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NDP has split personality Home Newspaper of Hills- Established A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited Street Georgetown L7G 3Z6 Ontario DAVID A BEATTIE Publisher and General Manager BRIAN Editor Phone 8772201 DAN TAYLOR Advertising Manager I Mull Number Mil Page THE HERALD Wednesday October Sunday shopping time to act A group of top executives from the national food store chains told Haltons acting Regional chairman last week that Haltons shoppers want Sunday shopping and that they can find a work force thats eager to work on Sundays The group which calls itself the coalition of grocery retailers and distributors has produced figures which they say backs up those claims Halton cant simply dismiss these figures- Nor can the Region accept them on blind faith Its time to act one way or the other Simply cursing the province for handing over the responsibility on Sunday shopping wont work Yes the province should have tackl ed the issue instead of passing legislation allowing regions to give out exemptions But will have to answer to the voters in two years If the coalitions figures which were published by reputable Goldfarb consultants are correct then relaxing restrictions on Sunday shopping seems the logical choice It does seem absurd that in these days when thousands of workers are forced to work what is known as Continental shifts that is they get their weekends in the middle of the normal work week that lawmakers disallow such a practice in the retail trade The coalition says large fruit markets which are allowed to open on Sundays are sellingmore than laws allow They also say their huge grocery stores are losing millions of dollars each Sunday theyre closed And this business of roping off aisles to conform to Sun day shopping laws is ridiculous and in many cases embar rassing Obviously chain store executives dont buy the argu ment that consumers would merely spread their dollars over seven days instead of six However if Halton should freely grant exemptions for Sunday shopping it would be unfair to simply favor grocery stores Other retail stores would have to be granted the same choice The coalitions figures say shoppers and store owners favor having the option of opening Sundays But acting chairman Rob Forbes says people who would have to work on Sundays would not favor opening on the seventh day Untimately more than grocery store owners or ex ecutives chasing dollars those who would have to work on Sundays should be given the most consideration Perhaps a compromise can be reached and Sunday openings allowed with restricted hours That would still allow people who work Sundays to attend church A report currently being prepared by Halton Region should reflect the wishes of all the groups involved The Goldfarb report consisted of 304 interviews with heads of households Yet its the students who would likely work on Sundays It will take more than 304 interviews to find out the true feelings of residents in a Region with five urban areas And the heads of households arent the only ones who will work on Sundays Sure the students arent of voting age But Sunday shopping affects them directly Their opinion should be represented in Haltons report We hope and expect that Haltons politicians wont dance around the issue leaving Sunday shopping up in the air once again Toronto So Ontario New Democratic Party Leader Bob is being touted again for boss of the federal party One report even said hed decid ed to run but was preempted by former BC New Democrat per- mier Dave Barretts decision to jump into the race Maybe maybe not Nothing in politics is forever While three months ago Rae said that he wouldnt be going federal ly times do change They especially change when a politician is bombarded by en treaties from friends and acquain tances who say that only he can play the saviour That gets to the ego that lurks in every politician an ego that says of course I can do it and without which he or she probably wouldnt be in politics in the first place It may not be enough to move since he is well aware he also carries truly negative baggage in that he is from Ontario and is seen as being antiWestern Canada pro- Qttawa and proQuebec on national issues This is why the NDP establishment wants him of course It isnt thrilled with the ex plicitly populist antiQuebec themes Barrett emphasized upon entering the campaign Mind you some other than New Democrats would love to see Rae leading the NDP federally Imagine the next federal election with the tially establishment Ontarian ver sus Quebec politicians Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien and no polarizing issue like free trade Preston Mannings conservative Reform Party could take up to western seats Barrett as NDP leader would make that goal much tougher to accomplish Still the NDPs frantic search for a leader is really a symptom of a much deeper paity malady than simply lack of a messiah What is the purpose of the Its social program has been im plemented in the main arguments nowadays revolving more around how to pay for the results than anything else Its economic program socialism is in tatters even the Soviets no longer believe that the state can allocate resources more efficiently than the market In the international sphere its Third World worship antiAmericanism and blind eye to Marxist tyrannies have been adopted by most Liberals and ex cept for the Americanism Tories as well As for peculiarly Canadian issues such as Lake the NDP suffers precisely the same split personality as all other major parties It was fascinating to read a cent newspaper article by close advisor Robin Sears in which Sears tried to set out an agenda for the partys future Ironically all he did was regurgitate the old postcriptions on the economy albeit in slightly dif ferent ways Broad restructuring of declin ing sectors including serious labormarket intervention a na tional economic strategy that picks winning sectors and works with the leading players to innovate and win new markets and so on It is new words for an ancient idea the belief that government is capable of picking winners and losers or organizing peoples lives so as to produce a smoothly runn ing economy Vet even the NDPs role model the authoritarian elitist homogeneous Sweden long ago realized that only the unfair and capricious market can properly make such decisions What government can do well is provide infrastructure roads railroads airports and so on for market change and provide transi tional funding tor individuals caught by market shifts re training unemployment insurance and such Only the second in terests New Democrats Only the first is absolutely vital Bob or whoever New Democrats pick as leader will face the NDP dilemma of having to push a dogma that politicians and bureaucrates can make intelligent market decisions at a time when all the evidence suggests such a belief is nonsense The GST and the real world Vic Parsons Imagine the bureaucrats perfect world The federal government in troduces a ninepercent Goods and Services Tax GST as scheduled on Jan 11991 Mr Consumer and Ms Wage- earner find when they do their weekly shopping that prices are rising at a pace that will lop about to from every they have to spend Theyd really like to get that back otherwise theyll see a decline in their living standards That means less or poorer quality food It could mean fewer clothes for their kids or putting off that planned summer vacation to another year But are they concerned Well no And knows they wouldnt think of asking their bosses for more money to replace the dollars they are losing to infla tion They are prepared to bear the burden of reduced buying power because theres that informative new tax index thats being put out by Statistics Canada And what does that index tell them It says inflation is not really costing them to for every but substantially less Roughly 225 to of that loss is actually due to the impact of the new GST Oh well say Mr Consumer and Ms Wageearner vaguely comforted Thats all right then We wont try to get that money back REAL WORLD So much for the bureaucrats vi sion of the future Lets talk for a moment about the real world By next fall just before the GST is due Statistics Canada expects to have developed a new index which will tell us how much taxes are pushing up the cost of living That may just- seem like an in teresting sidelight but the timing is of great significance StatsCan officials say the index will help Canadians the im pact of the new federal tax on infla tion But voices from the Finance Department reveal another motive They hope when the time comes for negotiating pay raises that employees will forget about the inflationary role of taxes Otherwise they worry large pay settlements could set off a new round of inflation The fly in the ointment is that when workers see prices rise by say seven per cent they care not one whit whether half of that is due to bad weather or higher energy costs or taxes WHAT IT COSTS The bottom line as corporate leaders are fond of saying is what it costs The only CPI consumer price index that employees care about is what happens at the cash register one farsighted economist is quoted as saying In recent months as the impact of new federal and provincial taxes worked their way through the system the cost of living has stayed at a steady five per cent