The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

THE HERALD Wednesday October Page 9 Columnists Health care specialists must realize responsibilities Banning the sale of cigarettes from drug stores says the owner of the Shoppers Drug Mart in Georgetown will not stop people from smoking Al uses this argument to defend his selling of cigarettes despite opposition by the Ontario College of Pharmacists The col lege wants its members to stop selling tobacco products as soon as possible It has established a task force to research the various legal ways the sale of tobacco in drug stores can be stopped Mr argument is cor rect in a narrow sense Those who want to buy cigarettes are not so lazy that if the drug store where they normally bought their cancer sticks one day stopped selling them they wouldnt take the time to pick up a pack at some other store The bombardment of anti- smoking education that people have been exposed to over the many years is another reason justifying Mr Frasers position Id be hard pressed to believe any smoker who told he had no idea that smoking is a major cause of cancer and heart Yet it has been education that has greatly contributed to the drop the number of people who smoke As a member of the health care profession Mr has an obligation to con- tnbutc to this educational pro cess Bens Banter Mr Fraser says that his drug store offers counselling to those who want to kick the habit In this sense one could argue Mr is warning people of the dangers smoking presents I dont know about you but I see a contradic lion in logic here You dont tell somebody not to do something and then turn around and make it easy for them to do it When this happens the whole exercise is discredited The question of whether the sale of cigarettes should be bann ed from drugstores should be con in the context of what message will be sent out to the public It shouldnt be con as Mr Fraser has done the context of will it end smok ing There is no one solution to con vincing people to stop smoking It only through continual rem of the anti smoking message that cigarettes may someday disappear Mr Fraser said he would only ban tobacco products from his store if they were declared Here again Mr Fraser is em phasizing a reactive instead of a proactive position to the smoking problem This position appears that more cynical knowing its highly unlikely the government would ever ban something that has been legal in society for so long On top of that how would the government raise more money The public also has a role in en drugstores to ban the sale of tobacco products Simply put dont support those that do Nothing talks louder than money the lack of it For the record Im a smoker Economic issues will dictate Quebecs future OTTAWA Economic issues will figure prominently when the Bel anger Commission set up to investigate Quebecs political and constituting future gets down to business One key question is would an independent Quebec continue to use the Canadian dollar and adhere to interestrate policy established by the Bank of Canada Bloc Blasts Recently the Bloc that collection of former Liberal and Conservative MPs that followed Lucien Bouchard out of the mainstream blasted the Bank of Canadas monetary policy The Blocs finance critic Benoit called on Finance Minister Michael Wilson to force the central bank to lower interest rates Tremblay com plained the bank had tailored its rate to fight inflation in Ontario and had pushed borrowing charges three percentage points higher than necessary Since Quebec has not known a level of economic activi ty that would justify such high in terest rates Tremblay said But this criticism is not unique One could imagine Western op position MPs or provincial premiers of any political stnpe making an identical charge In deed in some postConfederation period one could imagine Quebec and the West joining forces to pressure against punishing In terest rates With or without Confederation and whether Quebec remains part of any monetary union or drops out stresses are going to exist When John Crow the Bank of Canada governor released his last annual report he was asked Vic Parsons how a central bank could function if Quebec separated Could he serve two masters Crow called a provocative question and noted the 12 member European Community is now investigating mechanisms to coordinate monetary policy as economic union approaches in 1992 The ECs conclusions could prove instructive Own Currency But what if an independent Quebec decides it has had enough of monetary union here is after all the possibility some politicians would shun Quebec or seek to punish it for leaving the fold Or what if Quebecs political leaders decided the tral bank was not doing enough to combat inflation Could Quebec establish its own currency and interest rate policies A decision to establish a Quebec dollar would bring its own costs a recent study con eluded But if pegged to the S dollar or a group of other foreign currencies it would be a viable option David an economics professor at the of Western Ontario says a Quebec dollar with value tied to the