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Peoples Forum THE WEEKEND OUTLOOK Friday Man IS 1991 Page Jews for Jesus article queried Dear Editor The article Jews For Jesus Extend Special Invitation had some inaccuracies I feel should be corrected The Trinity and salvation through a personal relationship with the Messiah are NOT im plied in the Passover Seder Jews believe the Messiah is yet to come and when the Messiah conies we will have peace on earth The Passover Seder is observ ed by ALL Jews not only Or thodox Jews The feast in Jewish homes tak ing four hours is not quite ac curate Passover is the story of the Ex odus from Egypt and the freedom from being slaves under the Pharaoh When the Israelites were told to leave Egypt they could only gather their personal belongings and flour and water to take with them into the desert The matzoh unleavened bread which is eaten for eight days of Passover is symbolic of the bread made from the water and flour the Israelites took with them The story of Passover is told before the meal is eaten in almost every Jewish home on the first night of Passover Nowhere in the story can be found the Trinity or anything relating or referring to it The fact that Christ and his disciples last supper may have been the Passover Seder is the only reference to Christ and the Passover As for the Passover meal it does not take any longer to eat than any other The four hours referred to in your article also in cludes the grace before and after meals as well as the Passover story I have already mentioned in the above paragraphs Sincerely Ron Shames Georgetown PS Jews For Jesus are Jews who have converted to Christiani ty and should be considered Christians not Jews One cannot be both a Jew and a Christian any more than one can be both a Moslem and a Catholic AIDS tied to homosexual acts Dear Editor A few days after a letter of mine was published by the Toron to Sun as the Letter of the day on Dec 1989 I was invited by Wayne to participate in a CFRB phonein show together with Toronto councillor Jack Layton The question was homosexuality ana AIDS From statistics showing that men but no women died of AIDS in Toronto in 1988 I was implying that AIDS is strongly correlated to homosexual activity Of course councillor Layton did not want to agree He also did not believe that probabilities multiply ie if the rate of survival from HIV in fection using condoms Is 90 per year It is only 81 for a period of two years and less than for seven Now statistics from the Federal Center for AIDS in Ot tawa AIDS in Canada dated Oct 1 show how homosex ualbisexual activity remains the most frequent risk factor 3241 cases or 83 The next highest identified causes are blood transfusions is our blood supply really safe and in jections by homosexualbisex ual drug users 34 Injection by straight drug users accounts for only I Even more sur prisingly the number of homosex ualbisexual women infected was 0 or The total number of infected women was 227 the highest percentage of whom were infected through sexual contact with a person at risk presumably bisexual In view of these facts would it not be reasonable to try and save lives by introducing strong measures such as routine testing and contact tracing These techniques helped us long ago in the fight against syphilis but they seem to be politically unac ceptable today Would an epidemic of cholera be handed this way Is it possibly because of modern taboos about sexual behaviour Sincerely Giuseppe Gorl Executive Vice President Family Coalition Party of Ontario Opinion Petro Canada cost us plenty Dear Editor In the Globe and Mail Page B2 March the headline reads Gas probe extended nation wide The article goes on to say a federal in vestigation of gas prices in Sud bury and Ottawa has been ex panded to other parts of the coun try However people should not expect quick results of the probe As a Libertarian since when could we ever expect quick results by a government body It seems these types of things benefit the participants more than the people paying the bill taxpayers Since we own our own gas com pany which at the time it was purchased was to give us info on oil and gas prices I wonder why we do not use this info One pro blem I suppose is that Canada prices are sometimes more expensive than other brands However we did pur chase Petro Canada for this pur pose Perhaps a phone call could get the information on prices and eliminate the cost of this probe I assume we still do call the shots at Petro Canada After all the company cost us plenty Thanks JohnShadbolt Libertarian Acton Ontario Youths are warned about deadly vices Dear Editor Of course I smoked and drank too much when 1 was really young but fortunately I gave up both before my lungs and liver went up in smoke and worse I know how difficult it is to stop either vice but after cancer of the throat hit me the specialists warned me of the consequences that could follow unless I ceased The best cure and advice I can give to the young people today Is never start It may look smart and cool but believe me kids it certainly Isnt In other words it isnt worth risking your future years for the few moments your young lives think you really look grownup Sincerely Joseph Stamp Georgetown predicted Citizens Forum fiasco OTTAWA When Keith Spicer agreed last November to head the Citizens Forum on Canadas Future he did say that the whole business had the potential for fiasco Right now its beginning to look as though he enjoys the gift of prophecy While its too early to predict a fiasco by the time the forums Ju ly l deadline roils around there is clearly an element of the absurd in the way things are going at the moment When you get politi cians calling for a commission to investigate another commission you can tell somethings wrong There were such calls after It was revealed that the group might spend million or times the original estimate While this may seem in keeping with the usual government