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Whose fault is no fault Home Newspaper of Halton Hills Established 1866 A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited Guelph Street Georgetown 3Z6 Ontario ROBERT MAI Publisher dud General Manager BRIAN Editor Phone 877 DAN TAYLOR Advertising Manager Mall Page THE HERALD Wednesday June 1990 Radical change Halton Hills residents and politicians are going to have to do some serious soul searching the coming years Preserving Halton Hills rustic nature in the face of development has beei uppermost in many residents mind in the past two years But Halton Hills residents also want to avoid the pack as many as you can in a small area approach to development that they ve seen to the east The message that came out of Region last week is that all four of Haltons municipalities must choose bet ween the two Preserving Halton s green space means highdensity development like condominiums and apart buildings Haltons planning and public works com says Take a look at Georgetown south Do those houses and lots remind you of Georgetown or Many of those houses are nice but they re not Georgetown Councillors at Halton Region called the highdensity radical In Georgetown these highdensity buildings would likely take the form of six to eight storey apartment buildings or stacked townhouses There s no doubt affordable housing is desparately needed And there s little chance of getting more affordable housing without these townhouses and apartments Halton is considering making high density housing a part of its official plan We re in for it whether we like it or not But residents can make a difference Show up at public meetings Be vocal Make your feelings known Make a dif Don t expect your local politicians to do it all for you They re not mind readers If residents want to preserve Halton Hill heritage residents will have to do it Youre angry Brian MacLeod It looks like the demolition that historical house on Maple Avenue has struck a nerve with Georgetown residents When we first wrote about the demolition three weeks ago we knew we had an important story but we never expected the backlash against the town to grow to the level it has reached Usually when a community newspaper receives five letters on any single issue we call that a pret significant response to a story In the case of the demolition of the house been flooded with let ters Most of you are angry that the demolition his been illowed to happen without public comment and manv of you don t want the two 15storey condominiums proposed for the property to be approved Interestingly many residents have directed their toward the planning department Many of you seem to believe that it ing director Ian Keith fault thai the house got demolished Neither the demolition nor the condominium proposal is his fault Developer Frank was very within his legal rights to demolish tire house And the On trio law the town issue a demohtio permit without first do ing a review because of the size of the town and he fact that it was not designated as heritage building Such a design up to the owner to seek Needless to say Mr about to ask for a heritage designation for the house If want to be direct your letters at the politicians While this matter not have been brought before council direct ly you can bet that some hid heard about this pro posil long before that 12earold house was razed to the ground These types of proposals have a habit of making their way to in less formal surroundings than around the meeting table Nevertheless about residents showed up at a council meeting last week ready to do battle And council was only receiving the ap plication at the time It will be in teresting to see if residents can mobilize that opposition once more when the public meeting is an months from now GO Transit users will have to dip into their coffee monev 1 That s when the fares on buses and trains will up pardon the pun an of just over fte per cent That means those who t ike the GO trim to Union Station will pay 25 cents more or each way A londe pass 25 cents to 25 monthly pass on the GO train to Toronto will increase by to If the bus is your wheels of choice it will now cost 5 up from 15 to head to the bus terminal each day or up from for the monlhly TORONTO One reason the Liberals might prefer an early election is to duck the fallout from their new nofault automobile in law The law comes into effect June but motorists won t actually see what it does to their premiums til their present policies expire So the quicker the election the better Financial Institutions Minister Murray Elston continues to insist that the average rate increase in big cities will be eight per cent in more rural areas nothing But that one year and really weans nothing The basic question is whether the government s modified nofault system will save dnvers money over the long term The Liberals say yes million a year CAN The theory behind it is except for accidents involving death or permanent or serious injury peo ple involved in accidents give up the right to sue which means to per cent of us A driver own in company would cover costs from an accident regardless of fault One sideeffect of this is that good dnvers with more expen cars will pay much higher premiums All this will apparently save million in lawyers fees and other charges as well as reduce the amount paid out in settlement by as much as million These savings are all supposedly ongoing Maybe John Kruger who headed the first version of the government insurance board held public hear on nofault insurance last spr ing The board s consultants con eluded that financial savings were doubtful In fact nofault received precious little outside support since the Liberals 1987 began their somewhat exotic and detour journey towards some form of control over auto insurance rates Mr Justice Coulter Osborne whom the government sioned to look at the whole car surance matter published a 1 656- page report that opposed nofault insurance But premier David Peterson with his child like Liberal faith in the ability of governments to do things better than the market pro mised in the 1987 election cam to produce a plan to reduce auto insurance rates So the Grits had to deliver It took them a dozen studies commissions and false starts in eluding Kruger s failed auto in surance board that recommended per cent rate hikes The Grits also adopted then repudiated egalitarian rate structures which would have seen women paying up to per cent more premiums while young males received massive reductions Moreover in its twoyear search for an answer the government alternately froze then allowed rate increases with the result that a number of companies stopped in new customers because they got tired of losing money SWEETNER In fact it is a measure of just how unhappy the insurance com panies were even with nofault that the I iberals have had to throw in a of 143 million in reductions in premium taxes and health cost levies on top of everything else But all this is really detail The widespread assumption is that after the first year rates are going to leap again as insurance companies try to get back onto the profit side of the car insurance ledger that would be true even if nofault does produce some reduc in the rate of increase of premiums The irony of tight government regulation such as the Liberals favor is that unlike the com petitive market it guarantees the companies profits here is no doubt that voters will place all blame for any hefty hikes needed to achieve that goal square ly where it belongs on the govern ment s head They should have nationalized the industry or left it alone This hybnd just won t work The price of the environment Vic Parsons OTTAWA The term en price may not be familiar but there s a good chance you be hearing a lot more about it in coming years Simplv put environmental price is the cost of the use or of such as air water vegtt and land in the drive to develop produce Since these ire easily ibtained it low or no cost we can greatly their v due History shows cm lead to waste ind inefficiency But it not easy to assess the cost to an economy of polluted How to factor this into the country inclination to forge ahead More politicians now ac the view of environmentalists that tradition- economic measurements fail to take into count changes in a country s resources Hours after Canada first ministers wrapped up their week long constitutional session s conference centre list weekend about parliamen tanans and scientists mostly European gathered in the same room to discuss issues tike en price Unlike the Lake meetings the conference drew lit tie attention Hut the impact of such sessions could lie just as important to Canadians It could affect your jmcket book The idea of 1 iiion to reverse environment is gaining wide currency in in other countries While payers everywhere it tins ing taxes less hostile to the concept spa i il purpose levies if will guarantee they be use el com bat environment damage Here ire a few ises from the conference Weizsacker of the In stjtute for European Policy said prices fll goods and services must tell the ecological truth Bureaucratic socialism in Eastern Europe collapsed bee iuse it did not allow prices to tell the economic truth Wei said Market economy as in and other Western tries may ruin the environment and ultimately itself if pnees are not illowed to tell the ecological truth He noted estimates by the West Germ in environmental agency suggest that annual pollution dam ies there are worth about five per tent of the country year economic output But avoidance costs pud polluters are only one fifth of the caused In fact who initially doubted those estimates says the image is twite as high I he mi in did not elude tint untr contribution to ozone depletion spec its exlinehm landscape si null mile there itidc deputy secret irv of the for operation and Development CD to which Can belongs says business and government must account for en cosLs malting economic decisions