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

Opinion- THE HERALD Wednesday May 1 Page 1 1 Hydro Commission correct in its decision Halton Hills Hydro Commis sion should be applauded for its gutsy decision to clamp down on those who refuse to pay their hydro bills The decision was a gutsy one because of the current recession Power is an essential like water and most would say leeway should be given to those unable to pay their hydro bills This ra tionale is reasonable as long as people dont take advantage of it a situation that seems to be hap pening In light of the recession the commission introduced earlier this year an interim policy giving people with an outstanding hydro bill a limited amount of power Under normal circumstances if a bill goes unpaid after a certain amount of time then that customers power is turned off The interim policy allowed these same customers to receive a limited amount of power for heating and operating a lamp or two But Commission General Manager Gerry Trudell reports between 300 and Halton Hills Hydro customers have outstan ding bills totalling in April alone The utility usually has between and in late payment bills per month The interim policy was to be in place until May 15 but because of the excessively high April outstanding bill total the commis sion has decided to revoke its in terim policy effective immediate ly Bens Banter by Ben Granted the monthly outstan ding bill total will be higher dur ing a recession compared to nor mal economic times but not 400000 more All Town people have in terest in the collection of this money because if it isnt col lected the community as a whole will have to pay the bill through higher hydro rates Those who feel the Hydro Com mission crackdown is too harsh should first ask themselves if they are the same people who argue public agencies should operate more like a business A lot of people say public agencies get themselves into financial trouble because they dont operate on a basic business These people can now take heart then that the commission is listening to that advice There is no way a business would accept a total of in outstanding bills For those who say the commis sion as a public agency should not base its decision solely on business practices the utility is also acting responsibly Although revoking the interim policy before the May 15 deadline the commission only took this action upon the arrival of spring and the warmer weather Conservation is another positive thing to come out of the commissions crackdown Know ing the commission will be less le nient its customers will hopeful ly use less power so much so that in better economic times this practice will also be exercised The long run outcome will be cheaper hydro rates all around Federal NDPs carry weight in unity discussion OTTAWA Funny how quickly political influence changes in our wonderful if often weird coun try Not so Jong ago when the Lake accord was stil afloat no one paid the slightest attention to the New Democratic Party Oh sure Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was gushingly appreciative of the support that came from leader Ed Broadbent Certainly the NDPs Elijah Harper as an individual was a force to be reckoned with in the Manitoba legislature In fact it was Mr Harpers quiet No that sounded the death knell of the accord But the as a national force was not a formidable fac tor in the whole Meech process Thats largely because there wasnt one provincial government in office when the prime minister and premiers signed the accord in 1987 Even the federal NDP caucus had only twothirds of its present strength of Things are different now with the probability they will become even more dramatically different by the time we reach our next scheduled constitutional crunch in 1992 when Quebec faces a deadline for holding a referen dum on its future By then western socialists willing we could see a majority of Cana dians under the stewardship of provincial NDP governments That would mean in effect that whatever The Rest of Canada TROC proposes to keep the country united it will have to have broad support among New Democrats And anyone who has followed NDP constitutional debates over the years will quick ly realize the difficulties involved here DIFFERENT NOW The problems are no longer quite the same however The partys Quebec wing which used to force national conventions into semantic wrestling matches by constantly throwing sovereigntyassociation and other similar objectives into the ring has struck out on its own That should make things somewhat easier for national leader Audrey McLaughlin who unlike her predecessor wont have to spend half her time trying to interpret for the benefit of the often strident com ments of Quebec party officials That sure caused Mr Broad- bent to lose a few good sleeps But what Ms McLaughlin may have to content with and Mr Broadbent probably wishes he had had the same opportunity is a wide variety of views among members in other provincial NDP governments Canadas most powerful pro vince Ontario already has an government under Bob Rae Saskatchewan must vote later this year and opinion polls tell us its likely Roy New Democrats will unseat Premier Grant Devines Tory government If everything one hears in Vic toria is true or even contains a smattering of truth it seems equally likely that Michael Har- and his party will put an end to the riveting and rollick ing years of Social Credit govern ment While Mr Harcourt as premier would enter the unity issue with a clean slate the same cannot be said for Mr He was attorney general of Saskatchewan when the Constitu tion was in 1982 and Quebecers still see him as one of Jean Chretiens midnight plotters in that controversial process OPEN Quebec Premier Robert who health permit ting will be the key individual in next years crunch at least gives