over runs the bickering thats going on certainly isnt in keeping with anything What we must keep reminding ourselves is that the forum was established to find ways of holding the country together So far the commission seems more preoccupied with holding itself together Its obviously not easy not when you have members spouting off in all directions and its necessary for the chairman to issue press releases about ap parent dissension In the ranks The latest kerfuffle as this col umn is committed to paper began with comments from com missioner Robert Normand about the per diem being charged by other members Although claim ing his remarks were misinter preted Mr Normand left the im pression that some of his col leagues were charging a day for time not spent on commission business STRONG REACTION Naturally there was an outcry in Parliament Ever since a group of breakaway MPs formed the Bloc to advance the cause of Independence anything involving national unity generates a noisy reaction Ottawa Bureau Actually its rather amusing to see the Bloc members so con cerned about unity issues But its not just Bloc members Sheila Cops the deputy Liberal leaders wants the Commons public accounts committee to take a close look at the forums administration The commis sion has no credibility while this cloud is hanging over its head she says There are allegations of padding expense accounts and misuse of public funds Mr Spicer naturally doesnt agree People dont give a sweet youknowwhat about the ad ministration of the commission he says They are more in terested in Canada One supposes its not beyond the ability of many Canadians to be interested in both Anyway it all meant the com mission spent another day behind closed doors working on its own unity problems There were reports that Mr Spicer offered his resignation Things ended with a prepared statement about there being no evidence of abuse of public trust This aside the forum seems to be having more than the usual share of problems as it criss crosses the country from town hall to town hall trying to gather and digest the opinions of one million Canadians Whether any new ideas have emerged is anyones guess BAD START The forum got off to a shaky start last November when Prime Minister Brian Mulroney heard that a group of Liberals planned to establish such a forum He made a preemptive strike and hurriedly announced a 12- memher group under the guidance of Mr Spicer Some members were asked to serve only hours before the an nouncement A couple of members quit shortly after wards And there was no end of confu sion in the first few days It seem ed no one knew what the group would do or how It would do it In fact its still not absolutely clear these questions have been answered At first the commission in dicated it wouldnt go into Quebec where a provincial com mission was looking at Canadas future from a decidedly different vantage point There was an out cry of disbelief and for reason the commission plunged into the province where it didnt get a highly positive response Its a mad scramble that begs controversy Bankers are criticized in special report Business people say bankers are slow to lend and quick to call in their loans Bankers say owners of small businesses dont understand finance In the ongo ing war between entrepreneurs and their bankers the bankers appear to be waving a white flagi The Canadian Bankers Association CBA asked two professors from the University of Western Ontario to study their members dealings with small business customers The resulting 376page report con cludes that bankers explain themselves poorly and change lending officers too frequently among other things But while they may have been arrogant in the past bankers say they are determined to do better In the future Their small business customers may be forgiven for sounding skeptical The banks continue to treat small business accounts as a nuisance said Brian Gray of the Canadian Federation of In dependent Business CFIB As a result more of the federations members are turning to credit unions he said BLAME BUSINESS White the CBA study criticized bankers it also had a few words for their customers En trepreneurs have limited awareness of other sources of funds bankers charge As well they wrongly believe that banks should take risks But the banks say their business Is to provide lowrisk loans banks are not in the business of providing venture capital We are lending not our capital but depositors funds said Helen Sinclair president of the CBA A cynic might wonder why bankers freely lend depositors money to Third World countries real estate speculators and takeover artists This policy has cost them billions in bad loans Whatever the case bankers do not seem inclined to make a bad situation worse by losing money on loans to small business customers as well Some parts of the CBA study will not be made public which annoys the For example the studys authors analyzed credit files of the Big Six banks as well as problem loan cases and inquiries from small business They will not reveal which banks served customers better or worse In some ways the gap between lender and borrower may be too wide to bridge Each borrower knows in his or her heart of hearts that the business will fly If only he or she can get enough capital bankers are not in terested in financing their customers dreams unless the customer already has a substan tial business Meanwhile bankers are so leery of entrepreneurs and so eager to cover their own hides that they bother their customers at the slightest sign of trouble real or imaginary Bankers are quick to call In loans thus caus ing the very insolvency they so fear The solution If there is one will be found in the changing times prudent business people are shif ting from debt to equity and en trepreneurs would be well advis ed to do the same If you have to rely on borrowed money your business will always be vulnerable to rising Interest rates and tight credit