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Page THE HERALD OUTLOOK Saturday November the HERALD OUTLOOK is published each Saturday by the HALTON HILLS HERALD Home Newspaprr of Halton Hills A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Urn i ted- at Guelph Street Georgetown Ontario L7G 877 PUBLISHER David A Beattie EDITOR Brian MacLeod AD MANAGER Dan Taylor Second Class Mail Registered Number STArF Donna Kell Ben SPORTS EDITOR Colin Gibson Diane Smith CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING Joan ADVERTISING Jeannme Valois Craig Teeter Roberts PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT Dave Hastings Annie Giison Wilson CIRCULATION Marie Buyer beware when investing SNAFU by Bruce Beattie Diane Your Business Htm At some point in your life you may need help managing your money As you grow older and richer your savings will pile up You will wonder whether you should go to see a financial planner or hire an investment counsellor But will you be able to judge the quality of the advice for which you will be paying so dearly Will you know whether this insurance policy is better than that one or whether your broker is selling you the policy that pays him the highest commission When it comes to investing let the buyer beware says Tom Delaney an outspoken spokesman for the Consumers Association of Canada and head of his own invest ment advisory firm Tom Delaney in Toronto First of all you should seek in dependent advice rather than relying on bankers and stockbrokers who have a product to sell Second you must educate yourself Mr Delaney believes However much you pay for in dependent financial advice in order to execute it you have to go out into the financial services marketplace and deal with salespeople whose interest is not the same as yours he notes Some products pay a much larger commission FUTURE AT RISK Failure to educate yourself to the point where you understand in vestments may mean that your financial security in retirement is at risk Mr cautions A lot of people are going to fall bet ween the cracks Learning about financial ser vices will be increasingly impor in the years ahead he says We are looking at an exponential increase in the volume of money in registered retirement savings plans By people will be able to in vest a year in RRSPs he notes More than per cent of tax payers already contribute to RRSPs As we go into the 21st Century individuals will have to make decisions about hundreds of thousands even millions of dollars accumulated in savings plans he says It is the responsibility of every individual to know how to manage his plan It is a sibil pushed on him whether he likes it or not Mr did not make recommendations but I have a few suggestions SIMPLE GUIDES 1 Take the time to read the financial press In particular check periodic ratings of mutual funds prepared by the weekly Financial Post or The Financial Times of Canada Choose funds for their long term performance in good markets and bad 2 No matter how scary the stock market may seem if you have a long way to go before you retire in vest a portion of your savings in a stock mutual fund Funds by the Mackenzie Financial Group for example have a good long term track record 3 Hire an accountant to prepare your income tax and advise you of tax saving strategies in advance If you do not have an open one this year Deductions not used can be earned forward into the future Stay away from fancy in vestments unless you have money to lose You be surprised how many people hand over their money to uncertain propositions just so they can write off the loss It like throwing money away 5 Take a long hard look at education savings plans most of them are not as good as they seem If you want to save for your children s education invest your monthly family allowance cheque in shares of a mutual fund at your local bank And where possible take advantage of federal and pro vincial loans and grants to finance college or university education If inflation comes bouncing back you or your children can pay the money back later in depreciated dollars Berrys World WELCOME TO WEST GERMANY SHOP TIL YOU DROP ItMbyNEA Bureaucrats wield an axe to trim budget You t know I m deducting the cost of your retirement party from your last paycheck No stars in NDP Leadership race By golly it was exciting to pick up a major newspaper and see that one of the New Democratic Party s leadership hopefuls was actually criticizing another candidate for the job We know this must have on in the country s kitchens and perhaps the odd church base ment but in national terms it been easy to learn what the candidates think of each other In fact it t been easy to learn what they think of anything except perhaps that Dave Barrett has no immediate plans to move to Quebec It wouldn be stretching things to say that none of the seven candidates for Ed Broadbent job has become a television star lug the course of this campaign now only two weeks from climax ing If any details about the NDP leadership race make it to the news it s usually after some minor train derailment Not a bit like the 1983 showdown between Joe Clark and Brian nor do we suspect like the forthcoming battle between Jean Chretien and Paul Martin Jr It seems that leadership contents of a third party when no establish stars are involved just set the country fluttering Perhaps things would have been different had someone like Stephen Lewis agreed to take a run at the job In any event nearly card carrying New Democrats will begin converging on Winnipeg Nov to select the party fourth leader since its founding in 1961 And while the race hasn t been grabbing headlines there is no question that the foot soldiers have been at work It seems to be a foregone conclu sion that Yukon MP Audrey McLaughlin now has more com mitted support than any other can didate Even most of her opponents acknowledge this And it also generally believed that Mr Bar rett former premier of British Col umbia holds a solid grip on second place Everybody else of course claims to be in third place a rather popular spot ever since Joe Clark launched himself from that position in 1976 to sneak up bet ween Claude Wagner and Brian The thinking is that third place finishers on the first ballot have more growth potential than the two front runners who have been knocking heads ting enemies as well as friends But since there has been so little apparent head knocking in this campaign the theory might not ap ply to the in 1989 Still there are two weeks to go and it was heartening to read that candidate Steven came out swinging against both Ms McLaughlin and Mr Barrett Say that the Yukon MP has sup ported Quebec Bill 101 the original language law a victory for her would be to turn our backs on our commitment to minority language rights As for Mr Barrett he wants to shelve constitutional change for 25 years and that would without doubt guarantee the breakup of our country Naturally Mr Langdon feels he will come in third But then so do fellow MPs Howard Simon de Jong and Ian Perhaps it time they all began snarling at each other to attract national attention Whoever wins will be heading a party with a far greater western orientation than we seen up til now For starters three quarters of the federal caucus are westerners and there has been much greater interest in the West in the leadership race than elsewhere Bllingualism is a relatively scarce commodity among can dldatcs Penny wise and pound foolish is an ancient adage that often seems appropriate in the case of governments In Ottawa s wideranging hunt for spending cuts bureaucrats wield the axe rather than the scalpel when they seek to trim the cost of government An un fortunate result is that good pro grams can fall victim along with the bad A case in point is the yearold Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety It curious in this age of con about environmental and per sonal well being that the Hamilton Ont based centre should be singled out for attack Supporters from business labor and the healthcare field all credit the centre with providing in valuable unbiased information free or at low cost that has helped reduce Canada s appalling rate of industrial accidents and disease What burden did the centre place on Canadian taxpayers Last year Ottawa provided million a pit beside the total billion the government spent Then last April the government announced it would slash the cen tre s funding to 3 million for this fiscal year down to million next year and to zero the year after The centre should thereafter be self supporting the bureaucrats decided User pays and sale of ser vices are to be the new chwords DISMAL PICTURE How does the cost of the centre fit into the overall occupational health and safety picture In 1987 estimates from workers compensation boards across Canada snowed the direct cost of compensable injuries and death in the workplace totalled billion The federal Labor Department says direct and indirect losses to the economy through occupational injury and death total about billion a year In the last 10 dlan workers have died on the job Among five major industrial coiin tries the others being the United States Britain West Germany and Japan Canada has the worst rate of occupational death Yet says Liberal MP Robert Nault of Kenora Rainy River since the centre opened the try accident rate has improved to one mishap for every 10 from one in eight Last year the centre served 1200 organizations sent out compact disks with useful health data answered 26 inquiries distributed 150 publications and had revenues from sales of Those who back the govern ment action pay lipservice to the centre But they suggest funding can be raised from other sources dona tlona Bale of products and ser vices begging funds from governments or negotiating loans