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the HERALD Three groups oppose Meech Lake Home Newspaper of Halton Hills Established A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited Street Georgetown 3Z6 Ontario DAVID A BEATTIE Publisher and General Manager BRIAN Editor Phone DAN TAYLOR Advertising Manager Page THE HERALD Wednesday November Editorial No guns Here we go again Hunting may become a contentious issue once more in Halton but this time it wont be deer itll be geese that may be dying at the blast of a hunters gun Oakville councillors are setting up a committee to con sider how to control the Canada Goose population They want a councillor from Halton Hills to sit on the commit tee The committee is considering either harvesting the geese or addling heir eggs Its funny how people can come up with terms harvest or addling when they dont really want to say what they mean And what they mean is blasting the geese out of the sky or shaking up their eggs so they never hatch Its refreshing to see at least one local councillor Norm Elliott stand up and say these terms are nothing more than a euphemism for the hunt of Canadian Geese The problem is that the waterfowl population in the Regions waterways are polluting them with excrement The new beach behind the boathouse at Actons Pro spect Park was closed for 40 per cent of the summer this year because excrement had been stirred up from the bot tom of the lake But signs were also posted at the old beach a favorite swimming hole for Acton residents for 15 days this year warning of the potential dangers of swimming in the con taminated water The waterfowl are attracted to the lake by people who feed them Coun Elliott admits But it seems that every time nature and humans clash our answer is to dig the guns out of the basement Were pleased to see our councillors didnt agree to sit on the committee at the beck and call of councillors from Oakville Instead they want to wait for an expected 60page report on the state of Actons Fairy Lake due out in a few weeks We hope those councillors who expressed their dismay at the idea of killing the geese on Monday will stick to their guns down the road and prevent such a slaughter There are other ways to lure geese away from the lake such as prohibiting feeding them It may take a little longer but it would certainly be an easier solution to live with A taxing report Youll notice the distinct lack of advice to tax groceries The tax committee has been told that tax ing fihancial services can be ex tremely complicated and next to impossible to manage yet it has chosen to advocate taxing certain financial services rather than plement a tax on food Sounds the tax committee has been doing a little political tip toeing itself The tax committee also recom mends the government devise a financial plan which would tie future income from the GST to paying off the deficit A move one tax committee member said dur ing a meeting in Georgetown that almost brought tar and feathers front Michael Wilson when he sug gested it to him Brian MacLeod Editors Notebook Halton Peel MP Garth Turners tax committee has made its recommendations public and Finance Minister Michael Wilson wont be a happy man if he has to implement them The committee- which toured the riding asking for public input said the federal government should lower the pro posed nine per cent Goods and Ser vice Tax to seven per cent To cover the loss in revenue the government should eliminate ex emptions for brokerage fees and chairman Colin McKinnon says Secretary of State Tom will be in Acton Friday night and Saturday to mingle with the public At am he and Mr Turner discuss federal policies in the downstairs parlor of Trinity United Church on Mill Street in Acton Rave reviews from establish ment politicians and media greeted NDP Leader Bob eloquent appeal here last week for the Lake accord What he said bears repeating and what he didnt say requires a question or two Rae like Premier David Peter son and Progressive Conservative Leader Andy Brandt favors Lake as without question does a majority of the legislature But there are dissenters in all three parties although they keep their voices muted most of the time characterized opposition to Meech Lake as coming in three categories One was antiFrench and anti- Quebec It stems from a sense that has always existed in parts of our country that have never predated the French fact that have never accepted the existence and rights of the French language and that have never accepted that Quebec is a province in which the French language is going to be predominant I have no idea how wide broad or deep that undercurrent of senti ment is Anybody in public life en counters prejudice and bigotry everyday What Rae is talking about are people who believe that the Canada that existed from 1867 to 1967 that is Canada prior to the Official Languages Act of was a Canada that was doing fine It was a Canada where the English language was the language of the country although French was important in Quebec and present at the federal level Typically