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BEST AVAILABLE Page 4 THE HERALD OUTLOOK Saturday August the HERALD Five per cent down makes buying a home more practical OUTLOOK is published each Saturday the 1HIIS HERALD Home Newspaper of Hills A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited at Street Georgetown Ontario L7G3ZG Second lass Mail Registered Donna Kell Your Business Diane Ma ley Thomson Nw Service If Alan federal minister of housing has his way people who are buying their first home soon will be able to do so with a mere five per cent down Details of Mr Redways plan are not known but he hopes to have it up and r nning by the all Of all the proposals put forward to help first time home buyers Mr appears to be the most practical But it is not without to the federal government and Canadian taxpayers The way it works now anyone can buy a house with as little as per cent down provided he has enough income and the mortgage loan is insured by Canada Mor tgage and Housing Corp The fee is substantial per cent of the purchase price For a 100000 house with down the buyer would pay to insure the mortgage loan Big as it is though the CMHC premium has not been enough to offset the funds losses The fund is still suffering the effects of the recession when hundreds of peo ple could not pay their mortgages Any shortfall must be made up by the government Responding to a question about the size of the premium a spokesman was philosophical It all depends on what side of the fence you re on said Denis St director oi underwriting GOOD Compared with real estate fees the CMHC premium is more than reasonable lie We re assuming the risk for the loan for the next years Whether the premium will be even higher under Mr s plan remains to be seen The higher risk of the lower down payment will be offset to some extent by the fact that the new program will not be available to everyone Mr St Onge pointed out It will be limited to first time however the term comes to be defined It may also be limited to houses falling within a certain price range Both of these limitations will help contain CMHCs a Even so one wonders whether the governing should be diving m to help at the peak of the market TIMING KEY Timing is an important factor Mr St Onge agrees You have to be careful in a declining market Indeed part of the reason Mr plan is taking so long to come into being may have to do with the government s about the direction of real estate prices Introducing the plan in a booming market would only make the situation worse in traducing it in a failing market could be dangerous for CMHC If the slide continued there would be less incentive for pie to keep making mortgage payments as their equity in their home drops when the value of the house drops The government may be hoping that by fall the market nation wide will have settled down Berrys World GIVE ONE OF EACH OF OF POWER EQUIPMENT you HAVE NEIGHBORS PUBLISHER David EDITOR MacLeod AD MANAGER Dan Taj lor WRITERS lion Colin Gibson June Itll 1 sill SNAFU by Bruce Beattie ADVERTISING SAI Valois Teeter PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT Hastings Sunt Annie Olson Wilson UK 111 A DEPARTMENT Marie Shjdboll PRESSROOM I Alkm 111 Ruling on rules This must be a Twilight Zone episode Look My garage door opener works on that garage door too Is Elvis out of touch Elvis and all others mentioned below are mythical characters There could not be a Member of Parlia ment so out of touch with his com Could there As the dusty car crested the long hill descending into Venison Tickle the driver turned to his lone passenger with a triumphant smile Aha there it is Elvis exulted to his new Ottawa assistant A magnificent view eh Sorry Mr replied fresh faced Whitney All I see is a bunch of fog The MP looked again Sure enough a dense peasoup cloud had rolled up the arm of the sea and beloved hometown was invisible He didnt even see the railway tracks until the car was about 10 metres from them roared into town and came to a halt before his consti tuency office The fog was still thick but he thought he could see a welcoming crowd of peo ple You see Whitney he exclaim ed The political idol returns to his stamping ground during Parliaments summer recess and the throngs turn out to cheer him home It wasnt long however before Droodge and his companion realiz ed the good citizens of Venison Tickle had another kind of stamp ing in mind As the MP offered his band to the nearest Rufus Goodspeed he noticed that his oncefaithful follower had fire in his eyes FORGOTTEN RIDING Youve forgotten your roots Droodge grumbled Are you trying to shut this place down Stunned Droodge looked about for support There was a scarcely audible muttering sound in the air Eyes glowed through the mist like hot coals Could these be the same friends who gloried in his victory last November The MP feebly tried to change the subject How s the family My real estate business is the pits Goodspeed growled High interest rates The wife got laid off her fishplant job last week The boys have given up on work here Theyre in Ontario looking for jobs That show A reedy fellow in a grimy baseball cap and a checkered flan shirt chimed in Theyre shut ting our radar base down and Im out Youre making it harder to get pogey And what about that dock you promised I oppose that closure replied hopefully As for the dock its Just been delayed Itll come in time But now the national debt is in bad shape Weve all got to do our part for restraint Like the prime minister giving away a 5million painting to France I suppose said bit terly And Marcel Masse putting out for glossy coffeetable books or taking fun trips to Hollywood For this were paying higher taxes By the way Elvis how much did you spend on office renovations DODGED ISSUES chose to ignore that one He preferred to talk about regional development and declin ing national unemployment Our jobcreation record is the best ever the politician proclaim ed echoing the prime minister And no government has done as much for regional development Thats all very well said But theres little sign of those jobs here Small businesses that would like to expand cant because interest rates are killing them The larger companies are finding it harder to compete with foreignmade products So what are you going to do about it Gloomily pushed through the crowd and into his of fice The lone receptionist didnt even bother to look up It was cer tainly not the summer homecom ing he had anticipated Queens Pari Derek Nelson Thornton Service The rules of the legislature are of little concern to anybody beyond parliament And thats unfortunate How the legislature organizes its business has a large if indirect impact on everyone in this pro vince Thus it is nice to see the rules changes that have been agreed to by all three parties here for future sittings while there are gaps in what was decided there are some decided improvements in how the place is run And how it might even be good for us all Take just this one example The estimates process is an arcane ritual here where several committees sit down and look at the detailed spending of a ministry All ministries are supposedly covered in a fiscal year and their order is usually set by the govern ment The number of hours for con sideration of a ministry varies but is maybe only a halfdozen or so In theory this allows our elected representative to get at the nuts and bolts of spending that only received a broad sweep in the governments budget practice nothing of the sort happens Government ministries are just too big nowadays and have too much money for any politician to really probe the guts of spending Instead what we get are the op position spokesmen for a ministry giving philosophical and often rambling testimony to what is wrong with government policy and how they would fix it usually by spending more and thats from both New Democrats and Tories Sometimes a committee member will probe an issue of in teresl solely to himself or his con stituents in other cases questions and views are all over the map The governments presentation from its side tends to obscure rather than reveal In short no one has any respect for the process anymore DEEPER The Liberals proposed rule reforms would have created a new standing committee on estimates that would have tackl ed fewer ministries in greater depth Unfortunately it left the choice of ministry up to the government until negotia tions with the opposition produced a compromise that will all allow all three parties to pick in rotation a ministry for estimates study It will take time to see what ef fect the new procedure has on the quality of estimates debate but in no way could the results be worse than what the place has been inflicted with Of course estimates changes are only one of the many that the amendments to the rules of order will bring From the Liberals viewpoint the big news is that some of the more obnoxious opposition delay ing techniques will be abolished These include bellringing walking out and letting the bells which are calling members for a vote ring on and on Until they stop nothing can happen in the legislature