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Doctors have been nationalized Home Newspaper of Hills Established 1866 A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited Guelph Street Georgetown Ontario K ROBERT Publisher and General BRIAN Editor Phone DAN TAYLOR Advertising Manager Page6 THE HERALD Wednesday May 2 Editorial GO train go Acton residents are crossing their fingers in anticipation of finally getting train service through their community We hope they wont be left out in the cold once again In the 1984 federal election Otto famous election promise to bring VIA service to Acton turned into a one- train proposal three years later with the town having to pick up a healthy tab to build a train station He followed that up with a letter to the town saying he had fulfilled his promise The town decided not to foot the bill and Acton never got its VIA service Mr no longer represents Acton His riding doesnt include that community any more This time with the recent announcement that the Georgetown GO train line will be expanded to Guelph theres good reason to believe Acton will get the stop North MPP Walt Elliot said the Acton people are almost assured of getting a stop And after all a provincial election is very likely on the way Halton Regional Chairman Pete Pomeroy said the Region would do its utmost to get a stop but he pointed out the final decision is left in the hands of the province The Liberals do seem in a generous mood right now and if Acton councillors keep at it the GO service could become a reality But politicians and residents must keep after those above them We dont want to see politicians promise the service again only to see the trains whizzing by Acton once the elec tion is over Back to Earth Brian MacLeod Earth Day may have been April 22 but residents of Halton Hills ob viously took advantage of the en tire Earth Week to learn about their environment Many of the events held in schools are chronicled on our Earth Week page on page 11 of to days edition but there are some in teresting comments by students of Joseph Gibbons Public School after they were invited to print their thoughts for a time capsule to be buried at Mountsberg Wildlife Centre and Conservation Area in Burlington The capsule was buried April and it will be re opened in 2010 Some of the students com ments Our wish is to have a pollution- free world We want people to grow more trees and plants and to stop killing the wildlife for things that we dont need Here here Another class at Joseph Gibbons said People should stop throwing things away and reuse them We hope the air will not be polluted by factory smoke We wish there would be no more oil spills When young students can sit up and take notice that wreckless oil You may or may not catch me on this page again next week For those of you who didnt see it in last weeks paper I married my long time girlfriend years Karen two weeks ago with plans to head off to Scotland this Satur day But thats right our flight was booked on the nowdefunct Odyssey Airlines Were actually one of the for tunate ones Theres thousands of Canadians stuck overseas waiting to get home Wait a minute thats not such a bad prospect Derek Nelson Queens Park TORONTO The doctors of On tario finally appear to have ac cepted that theyve been na tionalized Theyve bowed their necks to the guillotine of govern ment control The irony is that the government looks set to cut off their heads anyway The Ontario Medical Association has offered to give up the right to strike in exchange for recognition of it by the government as the doctors union and binding arbitration to solve disputes over fee negotiations This is a major shift the OMA and its membership Doctors have long believed they are independent professionals and businessmen who just happen to be getting their incomes from government It was fear of losing that status that contributed to the intensity of their resistance to the ban on extrabilling brought in by the Liberal government in Doctors went on strike And lost There is little public sympathy for the principle of doctor strikes and even less for- strikes aimed at in creasing the incomes of the best- paid group of professionals in On tario wmch is exactly how the government successfully and portrayed it M1NISCULF RAISE Afterwards many doctors understood that Certainly the government did Thats how it has been able to impose a 18 per cent OHIP fee increase upon doctors in 1988 and give no in crease at all so far for or The OMA which represents about 85 per cent of Ontarios prac ticing physicians has been sear ching ever since for a new strategy to use in dealing with the government OMA President Carole explained it this way in a recent speech We had to be realistic The healthcare system was changing The Ontario Medical Association had to change too and had to adopt a new perspective We had to approach a new rela tionship not from the perspective of the independent professionals we once were but from the perspective of professionals work ing in a healthcare system that is publicly financed and managed by government Having accepted that perspec tive we began to try and find a way to make cooperation work It was obvious to us that the biggest obstacle in our relations with government was fee negotiations It was clear that if we were to ad