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Why cant do better Home Newspaper of Halton Hills Established A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited Guelph Street Georgetown 3Z6 Ontario K ROBERT Publisher and General Manager BRIAN Editor Phone DAN TAYLOR Advertising Manager contain Mill Page THE HERALD Wednesday June Editorial Help needed Halton Hills trustee Bruce is trying to sound an alarm Schoolage children face difficult problems in todays society and the result is that almost one student in five has significant psychological and social problems she says Ms Bruce is in favor of a proposal being considered before the Halton Board of Education which could bring qualified social workers into the elementary schools At least seven children in Haltons schools have attemp ted suicide she says The problems stem from societys refusal to acknowledge that there are some serious problems ac cording to Ms Bruce Several years ago a child mental health study was turned down by the board of education because many people thought the facts had been exag gerated We hope todays trustees are more in touch with children attending Haltons schools Putting social workers in Haltons schools would help discover and fight the feeling of childrens isolation before it manifests itself in antagonistic behavior she says Anything that helps children cope with the pressure of todays changing society which includes more serious pro blems at home than ever is welcomed The Board of Education has been chastised recently for increasing budgets The move to put social workers in schools would be money well spent Heavy hands Brian MacLeod Edilort Notebook I write these words with heavy hands Its shortly after noon Mon- and I have just arrived from the depth of my apartment after having groaned my way through the second half of the soccer match between my native land Scotland and some tiny strip of land in Cen tral America named Costa Rica As most of you might have realized by now the heavilyfavored Scots lost Thats why theres no hooliganism in Scottish soccer you know Most of the hooligans are Still sitting in front of their televi sion sets simply repeating to themselves What What What over and over again The television announcer said the defeat would be treated as a death in the family back in Scotland My own laments dont carry quite that far No matter about Costa Rica br ing on Brazil Just give the Scots a little time first Like another four years The Lake accord Wasnt that a thrilling week please detect the sarcasm most amusing I had during the entire week was when I picked up a Toronto daily newspaper flipped through it and stopped at the editorial cartoon A man depicted in stark surroun dings stood staring at his television set crying out Make a decision Cutting through all the egos and attempts to save face must have been the hardest part Brian Ontario Premier David Peterson and Newfoundland Premier Clyde Wells are being hailed as heros in the newspaper Heroes Hardly Theyre the ones who got us into this mess in the first place I dont know why there was such a rush to get Quebec into the con stitution They showed us what they think of it when they invoked the notwithstanding caluse to make sure English feel they are in a foreign land Are you one of those people who lay down a few bucks every week to take your chances on a lottery In Ontario gamblers bet over St billion last year bringing in a pro fit of million Since it was formed years ago the Ontario Lottery Corporation has brought in billion in pro fits Cash prizes were given away to the tune of million last year Anyone out there know someone who won a goodsized chunk of this The money raised went towards the promotion and development of physical fitness sports cultural and recreational activities and provincewide social service agen cies A bill passed in 1989 allows the use of profits for hospitals and plans are in the works to allow lot tery profits to be used for protec tion of thevipinmijty Derek Nelson TORONTO Why cant Ontario New Democrats do better The party is the official opposi tion which gives it a higher profile than the thirdplace Conser vatives Leader Bob is well known unlike new Tory leader Mike Har ris The NDP isnt sunk in debt like the PCs It also claims credit for all the wonderful things the Liberal government has brought us in the past five years because after all it propelled the Grits into power in the first place by supporting the Liberals after the 1985 election in stead of the then longruling Tories Yet it continues to stagger along virtually with the PCs the two of them tied as a dis tant second to Premier David Petersons dominant Liberals And yet the NDP is in its own eyes the only legitimate voice of the people the others being mere shills for horrid capitalism So why cant it sell better Why is it a real possibility the party might be relegated to third place in the provincial election expected later this summer There are two obvious explana tions COLD One centres on Rae himself In the era of personality politics he projects a television image that is cold youthful professional that totally lacks the kind of warm at tractiveness that Ontario premiers have traditionally shown He looks like the guy youd want teaching your children at school not runn ing the province Some people put distance from the Ontario culture to having been mainly raised outside its boun daries Perhaps The obvious con trast is between and his former leadership opponent Richard Johnston who has in spades whatever this peculiar Ontarioism quality may be Johnston who retires in August grew up here But there is a second theory which a news colleague Wayne Roberts of the leftist NOW magazine has somewhat made his own Its adherents snarl at the NDP for the partys attempt to be all things to all men to campaign from the socalled political centre to try during election campaigns to make selfinterest and porkbarrel politics cheap auto insurance replace the great dreams of the classless society to refuse for a while to call itself the socialist party that it would be if it were really standing for principle There is some truth to that criticism The NDP like the PCs for that matter rarely sounds much different from the Liberal government They all start from the same premises favoring Big Government and egalitarian legislation and orient their political lives around the agenda of the television clip They let the media set the agenda But is isnt totally fair Take this excerpt from a speech by Politics is above all about two things values and power We must define our values and do all we can to move others to share them with us Politics is not just about the power of governments It is about all power relationships at work in society and how those relation ships are imposed and justified MEDDLING This is an agenda for meddling with peoples lives on a grand scale of attempting to make peo ple share values even if those values are absurd like the NDPs redefinition of the fami ly to include homosexual and un married heterosexual for instance I FINE HOW ARE YOU MIKHAIL- Simplifying tax is complex Vic Parsons Ottawa Bureau TMaMaKtwi OTTAWA Simplicity is the operative word with GST ad ministration and I will continue to work closely with the business community particularly small business to further simplify the GST wherever possible Revenue Minister Otto Jelinek Theres nothing more complex than tax simplification John Bulloch president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business Take your pick of which of the above remarks scores higher on the credibility scale Normally Id choose Bullochs observation One only need recall for in stance what happened with last years reform of personal income taxes Growing numbers of tax payers are throwing up their hands and turning to outside help during the painful annual exercise But cpuld it be that has come up with some tax collection and remission alternatives that will truly ease the burden on small business Most experts believe the new socalled quick method for smaller firms based on total sales during filing periods rather than on individual transactions will help This doesnt mean small business is falling to Its knees in gratitude Bullochs federation says the change is only a partial victory PREFERS ONE TAX Notably one of the CFIBs big gest problems with the proposed goods and services tax GST re mains With the exception of Alber ta separate federal and provincial sales taxes will still have to be ap plied That complicates life for small business which prefers one unified tax simplicity statement came as he slipped the wraps off his plan to ease the anticipated hardships for small business Along with his announcement the minister gave an example of the workings of the quick method In the case provided a hard ware store with threemonth sales of GST included the tax owed by the business on sales averages three per cent or But the example says the store would receive a credit of percent GST paid on such pur chases as a computer This in GST paid by the owner can be subtracted from tax owed for a net payment of Using the regular method still an option for those who prefer it the owner would have to beep track of each transaction for the Although the total tax of is the same owners would hve much more paperwork to handle Some smallbusiness proprietors say they faced the prospect with the regular system of paying out thousands of dollars each year to ensure their books are properly kept and audited Even though small businesses will likely benefit from the quick method and streamlined accoun ting skeptical representatives suggest was doing himself a giant favor rather than adjusting to needs of the private sector Our information is that Revenue Canada cant cope with the previous system says Catherine Swift vicepresident of research for the CFIB Hes solv ing his own administrative pro blem Initially the government an nounced it would need new bureaucrats to handle the mind- boggling paperwork of the new GST The feels the number of administrators was grossly underestimated and the real figure was close to employees We think this may keep the number to said in an Interview