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-Opinion- THE HERALD Wednesday February 1991 Page 11 Acton arena should have been approved Last weeks decision by Halton Hills Budget Committee not to recommend approval for a new Acton arena this year makes no sense and I only hope when the issue goes before Town council next month for final considera tion the recommendation is over turned The Budget Committee balked at including the arena proposal in the 1991 capital budget because its million price tag of which the Town would be obligated to cover 32 million is too high The province would provide the re maining funds According to the capital budget staff report the Town would be required to bor row the million That means Hills residents would see their 1992 or tax rate increas ed by per cent over what the increase would have been if the arena had been rejected When the increase took effect would de pend on when construction hap pened Right about now you are pro bably saying to yourself its Ben instead of the local councillors who is being nonsen sical If he expects us to swallow what could conceivably be a 1992 tax rate increase in the teens hesoutofhismind Before jumping to any rash conclusions it must be realized inclusion of the arena in this years capital budget only means the Town Recreation and Parks Director Tom Shepard is permit ted to apply to the province for funding in 1991 The Town would only be obligated to front money once the province committed its Bens Banter by Ben Dummett funding and that would happen a year from now says Mr Assuming this scenario was allowed to unfold then in the termin council could direct staff to seek out alternative means other than borrowing money to fund the arenas cost The less money the Town borrows to fund the arena the less effect the arenas approval will have on peoples tax rate The Acton councillors suggest the sale of Town land could be an alter native method of financing A lot of councillors opposing the arenas approval for this year do so because they dont want to commit the next council to an ex pense it may not support A municipal election is scheduled for November I would agree with this point if the next council was obligated to support the arena on the basis of it being approved in the 1991 capital budget However any council has the right to reject a capital project Some argue the council would be morally obligated If the new Town council re jected the construction of the arena once the provincial funding was in place next year and the province was forced to take back its money the province may frown on providing funds for the project at some later date some say However according to MPP Noel the province would never carry out this action By not approving the arena for this year council would un necessarily delay the arena especially since it can always be rejected hi the future if the pro jects cost cant be met without taxpayers paying a heavy price History of taxation gives reason for concern TORONTO Now that the federal government has dinged us with a goods and services tax what other revenueraising raids might be staged on taxpayers That theme recently occupied a gaggle of experts who gathered in Toronto to brainstorm about tax possibilities into the next cen tury As you might expect they mulled over a wide range of scary options In making their guesses the tax prophets who attended a Canadian Tax Foundation con ference looked first at the emerg ing economic social and political structure before concluding in most cases that more study is needed They talked about tax relief penalties and incentives They pondered the political appeal of a green tax and whether it would be aimed specifically at protecting the environment or us ed as a general revenue raiser They discussed the increasing importance of payroll taxes such as unemployment insurance and pension premiums now the thirdlargest source of govern ment funds after income and sales taxes Latest Finance Department figures show 11 premiums total nearly billion in the first eight months of the current fiscal year more than 10 per cent of all taxes paid Benefits paid out were billion The increasing trend toward an economy that is more service- oriented provided fodder for debate The GST is clearly a move by the federal government to tap into a new Canada in which resources and manufactured pro ducts are not as proportionately important as they once were- IMPORTANT SOURCE One academic predicted what many Canadians suspect that the GST will become increasingly significant as a revenue source for Ottawa as time wears on Still such forecasts are as one participant said presumptuous How can one attempt a predic tion of the future when the past belies any rational explanation asked Satya Poddar a tax con sultant with Ernst and Young One of the factors that makes Ottawa Bureau by Vic Parsons Thornton Hews Service predictions difficult is the public frame of mind about taxation Despite apparent anger about the GST and other taxes there seems to be a widespread willingness to accept tax measures that would help clean up the environment But would this acceptance of green taxes diminish if tax payers knew the estimated costs Don Dewees an economics and law professor at the University of Toronto said measures would be required if Canada is to reach its goal of a cut in carbon dioxide emissions by When economic growth is taken into cont the target means Canada would actually have to slash