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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 Liberals as popular as ever BRIAN MacLEOD Editor Phone DAN TAYLOR Advertising Manager Srcond Clan Mall Page THE HERALD Wednesday July Doit Prime Minister Brian we are appalled that the recent developments on the abortion issue have oc curred simply because your government has been dragg ing its feet for months In the past few weeks the entire nation has watched as three young women have had lives dragged out in court and in public We have watched as Barbara fought a court in junction filed by her former boyfriend parts of which were later found to be in error stopping her abortion We have looked on as a 20yearold Winnipeg woman fought and won a court injunction filed by her former boyfriend preventing her from having an abortion Now 21yearold Chantal personal life is being scrutinized while she awaits a court appeal in Quebec Prime Minister your failure to act promptly once the original abortion ruling was deemed unconstitu tional has put these women through hell because of the public scrutiny theyve endured And there will be more You cant be enjoying this If you believe women should have access to an abortion restricted tell us and let the public fight it out If you think a womans body is hers to do with as she wishes then tell us and let the public fight about that Either way youre going to have to let the public get in volved in this one God knows politicians have avoided it long enough Abortion is a political and moral issue It should not be left to the courts You tell us that there are events that have brought abortion to the front burner more than has been the case You mean it hasnt been front and centre since the law was struck down in January 1988 What you have been doing You tell us youre going to introduce legislation in the fall but you wont tell us when well have a law Legal experts say there is now a possibility that someone completely unrelated to a pregnant woman can get a court injunction forbidding the abortion If you agree with this situation then tell us If you dont agree with it then let us know Its time Mr Prime Minister to lay what may be your career on the line Yeu cant wait any more Doit Origins Editors Notebook Brian MacLeod HtnMHttor Did you know that is per cent of Ontarios population has a mother tongue other than English or French Did you know that the large mother tongue group in Ontario other than or French Italian The Ministry of Citizenship has released a set of statistics of what Ontario residents speak ft based on the census A mother tongue is defined by the ministry as the language first learned in childhood and still understood The ministry says 21 per cent of the people in Ontario have Italian as a mother tongue German follows that group with per cent Nine per cent of Ontario residents call Chinese their mother tongue eight per cent have Portuguese and five per cent call Polish their mother tongue Of the 15 per cent of Ontarios population whose mother tongue is not English or French only 22 per cent were born in Canada But 20 per cent of them were horn in On tario Queens Park Derek Nelson Thornton Srvici The Liberal government may be reeling internally from daily media and opposition assaults on its ethics It might even be true that various schemes are being hatched in the Liberal backrooms to organize and reorganize the government to avoid such embar rassments again perhaps with the Liberals elder statesman himself Deputy Premier Bob Nix- on acting as watchdog But ail that is put into a lot better perspective by the latest provin cial party preference poll The Liberals may be enmeshed in scandal or at least the percep tion of scandal but the electorate doesnt seem to care much Environics Researchs poll taken June to July showed the Liberals would get just about the same vote today they would have got six months ago before the had news for them began In round numbers the Liberals have per cent of the popular vote the Conservatives 30 per cent and the 25 per cent When you smooth out a few bumps such as the major Tory drop in 1989 that is just about the way the polls have stood since September of 1985 a couple of months after the Liberals were given power here by their deal with the The question is why several mon ths of Liberal trials and tribula tions on ethical matters have had little effect on their standing with the public WORSE AM WORSE After all the news for the Grits got worse and worse starting from former solicitor general Joan Smiths improper dealings with- police through the campaign con tributions of- resigned Ontano Place head Patti Starr to the resignation of the governments top political bureaucrat Gordon Ashworth The Environics poll was taken in the twoweek period following Ashworths leaving the govern ment after it was revealed he had received a refrigerator arranged by Starr that had never been paid for Backbench Brampton Liberal Bob Callahan was quoted as saying the poll results show The people of Ontario are fair They dont buy the politics of sleaze stirred up by the media and opposition As a Liberal Callahan should know The Grils made a career out of attempting to tar successive Conservative administrations in Ontario with scandal usually er roneously But even when the Liberals had their facts straight as in the now almostforgotten scandals such as and the electorate yawned and moved on to other things The poll- indicates nothing has changed It is not mind you that the public is oblivious to the scandals An official said people are judging the government on other issues one of which is that the PC and NDP alternatives to the Grits arent particularly appeal ing Political polling expert Fred Fletcher at York University also cautioned that a lot of Ontario voters dont focus on Ontario politics unless a particular issue touches them or an election cam paign is underway LETTERS KftSSSffi Civic Centre is dangerous EDITORS NOTE The following letter addressed to Mayor Miller was filed with the Herald for publication Dear Mr Miller I couldnt resist going over to the new Civic Centre on Tuesday June to look around with my children ages two and four years and to pay my taxes I didnt realize that it would be such a dangerous experience for us all We parked the car in the parking lot and approached the building from that side On the left as you walk in is a sunken garden it drops about 1015 ft and there is no fence around the top The kids thought it was great and went run ning up to it to look down There is absolutely nothing there to stop them from falling down into that pit Please put a guard rail up We entered the building and went to pay the taxes As I was transacting this business at the wicket the woman serving me sud denly screamed Someone had thoughtfully placed a bench in front of the concrete bannister My children had climbed up on the bench and on to the bannister and were looking down on the concrete floor of the next level down Think ing that it was just my kids I asked the woman if this had happened before It was the second or third time that someones children had done the same thing Someone keeps putting that bench under the bannister I retrieved the kids fld then looked at the bannister It doesnt meet the wall or the elevator so there is a four to six inch gap in which a child could get stuck or worse squeeze through and fall down one floor I realize that when architects design buildings like the Civic Cen tre that safety for children is not their main concern they assume that only responsible adults will be using the building This is understandable but you should know that people with small children do visit this building especially since parks and recrea tion is in the basement It is the responsibility of you and the ad ministrator of the Civic Centre to correct the safety deficiencies and you had better do it quickly before you have an unfortunate acci dent occur I hope it isnt one of my children to whom this un fortunate accident occurs Sincerely Mary Jane Why nuclear power Dear Sir The desperation of our national atomic sales force which hasnt sold a reactor for years and cant even give one away is apparent in the Canadian Nuclear 15page advertisement in Macleans magazine June Nuclear power is clean and cheap they say What they dont tell us is that the cost of the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station under construction east of Toronto has just jumped by almost a million dollars This is the second time in less than a year that cost overruns and delays have plagued Darl ington And if this isnt bad enough the atomic establishment never seems to factor the environmental and health costs into their miscalcula tions Obviously the nuclear people dont feel accountable in these fun damental areas Let us compare the amount of money the Canadian atomic establishment is willing to spend on protecting our health with the figure theyve committed to pro tecting their health The Atomic Energy Control BoarcTis reluctant ly forking over a measly for studies on the effects of radia tion on populations living near On tarios nuclear facilities You couldnt even buy yourself one family home in Toronto with that figure I Is that all our nuclear regulatory body thinks were worth Is that all the government says were worth But in order to protect their business interests a colossal million of our tax dollars is ear marked so people in the pay of the nuclear industry can tell us that Continued on Page 7