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Page THE HERALD OUTLOOK Saturday Decembers 1989 the HERALD OUTLOOK is published each by the ALTON HERALD Home Newspaper of Hills Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited at Street Georgetown Ontario I PUBLISHER David A EDITOR Brian MacLeod AD MANAGER DanTavlor St Class Mail Registered Number STttl Donna Koll Hi SPOUTS oh Gibson 877 Diane Smith I Join Jcantime Valois Teeter Roberts PRODI I PARTMI- NT Dave Hastings Supt Annie Susanne Wilson Marie 3000 laid off on Black Thursday SNAFU by Bruce Beattie Diane The day I decided to watch for layoffs and business failures as sure signs of economic weakness about 3 people lost their jobs Black Thursday it is being call ed Accompanying the news that five companies had announced layoffs was a spate of other grim economic statistics Business in vestment is down consumer spen ding is down and domestic demand is shrinking The Canadian people are follow in the footsteps of their American neighbors spending less and saung more This is not altogether bad news In you may remember consumers literally shopped until thev drop ped from high interest rates unemployment and personal bankruptcy This time we are arming for recession Consumers are on a buyer s says economist Ben Gestrin who works for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Com merce Consumer spending actual ly fell in the third quarter while the personal savings rate rose to a respectable 9 per cent of disposable income LAYOFF LIST On Thursday Canadian Airlines announced it was laying off another people bringing to 700 the number of Canadian and workers who have lost their jobs since the airlines Ford Motor Co of Canada Ltd said it will close one of its three engine plants in Windsor at the end of next vear putting people out of work Another 80 people at a plastic moulding plant in Windsor will be out of work because of the slowdown in car sales Two Toronto companies Indal and PPG Canada are closing a joint venture plant putting peo ple out of work Gerber Canada is closing its baby food plant in Niagara Falls disrupting workers and Steel Corp of Sault Ste Mane is planning to la off up to 300 people because of declining steel demand Meanwhile in the financial com munit stockbrokers are reorganizing their business and laying off their high priced deal makers Not all of these people will re main unemployed Still the news is troubling In the midst of the swirl of bad news the Bank of Canada is keeping interest rates high At this stage of the game it doesn make much difference Eveij if the bank were to ease up on interest rates it would be too late to prevent the current slowdown Trying to restart the economy now would be like pushing on a string DON WORRY South of the border the don worry be happy school of economic nought is still singing the same tune Their optimism may be well founded The American economy usually suffers first but suffer less than we do in Canada Berrys World by NEA J mi My Aren t we being festive Fast foods are sure to speed up soon MacKenzie OTTAWA In the future world of John Stanton breakfast will pop from his dash mounted microwave oven as he and his wife dr ve to work in the morning His lunch of pasta pnmavera with a side order perhaps of garlic toast will likely be delivered to his desk An afternoon snack a hot cup of soup will relax him as he drives to another appointment He sip it as he chats with his son by cellular phone and discusses a dinner menu the tad has drawn up as he prepares the family s evening meal Stanton sees this un traditional lifestyle developing now He is con it will be typical for the North American urban dweller by the year He explained it all recently to food producers and processors at a seminar organized by the National Farm Products Marketing Coun ell And he told some of the skep tics who lead more conventional lifestyles that future is rapidly Stanton understands that the hot button for farmers is pro ductivity But the consumer market is changing quickly and there will be casualties among food producers and marketers who don t adapt Stanton should know He is a professor of food marketing research at Saint Joseph Univer sity in Philadelphia and market consultant to many of North America s giant food corporations He points to dramatic changes in society over the pasj decade The greater participation of women the workforce the decline in leisure time the lengthening of the whitecollar workday a declining number of single people are all factors behind changes in con trends he said But consumers are also becom ing more demanding and in their daily rush and hunt for energy they will not settle for the cheap TV dinners of bygone years and the early efforts at microwave foods There is an unequivocal move from a commodity mentality to a quality mentality People are permitting themselves to choose foods as indulgences he said But they re not going to get it by cooking Already 50 per cent of the food consumed in the United States comes from places other than supermarkets and 25 per cent of the food eaten in the home is prepared elsewhere he said The trend can be expected to continue with increasing em phasis on convenience foods packaged foods and quick meals and a growing demand for quality and variety WILL SPREAD In major S cities 25 per cent of commuters are already eating breakfast cars bringing it from home or stopping to pick it up on the way to work The practice will spread Stanton predicted As for lunch it s long gone Lunch has entirely left the house Stanton sees a tremendous challenge for food marketers and advertisers who must reckon with the social and demographic changes The entire marketing spectrum has been directed at the female and a specific young to- middleage consumer group ig nonng the growing influence of the male the children singles both young and elderly and growing ethnic populations Advertisers are only now beginn ing to realize the influence of the latchkey child the custodian of the home in the absence of working parents There are now seven million of them aged six to 13 in theUS What s happening is they are becoming the new gatekeepers of information They wach over 50 TV commercials a year They spend billion US They Warning bells for Liberal government For the Liberal government two rather subtle warning bells exist in this years provincial auditors report Yet judging from the arrogantly selfcongratulatory tone adopted by the Liberals under questioning in the legislature they cant seem to hear the music They really believe they need no lessons on how to handle our money well Normally the auditor s report as the annual indepth examination of a small portion of the govern ment s budget is called gets its clout from individual hor ror stones of mismanagement or abuse that the auditor uncovers In the main though these tales by themselves aren that tant As auditor Douglas Archer himself notes There is a general view that our reports unduly em deficiencies without giving credit for the many situations where no significant irregularities were observed To a large extent this result is unavoidable due to the nature of the job he said That fair enough For observers what should be noted about administrative foul ups is whether they form part of a pat tern or trend Something needn be all that big or involve a lot of money But it can send a powerful signal Take the examination of how well ministries were obeying policies and procedures involving travel expenses At nine out of 12 ministries examined there were many examples where these were disregarded by employees Archer said Travel defined broadly as in eluding automobile rental costs and so on is a bellwether type of expenditure It is easily con trollable by management abuse is simply laxness The Agriculture Revenue and Transportation ministries should get a for what Archer describes as strong adherence to the rules Their first couple of years in power the Liberals paid some at tention to symbolic matters like these It is a bad omen that the standard appears to be slipping for it indicates that If employees in the effected aren in the frame of mind to be costconscious about small matters what of the big ones Not good YARDSTICK And that bnngs up a second yardstick for the future from the report Overall Archer gave the govern ment a satisfactory rating of seven out of 10 for its administrative per Considering the size and complexity of the operation that isn t bad Although it is the same rating he gave the Liberals last year at that time he also suggested that on balance administration of public funds continues to improve He didn praise them that way this time He said nothing about MX jiJJjrS feth HawJIny levelled