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6- The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday July 7, 2007 www.oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5567 Classified Advertising: 845-3824, ext. 224 Circulation: 845-9742 The Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council. The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206, Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone (416) 340-1981. Advertising is accepted on the condition that, in the event of a typographical error, that portion of advertising space occupied by the erroneous item, together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for, but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate.The publisher reserves the right to categorize advertisements or decline. Editorial and advertising content of the Oakville Beaver is protected by copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Commentary Guest Columnist NEIL OLIVER Publisher JILL DAVIS Editor in Chief ROD JERRED Managing Editor DANIEL BAIRD Advertising Director RIZIERO VERTOLLI Photography Director TERI CASAS Business Manager MARK DILLS Director of Production Metroland Media Group Ltd. includes: Ajax/Pickering News Advertiser, Alliston Herald/Courier, Arthur Enterprise News, Barrie Advance, Caledon Enterprise, Brampton Guardian, Burlington Post, Burlington Shopping News, City Parent, Collingwood/Wasaga Connection, East York Mirror, Erin Advocate/Country Routes, Etobicoke Guardian, Flamborough Review, Georgetown Independent/Acton Free Press, Harriston Review, Huronia Business Times, Lindsay This Week, Markham Economist & Sun, Midland/Penetanguishine Mirror, Milton Canadian Champion, Milton Shopping News, MANUEL GARCIA Production Manager CHARLENE HALL Director of Distribution ALEXANDRIA CALHOUN Circ. Manager WEBSITE oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver is a division of A costly broken promise Garth Turner Halton MP Garth Turner never to tax income trusts. Town hall meetings. Petitions. Speeches. But not everyone agrees. Many Conservative supporters tell me to give it up and change the channel. So, should I? As with many governments that do hurtful things, this one has been counting on investors to lick their wounds, write off their losses and forget. Because many of the afflicted are seniors, well, so much the better. The perfect victims. And just to ensure there's no groundswell of support for these Canadians, some Conservatives have painted them as greedy old people. They took unwise risks, the story goes. They bought inappropriate assets. They lusted after crazy yields. They got busted. Change the channel. Of course, many would never have bought trusts if Mr. Harper had not told them they'd not be taxed. Many companies would never have turned into trusts without Conservative assurances. The argument for breaking this promise -- that billions of tax dollars would be lost as conversions increased -- was never proven. Mr. Harper and Mr. Flaherty never even tried, or said they were sorry. Well, let me make a simple point. This is not just about income trusts. Or the Atlantic Accord. Or Kyoto. Or cutting income taxes. Or the Kelowna Accord. Or lower gas taxes. Or accountability. Or any of the other promises the government has broken in a very short period of time. Instead, it's about you, me -- all of us. We're supposed to be the government. We are not supposed to be victimized by it. It may be a bunch of "greedy" seniors suffering right now, but what happens if Jim Flaherty decides to finance the next one per cent GST cut with a new tax on RRSP holdings? After all, only half of Canadians have any money saved at all, so this would just hit the "rich" among us. Or how about a modest capital gains tax on the windfall profits being generated through residential real estate? I mean, when houses in many cities have jumped 100 per cent in value in the last decade, wouldn't it only be fair to tax this unearned money? After all, why should money you make on your house be tax-free when everything else is shared? If Mr. Harper and Mr. Flaherty can tax the life out of the savings of two million seniors, after saying they never would, then why can't they tax you? Your family savings? Your house? And if they justified that action by producing 18 pages of documents with blacked-out pages, if their MPs tried to prevent any hearings from taking place into the action, if they called you whiney and refused to answer your questions and forced it into law, what would you do? Well, I know what I would do. And I'm doing it. IAN OLIVER Group Publisher Media Group Ltd. Mississauga Business Times, Mississauga News, Napanee Guide, Newmarket/Aurora Era-Banner, Northumberland News, North York Mirror, Oakville Beaver, Oakville Shopping News, Oldtimers Hockey News, Orillia Today, Oshawa/Whitby/Clarington Port Perry This Week, Owen Sound Tribune, Palmerston Observer, Peterborough This Week, Picton County Guide, Richmond Hill/Thornhill/Vaughan Liberal, Scarborough Mirror, Stouffville/Uxbridge Tribune, Forever Young, City of York Guardian RECOGNIZED FOR EXCELLENCE BY: Ontario Community Newspapers Association Canadian Community Newspapers Association Suburban Newspapers of America Y ou may know that I have been out fighting for a couple of million Canadians who were taken to the cleaners when Ottawa broke its promise THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: United Way of Oakville TV AUCTION Lessons in keeping cool and getting hot under the collar T his summer we're finally going to be able to keep our cool. And, come next winter, we're going to be able to get happily hot under the collar. And, best of all, we're not going to have to feel all guilty about getting hot or keeping cool. And for that we are thanking our lucky stars, Al Gore and Oakville's own Mike Preston. A while ago, you see, we decided that we could not take another great globally warmed summer. We'd sweated and suffered through three sultry seasons of mind-melting heat and humidity and we'd had enough. The solution seemed obvious enough: cave in and install air conditioning. But the obvious solution was enveloped in what I call "Gore Guilt." And Gore Guilt was accompanied by irony. Irony? How about this: we moved to the country to escape city life, to get back to nature, and yet we are increasingly aware that our so-called "country living" can be harmful to the very nature with which we wanted to surround ourselves. In spring, for instance, the grass grows around our acreage faster than we can cut it. Consequently, the environmentally unfriendly riding mower is running pretty much non-stop. In fact, about the only time it gets a breather is when we have to put the environmen- tally unfriendly autos into motion to get to work, appointments, activities ­ none of which is ever nearby because (have I mentioned this?) we live out in the country. Further, we recently, reluctantly, became a three-car family. Honestly, we didn't have a whole lot of choice what with five family members fleeing off in five different directions each day, it became a simAndy Juniper ple matter of logistics and sanity (my sanity). Still, this caused us even greater Gore Guilt. It's not like we are simply stomping on the environment. We are very conscious of our ecological footprint. We fanatically recycle and compost, we carpool whenever possible, and we fastidiously maintain the designated wet-lands areas of our property. But, we are also aware that everyone can do more and installing air-conditioners ain't exactly helping the cause. Enter Mike Preston, President of Max Air. We've known Mike for years ­ as a neighbor and as the tinkering technician who kept the heating system humming back at our old home. Well, when we talked to Mike about central air, he turned us onto the possibilities of Geo Thermal heating-cooling -- technology so environmentally friendly, the government offers generous rebates to entice people into taking the Geo Thermal plunge. Now, the down-side to this type of system is that it costs a bundle of bananas up front. The up-side is that it's cheap to run and incredibly energy efficient ­ so efficient that, in most cases, you make up in energy savings what you spent to have the system installed in under eight years. Further, by going Geo Thermal you're doing the environment a huge favor. In our case, this favor involves ending our propane addiction; we can now kiss our propane delivery guy goodbye, and I can quit hiding my wallet every time I see the propane truck chugging up our laneway. I won't bore you with the details of how this system works because I don't have a clue (despite having had the whole process explained to me in detail a dozen times). All I know is I flick a switch and I have air conditioning, I flick another switch and I have heating, and I can flick all the switches I want without Gore Guilt. Hey, it's a beautiful thing! Andy Juniper can be visited at his Web site, www.strangledeggs.com, or contacted at ajuniper@strangledeggs.com.