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Page THE HERALD OUTLOOK Saturday September the HERALD Outlook Its a carbuyers market right now OUTLOOK Is published each Saturday by the HA I TON HERALD Home Newspaper or Hills A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited at Street Georgetown Ontario Second Class Mail Registered Number 8772201 PUBLISHER Diane Maley Your Business General Motors calls it a heart- breaker sale Ford calls it the best thing going Its the fall car sale complete with cutrate prices free air conditioning and cheap financ ing Its a heartache for car makers but a joy for car buyers As the new model year ap proaches the deals being offered on unsold cars are better than have been in some time Car sales by the Big Three North American automakers came to a screeching halt in August tumbling 14 per cent from a year ago Sales felt despite the incentives to buy Ford for example is offering cash rebates 69percent financ ing and free air conditioning on certain models and Chrysler are offering similar deals as are Japanese automakers Yet the public is reluctant to buy To spur people on Ford grudg ingly announced it would offer wen better deals from now to the end of the month The new model year begins Oct I Part of the problem can be trac ed to the economy Interest rates have risen dramatically this year and job growth has slowed After several years of bounding growth people may have all the cars they need Besides car buyers have come Berrys World WEALTH AND FAME DO NOT BUY HAPPINESS HAVE YOU EVER TRIED IT iU9tyEAinc STAFF WRITERS Donna Kell to expect incentives says Kenneth president- of Ford Canada You have to do it to stay competitive ROLLING RECESSION Whatever the reason a rolling recession has rolled right over North American auto industry leaving workers afraid for their jobs and some dealers worried about going broke Rolling reces sions are slowdowns that hit one in dustry at a time rather than drag ging down the entire economy The auto industry accounts for a big portion of North American out put and employment South of the border carmakers are slowing production cutting costs and laying off workers some for a week or two some for good Meanwhile the US dealers association savs nearly half of the countrys auto dealers are losing money or breaking even and may not survive until next year The dealers pretax profit has shrunk to less than one per cent so far in compared with 18 per cent last year said Ron Tonkin president of trie National Auto Dealers Association He blamed the shrinking profit on incentives Some automaker must siep up and say No more rebates he said TIME TO BUY Given how slow sales are that is not likely to happen soon Indeed industry watchers in Canada predict that car deals over the next 12 to 15 months will be better than they have been in years Recognizing this wouldbe car buyers seem to be waiting for even better deals ahead If consumers smugness has carmakers and dealers exasperated car buyers are enjoying being back in the drivers seat David A Beattie EDITOR MacLeod AD MANAGER Dan Taylor SPORTS EDITOR Colin Gibson ACCOUNTING June Joan Mar CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING TnniinvSuIt SNAFU by Bruce Beattie Im here about the ad for the psychic you just decided to put in next weeks paper Experts dispute the benefits of new national tax Economics is a coldblooded as well asadismat science Thats probably why there is a deficit of Robin Hoods bleeding hearts and employeehuggers among practitioners of the trade And there seem to be none more hardhearted than those who want you folks out there to swallow the bitter medicine of the nineper cent Goods and Services Tax GST Denizens of the Finance Depart ment led by Michael Wilson want Canadians to take their word that the proposed GST when it comes into effect on Jan 1 will be good for them Sure they admit therell be a onetime inflationary hit that will take away about one of every hun dred of the average Canucks aftertax dollars But you can live with mat for the greater glories to come cant you In other words they want you to resist the subversive notion that you should try to recoup any in come you might lose to higher con sumer costs arising from the tax Unfortunately there are a large number of qualified experts who dispute the benefits of the proposed tax They calculate that the initial adverse impact will be worse than the government lets on One of the latest- is the invest ment dealer Wood Gundy Inc which challenges the Finance Departments figures For exam ple the government says jobs will be created because of the tax in the first year Wood Gundy sees a loss of 75000 Consumer prices will rise 225 percentage points in Year One says Wilson three points says Wood Gundy DIFFERING VIEWS Wages will hardly budge at all as a result of the GST Finance argues theyll increase per cent as workers try to regain their losses says the investment dealer There will be no rise in shortterm interest rates the government claims Sorry theyll go up two poi opines Wood Gundy Now Wood Gundy could be wrong But there are other in dependent analyses that fall in line with its conclusions such as a re cent study by the Conference Board And its tempting to con clude the government would want to minimize negative effects of the GST so it wilt be an easier sell Lets look a little closer at the wages and interestrate impacts of the GST Wood Gundy assumes that workers will successfully negotiate additional pay raises that offset about half of the consumerprice rise a not unreasonable assump tion But it suggests that this is where John Crow the governor of the Bank of Canada will cast a chilly eye on proceedings Crow who continues to monitor pay hikes closely would take tough action until rising interest rates raise unemployment sufficiently to temper wage demands Wood Gundy argues That could mean a jobless rate rising to doubledigit levels from the current eightper cent range PUNISHING RATES In short employees try to maintain their living standards by seeking more pay to offset inflation will be punished by the central bank This punishment would take the form of increased interest rates already high by historical standards that will cause more layoffs and shrink jobproducing businessinvestment plans Theres some irony to this The government says deficit reduction is pert of its goal with the GST ADVERTISING SALES Jeannine Valois Craig Roberts PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT Dave Hastings Supt Annie Wilson CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT Marie Shadbolt PRESSROOM FOREMAN Brian Frenchonly program sparks bitterness How do you make people bitter and resentful towards Its easy You take a program for which there is a demand English or in English and French and you convert it into French- only This at a time when the federal and Ontario governments are trying to assure people they arent playing language favorites on behalf of francophones One wouldnt think theyd be that stupid But in fact that is exactly how Ottawa and Queens Park have acted The University of Ottawa offers a PhD extension program in clinical psychology to northeastern but only in the French language Originally it was to be a program for all Ontarians in that area which meant it had to be Englishonly or bilingual No such luck When im plemented in 1988 the program supposedly for any psychometrist in northeastern Ontario who had the appropriate degrees was taught in Frenchonly automatically excluding the ma jority of those qualified for the pro gram This program wasnt established on the spur of the moment It took several years and numerous man- hours during which time the idea that it would be unllingual French was never considered In fact most of those who initial ly expressed interest in the pro gram are now pointedly excluded from it The question is why No one working in the psychiatric field in Ontario today lacks English as a skill The initial prospective candidates for the extension course all spoke English the majority being unilingual and the minority bil ingual francophones Why then this insistence that- those willing to upgrade their skills must do so in the French language When asked the provincial Ministry of Colleges and Univer sities ducks the question saying universities are autonomous in making these decisions ONLY FRENCH PORTION The university says it would have liked to offer the program in both French and English but cant since the province wont fund it and the only money available is from the federal government through a joint languages program with the pro vince Ottawa however will only pay for the Frenchlanguage por tion The obvious result the program now exists for Frenchlanguage students only Worse anecdotal evidence suggests that these are all francophones No French- speaking are includ ed even though those in charge have in at least one case had to go out and actually recruit a fran cophone to fill the program