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Page HE HERALD OUTLOOK Saturday November the HERALD OUTLOOK is published each Saturday by he HILLS HERALD Home Newspaper of Hallon Hills A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited- at 45 Street Georgetown Ontario 2201 PUBLISHER David A Beattie EDITOR Brian MacLeod AD MANAGER Dan Taylor Second Class Mail Registered Number 8778822 STAFF WRITERS Donna Kelt Ren SPORTS At COUNTING Diane Smith CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING Joan ADVFRTISINGSAIES Valois Craig Teeter Slacie Roberts PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT Dave Hastings Sup Annie Olsen Wilson CIRCULATION Marie Drabinsky story is not really that exciting SNAFU by Brute Hi Diane Matey Your Business Hurt If it were not for Robert Campeau s stunning performance as the tragic hero who overreaches himself Canadians would still be talking about Garth Drabinsky s stellar role in the saga Mr too has been humbled by the Fates for his hubris or overweening pride The youthful founder of the Cineplex chain of movie theatres has been struggling for months to save his empire from those who would swallow it whole and then spit Mr Drabinsky out Or so it would seem As for Mr an American shareholder has just launched a suit against him and his company for supposedly leading shareholders down the garden path Likewise Mr is be ing punished for his cavalier treat ment of shareholders But to say that a monumental battle for con trol of Cmeplex has been going on behind scenes may be more fie tion than fact The true of Garth sky and may be far less exciting than it has been cracked up to be STUPID MOVE It all began in when Mr ran into financial ble Charles Bronfman of Montreal stepped in to help htm out taking 30 per cent of the company for his trouble Cineplex went on to pro sper m the United States doing so well that movie giant MCA Inc bought 49 per cent of its shares Despite its big holding Canadian ownership laws limited MCA s voting rights to per cent of the shares outstanding Trouble erupted when Mr man decided he had helped enough and asked Mr to buy him out Mr agreed to do so but neglected to tell Sidney Sheinberg president of MCA Mr Sheinberg had been a friend and admirer of Mr and he took the move as a slap in the face He said that if Mr Drabinsky buys back Mr Bronfman stock he must buy MCA s as well Indeed that what usually hap pens when a company buys back a big block of its stock To be fair it makes the same offer to other shareholders Was Mr Drabinsky trving to wrest control from Mr Sheinberg by stealth It looks like it GRABBING CONTROL Mr Drabinsky and his partner Myron Gottlieb own eight per cent of Cineplex stock If they had bought Mr Bronfman s 30 per cent they would have snatched voting control of the company from MCA But this change in control may have been more apparent than real In most matters Mr Bronfman may have voted his stock along with Mr Drabinsky and Mr Gottlieb Berrys World I just had a NIGHTMARE I dreamt I was sent to jail and ZSA WAS MY CELLMA TEI The only shock worse than seeing Christmas decorations early is getting the bills in January Auditor General wades into trouble Vic Parsons Ottawa Bureau timet It was like deja vu all over again onetime baseball star and legendary phrasemaker Yogi Berra is reported to have once said These days Auditor General Ken Dye might well be expenenc that same sensation When he caned the government arrogant for refusing to allow an audit of receipts of federal cabinet ministers travelling on public business Dye was tripping down a well used path that has led him to controversy before There is a healthy quota of the powerful in this country who feel Dye is snooping into areas in which he has no business The auditor general riled at least two prime ministers Pierre and Brian and possibly a third John Turner when he went after cabinet documents concerning the of Petrofina to PetroCanada in the early 1980s Dye who felt the peo ple of Canada paid far too much for the takeover ultimately lost his claim to the files in the Supreme Court this year He rubbed the Nova Scotia government the wrong way last year by questioning the way federally supplied funds from a program to support development of offshore energy resources were spent And Dye irritated our beloved senators this year when he sug it was time for a com prehensive audit into the way the upper house spends its annual allocation of taxpayers dough million in After charging senators were giving him the bureaucratic things settled down a bit There are negotiations that may end up giving Dye a peek at the Senate books as long as he doesn t complain about attendance or offer his views on the cost effectiveness of the institution SOME RESULTS His latest attempted foray into the realm of ministerial travel has already achieved some results even though the auditor general said he wouldnto ahead with an audit at this time Ministerial travel costs were estimated in the public accounts at about 7 million last year although Dye suspects the figure is too low But an audit was impossible because treasury board the federal money manager decided that even if travel receipts and written requests by ministers for the use of government planes ex isted they would not be made available Dye view backed by references to federal rules is that he has clear statutory authority to audit the expenses Treasury Board President Robert Cotret showed Tuesday that the government is somewhat twitchy about its stance Under op position fire he said the govern would make available total travel expenses and details of the use of federally owned VIP jets Cotret was less flexible however when he said receipts for such things as meals and drinks would not be made available He argued that providing such details would violate cabinet confidential because it would reveal whom ministers met with in the course of their business NOT IMPOSSIBLE Surely this Is not an table problem There are ways to report spending without blabbing to the world the details of every private meeting The government sensitivity may stem from the embarrass it suffered in the case of former environment minister Suzanne BlaisGrenier In 1985 Blais Grenier spent about for herself her hus band and political aides on two separate trips to Europe The lavish spending led ultimately to the demise of her political career How Queens Park stacks up against Brits LONDON Visiting the Mother of Parliaments here at Westminster can be an eyeopening experience for someone used to the Ontario legislature More genuine debate dissent and philosophy was heard in two hours than Queen Park produces in two months When people spoke they actual Iy had something to say and t just blowing air Admittedly this was a small sliver timewise of events in the British House of Commons but regular observers present said it was a typical day What made the difference Interestingly enough it is partly the layout of the place At Queen Park there are members They sit in a cavernous chamber with so much space available that each has his or her own desk with aisles between them every sooften and a huge gap between the government and opposition sides At Westminster there are literally benches for members to sit upon hence the origin of the terms frontbenchers for cabinet ministers and backbenchers for the rest There are no aisles no desks and even when crammed there is seating in Parliament for only out of the members The rest stand a crowd In Ontario ministers make their statements and the opposition replies from their individual desks In Westminster the minister and the opposition speak from a separate corner of the same table between the ben barely separated by the length of a mace In short there is a deeper feeling of intimacy about the British House of Commons than exists in the Ontario legislature with its enormous amount of space and feeling of openness This difference is also reflected in how business is conducted there being much more of an ebb and flow between members in the British system than in the Ontario system The British members on both sides including ministers yield for comments and questions which are succinct and to the point rather than mindless rhetoric Even better those participating actually express philosophical dif This day the governing Conser vatives were defending changes to the student assistance program in Britain which would result in more loans and fewer grants on the theory that those benefitting most from a state paid for education should also carry more of the burden The Labor Party critic disagreed of course and there was considerable cut and thrust on how the two parties stood and how each would finance their views and what the consequences would be of each approach