thinks people who for years favored that vi sion of Canada are bigots The Canada since then has seen the suppression of English in Quebec by Bill 101 and this was ruled legitimate by the Supreme Court in the Singer case and the extension of French throughout both federal and provincial institu tions elsewhere in Canada The second group opposing Lake includes those who implemented the changes of and have attempted to make Canada into a bilingual country with a strong federal government Their foremost spokesman of course is Pierre SURRENDER To them Meech Lake is a Munichlike surrender of federal powers especially on implemen ting genuine national pro grams to greedy premiers Rae while disagreeing un fortunately declines to deal with the two great flaws in the argu ment of the Trudeau centraitzers commenting only that their views were out there as a fundamental intellectual case against the ac cord The first of the flaws was Ottawas refusal to put the brakes on Quebecs suppres sion of English during his years in power through such devices as the disallowance clause which could have thrown out Bill 101 Genuine bilingualism would have defended English in Quebec with the same intensity as Ottawa promoted The second was the failure of the central to this day to accept that Canada has evolved into distinct societies not just one with the other nine lumped together If Rae is willing to accept a looser confederation then it must be so for all 10 provinces This inciden tally is why people like myself favor Meech Lake but see it as only an interim step The third group to reject Meech Lake includes all those special in terests who want the accord to go further than it actually does and give thm enhanced powers too multicultural feminists politicians and so on did not see any restraints in Lake to prevent saying yes to Quebec without saying no to native people without saying no to other concerns Without Lake Rae believes the countrys life itself is threatened if we fail to define the relationship between all of us in this country Thats fair enough But what we really need is a constitutional con vention to deal with it not a backroom deal by the establish ment Our legacy wont be rich Vic Parsons Ottawa Bureau One might have hoped that Cana dians could have stepped over the threshold into the 1990s with a song in their hearts optimistically challenging the future Sure there are some trifles to cope with increased taxes high interest rates and prospects of recession but these are necessary to beat down the trail to pro sperity right Shortterm pain for longterm gain and all that Unfortunately the few remain ing optimists in the country if there were any left outside Brian Mulroneys cabinet have been dealt a blow by the latest annual review of the Economic Council of Canada a federal advisory agen cy The review entitled Legacies suggests that we will leave our children a leaner economic future than we have enjoyed unless cur- rent trends are reversed One of those trends which became the theme of most news reports was growth in the national debt fuelled by current interest rates The council said the federal government has slipped into a danger zone of debt because the rates per cent are much higher than nominal economic growth eight per cent when real growth and inflation are added This could lead to an explosion in debt the council warned with future burdens greater because Ot tawa is offering high interest rates now to finance past obligations DEAF EAR The council suggests solutions including a spending freeze and lower interest rates but these choices have not yet caught the ear of Ottawas deci Ionmakers But there was another sombre sidelight raised in the review that could have severe social repercus sions The council found that in the last two decades there has been a shrinkage in the proportion of employees who are considered middle income and split virtually equally an increase in the radio of both low- and highincome workers In 1967 about 27 per cent of workers were middle this group was 5 per cent After adjusting for inflation the members of an average young family under age 25 in could expect a real income that was lower thflh that of a similar family a decade earlier the review says By contrast a young family who started out in 1967 could have expected a real- income gain of 33 per cent over the next These numbers suggest a wor risome widening gap between the rich and the poor that needs to be addressed In general the poor are younger located outside Central Canada and work in lowpaying nonunionized often parttime service jobs the fastestgrowing employment sector Tne wealthy have wellpaying permanent jobs with savings and vested pension plans that grow fat ter with high interest rates OTHER HURDLES The poor may encounter other hurdles as they approach retire ment Between I960 and 1986 the review says proportion of the labor force covered by private pen sion plans 367 per cent from per small firms and I service industries where increas- the poor tend to work- generally lack private j It would shame to leave tothe young