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the HERALD Member is howled down Home Newspaper of Hills Established A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited Guelph Street Georgetown L7G 3Z6 Ontario DAVID A Publisher and General Manager BRIAN Editor Phone 877 DAN TAYLOR Advertising Manager Number M Page THE HERALD Wednesda Car owners beware The latest provincial budget seems to be taking a stab at those who are reliant upon their cars Residents in what is termed the Greater Toronto Area of Durham Peel York and Halton Regions as well as Metro Toronto are being slammed with an incapacitating fee to renew then- licence plate stickers And fuel will take its second major hike less than a month as the second governmental budget takes aim at Ontario taxpayers But the personal attack on car owners who rely heavily on their vehicles for transportation hurts The provincial government is assuming that anyone living in the GTA has access to reasonable transportation The new taxes they say would reduce the number of cars burning fuel and wearing out tires which pile up in landfill sites Here in Halton Region especially in North Halton there are a great number of people relying on their cars for transportation into larger urban areas We pay taxes to maintain our roads to make them we pay subsidies to GO transit and VIA rail to facilitate train travel and now we are forced to carry a debt load for not living in an urban area Making the assumption that the Greater Toronto Area residents don t need private transportation is erroneous as almost anyone living in almost all of Bramp ton much of Durham and all areas of Halton can tell you Ontanons will pay a tax per tire They will face in creased gas hikes and they will pay through a manufac turers tax for having a car that burns an unreasonable amount of fuel But there is no concession for those who live in rural areas They have no choice but to pay the price or exercise the option of living an urban centre where they could re ly on large and frequent transit systems But thats not why people came to Halton Hills Those who werent born here came to escape crowded urban cen tres and to bring up children in a better environment And how the very people who made Metropolitan Toron to a lesscrowded place are paying for it on the drive to work BangORama is a bang Staff Comment Otter heard it said before Wbo like a fair While the annual Optimist BangORama may not be in fact a full fledged fair it is the closest thing we ve got until fall And ten it great to enjoy all the best attributes of a fall fair in balmy spring weather Walking around the Fairgrounds on Monday taking in my second I couldn t help but barken back to my own adolescent days Heading straight for the food stand to buy my hot dog with tons of fried onions I breathed in deeply of the funfilled at The midway rides games of chance and skill tbe good old tug- curios and art shos They re all there Add modern additions like truck pulls and radiooperated model car races and you ve just about covered everyone tastes Then of course the of chicken in the air and to top it all off ia proper Victoria Day fashion fireworks It all spells fun and it surely must provide a thrilling ben chmark for local kids who realize with the coming of BangORama there s only one month left of school But perhaps most importantly while we re busy eating hot dogs and having loads of fun the Op timists are raising muchneeded cash to fund their many wor thwhile community projects such as the anti drug CHICKEN Club As one of the Optimist faithful manning the gate told me Mon day We can always use more money there s so much to do Heres to after hitting raw nerve art Queens Park Derek Nelson Thornton Service TORONTOYou know when a member here has hit a nerve with his question The place erupts Progressive Conservative Don who hails from the nor iheastern border of did that this week with a very nent question about the use of French in the legislature In the best Liberal and New Democratic Party traditions of free speech he was howled down The effect was rather devastating on personal ly as he floundered around trying to defend himself from accusations of being a bigot prejudiced and so on But then when people don want to debate an issue on its merits they invariably resort to personal abuse Much of the media played along naturally in that their reports Cousens was objecting to the use of French in the legislature He was not As a courtesy ques tions and speeches have been recognized here in ail languages That s fine with Instead he was asking about bil ingualism which is the official substitution of French for English on an equal and interchangeable footing in any and all activities of government In a departure from tradition Deputy Speaker Jean Poiner has been using French rather than English to conduct routine business from the chair What is the precedent for this on an on going basis asked on a point of order noting that Ontario remains primarily an English speaking province Cousens had his own suspicions I have a sense that there is a movement towards making On tano an officially bilingual pro vince and that is the basis upon which my concern was express he said Liberal House Leader Sean Con way really confirmed Cousens fears when he responded This legislature quite properly recognizes two official languages I have been particularly pleas ed by the way in which you have been conducting yourself over the past few days by introducing French as the language on a number of sions Speaking from the govern s point of view we are ab solutely in support of that because it recognizes a central reality of this country What that central reality is he didn say but presumably he meant the equal constitutional status of the French and English languages in Canada Yet Queen s Park is not Ottawa Toronto is not the of the federal government This is a legislature for a province where barely out of 9 1 million people speak only French at home and most of thun also know English ically Conway s central reality doesn t apply in Quebec where English is never heard in the legislature No Speaker in Quebec would dare give English precedence such as Poiner gave French here It is true that the Ontario legislature made English and French equal languages by statute in what Conway means by g both of them official languages although many peo ple at the time thought the action mainly symbolic BUDGET IS SPENT ACROSS THE WW r torjft Collapsing real estate market hits Your Business Diane Thomson Service A collapsing real estate market claims its victims in waves First it drowns the speculators people who snap up half a dozen houses hoping to flip them over at a profit Then there are the people who get caught trading up buying big ger better houses confident they can sell their existing ones with no trouble Having thrown caution to the wind they suffer when the market turns Often they end up with two heavily mortgaged houses The third wave hits the builders of new homes It is this group that is foundering now New home sales tumbled by per cent in the Toronto area last month hard on the heels of a similar drop for resale homes Nation wide housing starts slip ped 10 per cent in April Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp numbers show Builders are putting on a brave face The drop in sales was ex says Frank Giannone president of the Toronto Home Builders Association Unlike the resale market new house prices will not drop Mr Giannone says The average for new homes has never dropped year over year even during periods of reces sion What do you expect the leading builder spokesman to say Ac this is an ideal time to buy a new house Giannone adds op timistically Maybe PRICES MISLEADING When it comes to prices it is ficult to get a handle on what is really happening In the Toronto area the average house pnce edg lower in April but that s a meaningless number Sellers have had to slash up to per cent off their asking prices but the cut is more apparent than real They may still be selling their houses for more money than they would have last month or last year The weakness is spreading Re cent reports show bouse sales tumbled in the overheated West Coast market last month Even so one bousing analyst believes the British Columbia market will fare better than most of the country because people are still flocking to the province Newfoundland too could prove resilient helped by the anticipated development of the oil field DEFAULTS SEEN Meanwhile Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp is fattening its mortgage insurance fund in preparation for a wave of defaults that could come when the economy finally slows in or 1992 A recent study shows the average new house is sitting empty for 7 months which is a long time The nationwide average is Jig highest since the reces sion Most of the empty homes are in Quebec as well the numbers may be distorted by the fact that most southern Ontario homes are sold before construction begins The only good news seems to be on the lending front where mor tgage rates are easing after a frightening runup early in the year At Canada Trust for exam pie four and fiveyear mortgage loans cost per cent That com pares with 13 5 per cent for the banks prime business lending rate a bellwether shortterm rate For now short term rates are being helped by the strength of the North American dollars which have been soaring against their European counterparts and the yen Whether they are about to begin a long steady descent re mains to beseen Nevertheless the next loo ve in interest rates will be down