emissions by per cent from the anticipated level If taxes alone are used to clamp down on the use of carbon- producing coal natural gas and oil the afterinflation prices of such fuels would have to double This would squeeze about billion in additional taxes each year from consumers about half of that from motorists A carbon tax of that magnitude could make the GST look popular by com parison Dewees said TURN SOUTH Moreover if Canada had a big carbon tax and the United States did not more consumers than ever would cross the border to shop for gas Triads not all If taxes were levied on sulfar oxide emissions the revenue from that source could be more than billion A charge of nitrogen oxide releases could raise another billion about per cent of which would be extracted from transportation Dewees suggests taxes col lected from sulphur and nitrogen emissions would fall over time as producers acted to reduce their tax costs With carbon however there is little feasible control technology so lower fuel con sumption or switching to other forms of fuel would be the solu tion How acceptable these kinds of taxes are to the people who pay the governments bills may de pend upon bow they are perceiv ed Nancy Oleweiler a Simon FraBer University economist said if such taxes are successful in protecting the environment then over time the revenues from them should diminish But if government lust for the cash generated takes over tax payers might take a dimmer view of a socalled green tax that raises money for general pur poses Certainly the history of taxation gives them reason for concern More on the tax future In my next column Soviet Union repression raises questions Should the West be concerned Should the West be concerned about the trend towards increas ingly visible repression in the Soviet Union Yes with qualifications Above all it depends on priorities on what is important in relations with the Soviet Union and what isnt And these come on a sliding scale For the Western world the prime concern in regard to the Soviets always has been and always should be its military might and its expansionist tendencies Soviet conventional military superiority has always given it the potential for overrruning western Europe by surprise at tack Soviet strategic forces could also launch a nuclear first strike to destroy that last bas tion of imperialism the United States And Soviet imperial schemes have spread worldwide Yet with the collapse of Soviet puppet regimes in eastern Europe and the of many troops to Russia proper the first of those concerns has been great ly eased So too the level of Soviet meddling worldwide has declined CHEATING Not that all Western security concerns have been answered mind you as witness the multitudinous ways the Soviet military has gone about cheating on the conventional forces arms control pact signed just last autumn Theyve reclassified whole divisions and air regiments as naval and therefore exempt from the treaty Theyve moved enormous amounts of equipment behind the Ural Mountains to avoid destroying it and they simply deny the existence of hun dreds of military installations the West knows exist But beyond such lifeanddeath matters where a mistake could be final there lurks the more murky area of the West interfer ing in the Soviet Unions internal affairs Do we have the right The answer has to be yes When the Soviet Union singed the Helsinki accords with the West in 1975 it committed itself to a certain standard of civilized behavior towards its own people For a Communist regime this was quite remarkable and in fact the accords have since serv ed as a very useful tool for remin ding the Soviets of their obliga tions to their own people There are limits here of course Concern over repression should not supercede the priority we give international peace and stability On the other hand we in the West do have a special obligation to the three Baltic states of Lithuania Latvia and Estonia which when conquered by the Soviets in 1940 as part of the NaziCommunist deal to divide up eastern Europe were sub jected to rigors very similar to what Iraq has inflicted upon Kuwait Unlike other Soviet conquests such as Armenia central Asia or the Far East the incorporation of World Affairs by Derek Nelson Thomson Hews Service of consequence about glasnost This is of major concern to the West for an open society is one of the best guarantees that the Soviets do not revert to rampag ing across the face of the earth in pursuit of world empire in the name of Karl Marx the Baltic states Into the Soviet Union was never recognized by Canada and the US Paradoxically it is good news that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is pretending to know nothing about who is giving the orders in Lithuania PRIME GOAL This allows the West to make the strongest remonstrances against the crackdown in the Baltic states without it interfer ing with our prime goal making the world a safer place to live through the relaxation of Great Power tension Even in that contrast there is one deeply worrisome aspect to the crackdowns far worse than the actual shootings horrendous as they are This is the suppres sion one after another of Baltic nonCommunist media outlets The great triumph of Gor bachevs resolution was to bring free speech to the empire If the Soviets are repudiating that then they are repudiating everything Berrys World You are to avoid stress That means no more watching WORLD NATIONAL or LOCAL news