Why all the fuss Because its National Tax Freedom Day on July 3 Yes the Vancouver BC baaed Institute our national think tank has declared the third day of the seventh month Tax Freedom Day Based an complicated calculations Tax Freedom Day represents the day Canadians begin working for themselves But we cant all celebrate at once Each province has its own Tax Freedom Day In Ontario Tax Freedom Day actually Mis on Ju ly the latest of all the provinces Prince Edward Island has the earliest Tax Freedom Day on May The nationwide Tax Freedom Day on July 3 is actually two days later than last year Its the day of the year Pretty hard to believe isnt if Well heres how its calculated The Institute has set the average cash income for an On tario family at According to the institute in well pay in profits tax in in come tax in sales tax for liquor tobacco amusement and excise 673- for auto fuel and motor vehicle licence taxes for social security pension and medical and hospital taxes for property tax for natural resource taxes for import duties and other taxes for a grand total of 25913 Thats the highes of all pro vinces and higher than the national average of 23094 Prince Edward Island by comparison will pay on ly this year But their average family income is listed at only 37000 The same report says not Ontario residents will spend the most per capita this year Each person in Alberta is expected to spend 463340 in 1989 while those of us who live in Ontario will each spend only 4339 30 Hey guess what All this about Tax Freedom Day doesnt include those huge red numbers our governments run up every year Inducting deficit financing Tax Freedom Day in Canada would be August Are you disgusted yet Actually lets not dismiss our various levels of governments forts Todays society has conve niences never dreamed of in the past But theyre expensive and it seems our governments believe were willing to pay for them Pioneer Days suffered a bit of a setback this year with chilly wet weather but we didnt stay away in droves according to Business Im provement Area Margaret Vint Thursday and Fri day were pretty cold but Main Street was barring with bargain hunters she said The downpour on Saturday pret ty well washed away the remnants of Pioneer Days but well live to Queens Park Derek Nelson Thomson Newt Service OTTAWA Nuclear power is back Maybe There nothing definite yet but a sense of optimism existed at the joint Canadian Nuclear tionCanadian Nuclear Society meeting herethis week It was an intangible as much as anything a feeling that in an age where acid rain and fossil fuel pollution are increasingly unac ceptable nuclear offers the best alternative In Ontario in particular deci must be made this year about new reactor construction after the Darlington station just east of Oshawa is finished and there are increasing hints that the Liberal gdvernment is going to go for fur nuclear construction This is as much to keep an in high technology industry alive as it is to meet the obvious need for more power Not that everything is sweetness and light for nuclear Although both federal minister Jake Epp and Ontario Energy Minister Bob Wong were present and said the usual nice things it Is clear that discussions between them for restructuring the in art a long v ay from com The federal atomic agency is Atomic knergy of Canada Ltd which is usually referred to simply as AECL At the provincial level Ontario Hydro has effectively the equivalent To quote A year or two ago was unable to fully fund its engineering work out of operating revenues It asked that the government help finance the design of a new reactor the Candu That request prompted us to take a hard look at the larger issues surrounding Canada nuclear program Was there a solid future for the business Could Camda reasonably afford to pay the cost of staying in the business the markets improved The answer is yes However we do have some con cerns he added has become largely marginal to the nuclear program in Ontario where the bulk of the worlds capacity resides BENEFICIARY At the same time Ontario is a significant indirect beneficiary of AECLs major research and development and design efforts a fact recognized by Ontario Hydro contributions to AECLs research effort With AECL and Ontario Hydro as the two key players and the private sector in a supporting role suggested a restructed nuclear Team Canada be formed It was all up beat although neither kpp nor Wong really touch on the bom of contention between the two levels of govern merit money Ottawa Ontario to pick up mort of the nuclear tab And On tario Hydro which now does per cent of its own engineering on Can would have to return to the old days were design was more evenly shared with AECI A consultant report is due in a month or so on restructuring and major discussions are under way with New Brunswick and Saskat chewan about the possibility of their building the new Candu 3 This would be a smaller less ex pensive reactor made easy to- by using modular con struction and geared to the export market But before it could be sold a demonstration model would have to be built Canada So far it is said Ontario hasnt expressed a great deal of interest even though its energy demand problems are becoming severe But Saskatchewan and especial ly New Brunswick are interested In any case there is somehow the feeling that nuclear has turned the corner that the Ontario government isn t about to axe the nuclear option as it looked like it would three years ago and that the federal government isnt about to abandon the field As one observer here suggested the nuclear industry is to Ontario what oil is to Alberta and fish to Newfoundland None of them can afford to walk away from it ON US MID BAIN Mulroneypopularityis tumbling Ottawa Stewart MacLeod TkfRssfl Nmn Sot let With the next federal election three or four years away the opi nion polls on party standings dont have a great deal of practical significance these days Still the tumbling popularity of the Mulroney government cannot be ignored What the latest Gallup survey suggests is that if an election were held today the Liberal Parry would form the government with 181 seats the Conservatives would win 80 and the New Democrats would drop to This is quite a turnaround for the two major parties since the Tories won 168 seats the Nov general election compared with 83 for the Liberals The New Democrats won Its not often that such a dramatic change occurs in a sevenmonth period Right now according to Gallup the liberals lead with per cent of the popular vote while the Tories have dropped back to per cent and the New Democrats hover around their traditional percent The only region where the Tones lead on the Prairies with pet cent In Quebec and Ontario they stand at 29 per cent in Atlantic Canada at a dismal per cent When you couple this with another Gallup poll rating the per formance of prime ministers it doesnt provide Mr Mulroney with much happy reading No less than per cent of Canadians think that Pierre Trudeau was a better prime minister than Mr Mulroney who was selected best by only 23 per cent of respondents Fifteen per cent didnt think much of either man It appears as though the popularity of Mr Trudeau Is in creasing in step with the length of time be has been out of office Now even on the Prairies where the Liberal prime minister was so openly disliked he has moved ahead of the present prime minister While only 29 per cent of Prairie respondents thought Mr Mulroney was the better prime minister per cent now name Mr And in Quebec Mr- Trudeau leads Mr Mulroney 22 Again this is more amusing than significant The chances of Mr Trudeau ever running against Mr are rather slim Had the Tory fall in popularity occurred immediately before an election it would be frontpage news all over Canada But not only is there an obvious lack of concern among federal Tories they had ex pected to go through a post election slump The idea in the immediate after math of an election victory is to get the unpopular measures out of the way so the last couple of years of the mandate can be devoted to re establishing footings for re election The present government has not been particularly effective In get ting any measures unpopular or otherwise out of the way since the election but that hasnt slowed its fall on the popularity charts Even though there Is very limited pro gress in terms of legislationthere has been a steady flow of disconcerting news out of Ottawa And now that Leader John Turner has announced hes retiring he seems to be better lik ed than before