Mr Rae a relatively high assess ment He describes him as open Perhaps thats because the On tario premier has been careful to avoid plunging into the debate with quick fixes or hardened posi tions The bilingual premier has sounded fairly reasonable to Quebec editorial writers and other commentators But there hasnt been un qualified enthusiasm for Ms McLaughlins vision of a new Canada In fact after years of the NDP policies being regarded as among the most sympathetic towards decentralization Canadas first female national leader has come across as perhaps the most centralist of all current leaders What she proposes in general terms is the transfer of ad ministrative powers to the pro vinces rather than legislative powers Other shifts would have to be justified by the provinces The onus should be on the pro vinces to explain why a redistribution is necessary and to demonstrate how Canadians would be better off The fundamental rule that must apply is not whether a redistribution serves the needs and goals of governments but whether it serves the needs and goals of the people Ms McLaughlin has said In a comment that probably didnt win a hearty round of ap plause from Mr the national leader said patriation of the Constitution without Quebec represents one of the greatest- errors in Canadian history It could be come fall that New Democrats will be holding their own federalprovincial constitu tional conference in search of common ground And unlike any previous national conven tion Prime Minister and other premiers will be tuned in to every word It must feel good to really mat ter Precious little being done about competitiveness OTTAWA Everyone seems to be talking about Canadian com petitiveness these days but theres precious little being done about it Much of the chatter in govern ment and business circles is about unit labor costs compared with our rivals in the United States Asia and Europe Unit labor costs is a fairly sim ple concept It measures the pro duction cost per unit of something a car windshield a dress a com puter keyboard or that old stand by the mythical widget The concern arises because Canadas unit labor costs have been climbing faster than those of our competitors in recent years Federal budget papers released in February noted that Canadian unit labor costs rose by 65 per cent last year and were expected to jump by another percent in These increases are as much as 50 per cent higher than those in the US up to seven times higher than Japans and five times more than Germanys Finance Minister Michael Wilson mentioned the need to im prove our competitiveness with his budget speech promising a batch of discussion papers and talks with business and labor on ways to shape up OPTIMISTIC VIEW If success is at hand the Finance Department predicts unit labor cost increases may on ly be 17 per cent in 1992 and average only 14 per cent between and That would be markedly below AMerican pro jections of 29 per cent for the same period For this to happen however Canadian business will have to do its part in a realm thai it has largely neglected until now There are three ways unit labor cost increases compared with other countries can be lessened Two have been tried but un fortunately the third has been given short shrift One method has been to make life tough for workers Thats the approach being followed today Demands for large wage in creases and more lucrative benefits can be discouraged by a hardnosed combo of high in terest rates and limits raises When interest rates rise and we are all witnesses to it these days consumers stop spending busineses their investments and employees lose jobs Workers who face unemployment are going to reduce their expecta tions hence production costs will be less The trouble is this is a Ottawa Bureau by Vic Parsons Thomson News Service very costly policy in social and economic terms A second way to make Cana dian exports cheaper abroad is to let the dollar fall in value The point was brought home this week when Adam Zimmerman chairman of giant Forest Inc called upon Ottawa to allow a devaluation of the loonie LOWER DOLLAR Our lower dollar helped save Canada the last recession but it can lead to complaints in other countries notably the US of un fair competition Moreover it drives up the rate of inflation by making imported goods more ex pensive to Canadians The third path and one often overlooked is to increase our productivity through more research and development and technological innovation If Canada is losing ground to other countries this is the theatre in which we must improve The countrys performance in this sector is pitiful If the governments research and development and spending is a disgrace the private sectors effort is appalling Government andD spending falls in the middle of industrial powers Science Minister Bill Winegard said in a recent speech But private investment lags sad ly behind Recently the Commons science and technology of total Canadian R and D spending total output of the economy hovers between one and 15 percent The unanimous report entitled Canada Must Compete urged Ot tawa to set a national goal of 19 per cent by the year and 25 per cent by 2005 Look at how those figures com pare with our trade rivals Japan spends 29 per cent on and Germany forks out per cent and the US invests two per cent Is it coincidence that Canadian unit labor costs have been rising much faster than these com petitors who devote more to and You be the judge tee issued a report saying the Write us a letter The Herald wants to hear from you If you have an opinion you want to express or a com ment to make send us a letter or drop by the office Our address is Street Georgetown Ontario All letters must be signed Please include your address and telephone number for verification The Herald reserves the right to edit letters due to space limitations