dress the broader issues of health care we needed to end fee disputes she said And thats when the OMA came up with the nostrike pledge in ex change for binding arbitration of fee disputes and recognition by the government as the doctors bargaining agent In short a doc tors union Doctors who do not want to belong to the OMA would not have to but would be subject to the Rand formula and have to pay the fees since they would benefit from the negotiations With the uncertainty and nastiness of fee disputes out of the way the doctors coulH concentrate on what the government wants them to do which is come up with some ways to bring healthcare system costs under control After all physicians and other practi tioners directly control about one- third the costs of medical care and both government and doctors claim to be interested in good but efficiently delivered care for all STALLED Yet negotiations are now stall ed The doctors want the same kind of binding arbitration that other government professionals such as Crown attorneys and hospital- based psychiatrists have The government although it refuses to publicly reveal its views ap parently wants to set up a special appeal procedure strictly for doc tors The fears a trap It may be right The problem the organiza tion faces is that it lacks believable clout in government eyes By offer ing to give up the right to strike it is simply describing reality anyway The Liberals know OMA cant use withdrawal of ser vices again so why should they give the OMA anything The correct answer is why not The psychic shift as Guzman called it towards acceptance as state employees is a major leap for doctors Theyve offered their heads For the Grits to slice them off would be adding injury to insult spills are ruining our environment and killing wildlife we know teachers and the media are doing their jobs Clearly the message is getting through in the schools In Acton students at the high school watch ed a by a young troupe called Ruckus in the Rainforest The troupe took students through the perils of the destruction of the rain forest and judging by the questions and the genuine interest shown by the students after the play they got the message too In School the stu dent council organized a litterless lunch and the school was actually able to reduce the amount of gar bage they produce in a day from nine bags to two The real challenge is can we all do that and can we keep it up Finally over at Georgetown Day Care Centre in Norval John and Donna Kuenzig are teaching kids between the age of 2Vz and five that the environment is important and they should work to preserve it John and Donna obviously know the advantages of cathing them while theyre young and putting them on the right track Trade imbalance increases debts Vic Parsons OTTAWA Its no secret a strong dollar and high interest rates have savaged Canadas trade per formance in recent months What is less evident Is a side- effect A deteriorating trade balance tends to increase our debts to foreigners And when politicians including Prime Minister Brian Mulroney talk about our national debt placing an unfair burden on future generations this foreign portion is what they should be most worried about Heres why it has to do with our balance of payments with other countries This balance sums up all the transactions between Canada and the rest of the world in a year It has two main parts One is the current account This includes merchandise trade often called in goods and a variety of other payments These other ex changes include travel by Cana- dians abroad and foreigners here shipping costs business services investment income such as in terest and divident payments and transfers such as money sent out of Canada to relatives abroad foreign aid contributions and the like Generally Canada benefits from a surplus in merchandise trade but runs up a larger deficit in the nonmerchandise categories That brings us to the second ele ment To offset this current ac count deficit we must import money These transactions are in cluded in the capital account and take the form of foreign purchases of Canadian companies stocks and bonds Our investments in other countries balance these off to a degree RECORD DEFICIT In 1989 Canada rolled up a record deficit in its current ac count of billion nearly double tne previous high And last year abut billion of foreign capita flowed into Canada This too was a record Ominously the previous capital account high was billion in 1981 just as the last recession was building up steam Why did the current account shortfall soar last year The main factor was a deep plunge in our surplus in trade goods While mer chandise exports by by billion last year over 1988 we imported billion more So the merchan dise trade surplus suffered a net billion reduction This year doesnt promise to be any better In the first two months of 1990 our sales abroad have fallen by per cent from a year earlier Meanwhile our imports have risen by per cents Whats going on Part of the answer may lie in businesses im porting foreignmade equipment to gear up for opportunities arising from free trade But exporters blame high in terest rates and the overvalued Canadian dollar Threequarters of Canadian exporters are having dif ficulty as a result of the dollars value and per cent say the pro- Continued on Page