American buck would be a se cond choice to continuing monetary union in a recent article in the influential C Howe In publication tary suggests a Quebec currency would be hit hard if it was just loose from the Canadian dollar It would become an ob ject of suspicion on foreign markets and this would Quebecs international debt as traders would demand a premium to accept it Pegging a Quebec dollar to the loonie is not a solution either Laidler suggests Why bother breaking out of a monetary union if Quebecs currency is simply going to move up and down with the Canadian dollar If logic prevails it seems Canada and Quebec continue some form of economic union regardless of what happens on the political front Damage control simply wont wash Oil AWA That a noble ef fort at damage control by Maurice Sauve no doubt with some guidance from his wife but it wont wash Try as he might the former Liberal cabinet minister will never convince us that his wife Jeanne Sauve was not pointing fingers when she offered a few observations about Canada to an audience in Pans The former governor general famous for locking the gates to the grounds of Rideau Hall hasnt made many speeches since vacating the property last year But according to reports from France she didnt hold back when she finally got the floor What she said among other things was that Canada lacks a leader who has a clear idea of what Canada is and who pro poses that idea to the people Now one doesnt require a doc torate in political science to inter pret this as at the very least somewhat of a slight toward one He is after all the pnme minister of Canada and when one talks about tional leadership or lack of it he justifiably spnngs to mind Obviously if Madame Sauve liked the way the present pnme minister is doing things she wouldnt feel the urge to say Canada lacks a leader who has a clear idea of the country protocol aside Mr Mulroney is the leader of anada WONT WORK When the former viieregal ladv heard her remarks hid hit the headlines Canada she was understandably unhappy While still in the French capital she got on the phone to her in Montreal Quickly the onetime federal forestry minister got on the Stewart MacLeod phone himself and launched his damagecontrol mission He said that his wife in no way pointed a finger at the present leadership in Canada What she was talk about he said was the need for new ideas and new leadership in constitutional matters The context of her statement suggests that new leadership should come from alt sectors of society The gentleman could be about the context But when it comes to finger pointing the ex is much more difficult to digest particularly since there was no denial of what his wife was reported to have said Mr Sauves cause was not helped when he said his wife didn know reporters were listening There were no jour that were supposed to be there Someone must have sneaked in Whenever anyone pleads the that reporters were not sup posed to be there it tends to in crease the credibility of what had been reported If the former governor general argued that she was pointing the finger at leaders of all federal political parties we could easily that Or if she wanted to ex pand her target area to include provincial premiers that would also be a marketable tion But to pretend there was no finger pointing whatsoever simp won I work No Warmth Anyway everyone who has ever passed through Ottawa knows full well that Madame Sauve and Brian have never shared a mutual Quite the contrary There is every reason to believe they dislike each other with some unrestrained enthusiasm You might recall the time Mr Mulroney fresh faced in office back in 1985 organized the Shamrock Summitt in Quebec so he could entertain then president Ronald Reagan Well by all standards of protocal Madame Sauve should hav en there as head of state to welcome another visiting head of state But the pnme minister not one to be upstaged said the summit was a working meeting and therefore did not require a regal welcoming committee of one He could handle that quite nicely himself thank vou The displeasure of the governor general we learned was con siderable The former Liberal cabinet minister and Commons Speaker was as sav in regal not amused And it reliably reported that the roval representative who had been appointed to the hand shaking job bv Pierre Trudeau became less amused with the new leader of her government with each passing No one ever thought she enjoved delivenng those throne speeches written by people in the pnme minister office listing the proud of my govern men Now however she seems to be getting her own back And one can assume that Mr gets absolutely no enjoyment from reading her speech even if the newspapers Good try Mr Sauve but no amount of damagecontrol will change things Write us a letter The Herald wants to hear from vou If you have an opinion you want to express or a comment to make send us a letter or drop by the off ice Our address is Guelph St Georgetown Ont All letters must be signed Please include your address and telephone number for verification Berrys World SCARY PUMPKIN 1990