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Hagersville what can you say Home Newspaper of Halton Hills A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited Guelph Street Georgetown Ontario DAVID A BEATTIE Publisher and General Manager BRIAN Editor Phone DAN TAYLOR Advertising Manager Will Number mil Page 6 THE HERALD Wednesday February 1S90 Act now We can certainly understand the frustration those who are fighting for changes to the Young Offenders Act are feeling A group calling itself the Citizens Coalition Favoring More Effective Criminal Sentences presented HaltonPeel MP Garth Turner with a 6000name petition Friday demanding changes in the act Were optimistic because Mr Turner said he has no problem with tightening the Young Offenders Act Yet were pessimistic because he wouldnt promise the government will heed the request to make sweeping changes He said thats for the new minister of justice Kim Camp bell to deal with We hope Ms Campbell will sit down and have a serious look at some of the laws incorporated in the act As most people know the maximum penalty for a murderer who is tried under the Young Offenders Act is three years in jail Three years There is an amendment before parliament to up that sentence to five years Thats not good enough While we can understand a certain amount of leniency for young offenders when they kill at the age of 16 they know what they do The coalition groups Gordon has consistently said the Young Offenders Act is an incentive for young people to commit crimes Its difficult to call a jail term an incentive but the act very definitely isnt any deterrent to young offenders In the past all weve heard from politicians is that the current act is better than the previous law Fine lets take it one step further Lets stop the buckpassing and design an act that will penalize young offenders appropriately for their crimes Only then can we watch justice served Late sounds Brian MacLeod If youve already scanned the story in our Entertainment Section on page 22 this week youll know that Club 2000 manager ran into just a few difficulties in per formances by rap artists Young and Maestro Fresh Wes Sun day Well shortly before our deadline Tuesday Bob Spence of Band World Sound and Lighting the production company supplying the equipment sent a letter to John Fisher explaining the delays One of the reasons Young MC cited for his lengthy delay was a problem with the production equip ment namely it wasnt there In his letter Mr Spencer says his equipment got bogged down after its use at the concert at Nathon Phillips Square in Toronto the night before the date at Club 2000 We experienced a severe weather and snow problem and roost if not all our equipment was buried in the snow Mr Spencer writes The equipment was returned to the shop to be cleaned and dried for Sundays show he said Somewhere along the way the gas Una on the truck used by Band tognavansadaarfinaiwu World froze continued Mr Spencer All of the above added together to cause Band World to be several hours late and the show to be delayed To our business these are called acts of God and although they rarely nappen they always con stitute a possibility writes Mr Spencer He apologized for any inconve nience to Club 2000 and the public No word yet of an apology from Young MC If youve already flipped through the pages of the Herald this week youve probably read some not-so- good news items The Board of education now consider ing a budget increase of per cent is desperately trying to shave that number down to something more in tune with the rate of infla tion And Dufferin Aggregates wants to put a landfill site that would dwarf the proposed site in Acton in their quarry on the southern edge of Halton Hills bordering with Milton You may as well get used to both of these pieces of bad news The board of educations budget has been over the 10 per cent mark for a number of years now and theres no sign of that changing And with all of the quarries in the area in cluding some on the Niagara Escarpment aggregate com panies have found out that it is much more profitable to fill a hole with garbage and collect money than It ir to stick to a rehabilitation plan and pay for It A Thomson News Service col league has been haranguing me to write about the Hagersville tire fire Ive been reluctant mainly because I doubt there is little to say beyond the eloquent statement the smoke plume itself makes And a denunciation of the who prefer to scare peo ple into stress attacks rather than try to handle problems rationally My colleagues argument is that the province should have moved faster before the incident After all the dump which is the graveyard for per cent of On tarios car and truck tires is such an usightly mess that it prompted Treasurer Bob Nixon to bring in special 5 a tire recycling tax In last years budget And the Environment Ministry so disliked the way owner Ed Straza was keeping the dump that in 1987 it ordered him to subdivide the four piles that held 13 million tires to fence the area and to pro vide access to a water reservoir for firefighting purposes APPEALED Straza appealed the order to the Environmental Appeal Board and lost His appeal is now at divisional court level The question my coworker ask ed is why the ministry just couldnt