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Home Newspaper of Halton Hills Established A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited Guelph Street Georgetown 3Z6 Ontario DAVID A BEATTIE Publisher and General Manager BRIAN Editor Phone DAN TAYLOR Advertising Manager PageeTIIEIIERALD Wednesday June Take a hard look at a big raise As taxpayers in Halton Hills youll soon get a good look at the stuff of which yourlocal councillors are made Our local politicians must decide what to do with a report from a fivemember citizens committee containing recommendatjions for a raise for the mayors posi tion and a raise for the towns 12 councillors The report also recommends a monthly car allowance for the mayor and a a month car allowance for councillors The citizens committee which consists of chairman Ross Knechtel Jo Lister Hartley Coles Bob and Fred Harrison says the increase could be spread over three years Currently Mayor Russ Miller makes 20400 a year plus an extra 16000 as a Regional councillor Halton Hills four Regional councillors are paid by the town and 16000 by Halton Region The remaining eight town councillors are paid each by taxpayers in the Town of Halton Hills The mayor of Milton a town in Halton Region com parable in size to Halton Hills makes 26000 a year plus the Regional salary and Milton town councillors are paid annually All this spawned from a Halton Hills staff report last year which showed salaries of the mayor and councillors here are lagging behind other municipalities At the time several councillors jumped to their feet adamant they werent doing the job for the token payment They believed that the mayors position should be given an in crease in salary but that councillors salaries should be kept in check At Mondays meeting there was no such immediate backlash Only one councillor Lil Bowman queried Mr himself a former councillor about the background of the report With a budget increase in double figures this year wed expect the town to exercise restraint It must be stressed that personalities should be divorced from payment where councillors are concerned No one can deny that Miller is a hard working and diligent mayor but he will not be mayor of Halton Hills forever The salaries must be representative of the position and not the people filling them We cannot begrudge councillors giving themselves a raise to keep up with surrounding municipalities Instead of forming this public committee as an attempt to legitimize a raise in salaries councillors could have should have tackled the issue a year ago and explained heir actions to the public If their reasoning made sense the public wouldnt have grumbled Its often said politicians are elected to make tough decisions This is one decision they should have made without tossing it out to the public first And the composition of the committee which includes Georgetown Independent Managing Editor Hartley Coles has put councillor Ann Currie in a terribly awkward posi tion Although Coun Currie has retired from the Indepen dent she worked there for well over a decade and still does parttime work for the newspaper She has been put in a position in which her former immediate supervisor is recommending a salary increase with public funds Its incumbent on that she declare a con flict of interest and refrain from voting or speaking on the Premiers vision of Canada lies only in southern Ontario SL Queens Park Derek Nelson Thornton New Strvice TORONTOPremier David Peterson made a revealing slip here this week as he was being in terviewed scrummed as they say by reporters He was being asked about the justannounced joint Ontario- Quebec feasibility study on high speed rail transport in the Quebec City corridor Among other points that he made he said such upgrading would be Important for national unity for linking the country together One sharpeared reporter quick ly asked what was in this symbol of national unity for western and Atlantic Canada Peterson immediately realized hed made the classic central Canadian faux pas of defining the country as southern Ontario and Quebec with a spur line to Ottawa and mumbled some generalities In fact though what he first said was what he thought And it is more than that the coun trys industrial heartland lies along the axis It is also the road to Quebec francophonie by which Peterson and his ilk define the country It isnt really a partisan thing Prime Minister Brian federal Tories think much the same as did the former Ontario Conservative government of Bill Davis And former Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau almost copyrighted Canada on those grounds But there is a difference nowadays Peterson is worried about the future He admired a couple of in his words insightful articles by Jeffrey Simpson in the Globe and Mail recently that described how the vision of a dual English- French bilingual Canada is dying Canada as we know it cannot exist without a desire by and Frenchspeaking Canadians to do great things Never in my lifetime has that sense been weaker Simpsonwrote Peterson whod just returned from being feted in Quebec City by Premier Robert spoke of an resignation in Simp sons pieces about the future of Canada and of how he wanted to fight that pessimism Peterson continues to insist one way to do so is by ratifying the Lake accord with iU definition of Quebec as a distinct society a document he calls pro- Canada It needs support at least partly because inside Quebec il has assumed a very great sym bolism synonymous with rejec tion or humiliation if it is turned down SAME OLD LINE In short it was Peterson peddl ing the old line that so mesmerized nonFrench Canada two ago Give Quebec what it wants or see it leave The short reply nowadays is as Simpson implies Who cares The Peterson vision of Canada is yesterdays vision It is an abstract view of a Canada that never was or will be It is a vision that runs only across southern Ontario it is bil ingual even as Quebec marches further into unilingualism it is centralist even as Quebec becomes semiindependent It is a vision that has long in furiated many in western Canada and is today losing as Simpson notes most of its appeal in its former heartland Ontario By coinciderice the reply to Petersons vision was given by Publisher Link Byfield in a recent issue of the newsmagazine Western Report Quebec has already told Anglo- Canada to stay out of its affairs It wants an armslength relation ship And yet it also wants a lot more money from Ottawa than it sends back in taxes and it wants to go right on electing onequarter of the MPs in the House of Commons If losing Quebec means losing the stupendous privilege of paying for all this most westerners should eventually agree that we should lose Quebec as fast as possible It can be as distinct as it likes but it can do so from the National Assembly in Quebec City and it can stop sending AngloCanada the bill he wrote Including the bill for a central Canadian train set Alberta works for senate reform By RENNIE Ottawa Bureau Thomson News Service any en couragement from the federal ad ministration the Alberta govern ment continues to lurch forward with its own daring attempt to reform the countrys appointed Senate Cynical observers of the pro vinces determined effort to elect its first senator as early as this fall might view the first few clumsy steps in the process as another amusing sideshow in the never- ending theatre of federal and pro vincial politics But the unilateral decision of Premier Don Getty to push a Senate election bill through the provinces legislature has excited Albertans who feel and elected senator would give the appointed upper house some legitimacy The Alberta idea of a Senate election foUowed the 1987 Lake accord and the federal offer to select senators from among names recommended by provin cial governments Getty sewed the opportunity and declared that Alberta would elect its candidate to fill a vacant Senate seat But the appointment of a senatorial candidate elected by popular choice was not quite what Prime Minister Brian had in mind He reminded Getty that the Meech Lake accord called for the provinces to submit a number of names and that the final selection would by the federal administration There was also the example of Gerald Ottenheimer who became the first senator appointed under the process He had been recommended by Newfoundlands of the day Brian Peckford Getty had no great problem with the prime ministers response Mulroney could select his senator from among the top five finishers in the Alberta election be said In Ottawa some politicians are pressing the government to accept the Alberta process Edmonton Tory MP Scott has urg ed the prime minister to accept the peoples recommendation and has proposed a caucus- sponsored conference on Senate reform Thorkelson an active proponent of the Triple elected equal and effective Senate said it is unlike ly Mulroney will reject any can didates to come out of the Alberta election He sees the Alberta elec tion as another step in the natural progression to a completely reformed Senate PROVINCIAL INTERESTS People in the West feel strongly about Senate reform he said There is a need to have a Senate that represents provincial in terests But while the Getty government has a firm objective and a clear means of establishing the process it appears to be stumbling over the mechanics of implementing it Enabling legislation was in troduced in the last session of the legislature but died when Getty called the last provincial election The same legislation has been pro mised in the new session and then is still hope the Senate election can be held this fall