go in two years ago clean up the site and then bill Straza The answer is that something has to happen before emergency operations can be conducted Legally a potential hazard Isnt enough Thats understandable frankly in that the definition of potential environmental hazard would include for example every gasoline station in the province It seems clear that under normal conditions Strazas tire dump would have been safe if unsightly As Nixon said Im disappointed we didnt have a chance to get our tire recycling program in gear before some twit set it on fire Arson aside though is it possi ble to make governments move faster when dealing with potential environmental hazards The answer has to be both yes and no Its no in that we have set up ex tremely complex and convoluted systems in this province to protect peoples rights including those of polluters or potential polluters As governments increasingly make decisions affecting private actions and private property the only safeguard left to the citizen is the ability to appeal through various legal and quasilegal systems Its called due process The alternative would be to allow bureaucrats free rein over peoples lives and businessesand Eastern Europe is living proof of the horri ble environmental consequences of giving government total control STILL WATTING On the other hand there is no doubt the current system of orders and appeals is in fact is so much else that has to do with environmental protection it is more than 10 years since the pro cess began to find a site for liquid waste disposal in there are probably three years of environmental assessment hear ings still in front of us One suggestion is a onestop where the government could seek authority to have a potential environmental hazard removed or altered by convincing the court to issue an environmental stop order which would be used like an injunction However the most likely result of such a court would simply be to add another level of appeal But whatever lessons are learn ed from Hagersville whatever suggestions are made for changes En rules and enforcement the sim ple truth remains that in a ruleby law industrialbased society such as ours some things will never happen fast enough and others will inevitably go wrong Language tensions high in US Kevin Bell EDITORS NOTE While heated arguments over language Issues threaten to tear Canada apart ingnatism is not a major issue In the United States yet Various groups however have been urging State and federal officials to adopt English as the official language and to curtail the spread of bil ingual services Seventeen states have passed laws making English the official state language Earlier this month an Arizona judge struck down the language law passed by Arizona Tbe judge ruled It violated the First Amendment of the US con stitution which guarantees right to free speech Much of the ammunition used by forces In the conies from the divisive language battle In Canada In a twopart Kevin Bell Washington Barf a Tbontsan News Service examines the bll- Issue In the US Canadas bilingual battle may dwarf any language tensions in the United States but the rapid growth of the Hispanic population here has spurred a campaign to stem the de mand for bilingual government services Because the United States is dominantly unilingual many peo ple assume English is the official language In fact the United States has no official language But numerous groups have begun lobbying the federal and state governments to adopt English as the official language and to stop the spread of bilingualism So far 17 states have passed laws or constitutional amendments making English the official state However a littlenoticed ruling in Arizona has dealt a severe blow to the forces that want to make English the only language of government While Canadas leaders were trading sharp insults over bil ingualism earlier his month an Arizona judge struck down a 1988 state constitutional amendment that had made English the official language of Arizona The judge ruled it violated the First Amend ment to The US constitution which guarantees the right to free speech The ruling was made after a bil ingual state employee complained she could be fired if she spoke Spanish on the job The amend ment made it illegal for state and local government workers to per form any official duties in any language other than English What rankles the forces is the refusal by Arizona Gov Rose Mofford to appeal the ruling despite the fact the state amendment had been ap proved in a referendum during the last presidential election US English an organization trying to make English the official language throughout the United States acknowledges that the rul ing could set a precedent for the defeat of Englishonly laws in the other 16 states that have such laws It is planning to challenge the rul ing in court English First another lobby organization that wants to stamp out bilingual government services throughout the United States reacted bitterly to the ruling This really is an outrage on the people of Arizona fumed ex ecutive director George think its simply wrong he said in an interview that the government should be providing bilingual services They Hispanlcs should go to class to learn English instead of reading trilingual pamphlets Continued on