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

THE HERALD Wednesday November Page 9 Opinion Even local politicians feeling media heat In writing a newspaper story my job is to present both sides of an Issue in a way that will cap ture the attention of the readers There is no point in writing a story that nobody is going to read One way of achieving this goal is to use the most colorful comments of those interviewed for the ptory Some might say this writing style is sensational and has nothing to do with good jour nalism For me however this only holds true if the comments no matter how color dont reflect the issues involv in the story Town councillor Joe Hewitt and Miller seem to disagree with me Recent com ments made by the two politi cians show they believe the Fifth Estate only cares about writing sensationalism at the expense of being fair Coun Hewitt described the press at last Mondays General Committee meeting as follows the newspapers dont write the rules interpret the rules and a lot of times dont know what they are talking about He made this comment in response to a presentation by local resident on the issue of a proposed golf course in Acton As part of his presentation Mr Vandevalk us ed press clippings from the local and Metro Toronto newspapers to show the public feels ignored by politicians These clippings have nothing to do with a proposed golf course and whether the town should port it said Coun Hewitt Even if they were relevant Mr Hewitts description of the press implies the clippings should be dis counted because they are pro bably inaccurate The articles were not directly related to the golf course pro posal but they showed the public does feel alienated from the political decision making pro cess In this sense they were rele vant to Mr Vandevalks presen tation because he felt the public Bens Banter By Ben being consulted on the golf course proposal Id be the first to agree there was a sensational element to those articles presented by Mr Vandevalk The press presents these sorts of articles because it knows peo ple like to read about politicians being lambasted But at the same time the press isnt pulling his information out of thin air The public is express ing dissatisfaction with political decisions Politicians argue the press shouldnt publish these reports of public criticism because its not based on fact If people understood the issues theyd never made these comments politicians say in their defense Maybe this Is true and maybe it not but the point is politi cians are failing to properly ex plain the issues to the public In stead of condemning newspaper articles that show public dissatisfaction with governments they should concentrate on better explaining the issues Coun Hewitt in condemning the press made reference to a quote Mr highlighted in an article I wrote The quote was as follows We are going to throw a party and we wont be inviting Joe Hewitt and the mayor The comment was made by one of the residents who successfully challenged a town decision to permit an asphalt plant in town That comment had nothing to do with the issue said Mr Hewitt Mayor Miller saying during an interview Mon day the issue was the official plan and not whether the residents were going to have a party Both politicians Insinuated I wasnt interested in presenting the facts I was only interested in sell newspapers I would agree with this if the ar ticle was only based on negative comments about the town Sure I included the quote because of its but I also included it to give Ireaders an idea of how the felt about the decision land their dealings with the local politicians To the mayors accusation that my story didnt focus on the main issue I say the first seven paragraphs of the story focused or the official plan The supposed unfair comment only appeared in the ninth paragraph I hardly see this as unfair journalism Instead of getting defensive when criticized politicians should attempt to address the criticism and learn why criticism was directed their way Fly appears in Wilsons GST ointment By VIC PARSONS Ottawa Bureau Thomson Service OTTAWA Forget the bizarre bag of Liberal in the Senate and widespread national over the GST the biggest remaining hurdle to the new sales tax could be inside the federal bureaucracy The fly in Finance Minister Michael Wilsons GST ointment could be a strike by 3 federal auditors which might zap the governments collection plans just as the tax goes into effect on Jan 1 To be sure the tax will still be collected if the auditors are walk thepavement But these folks are the ones who monitor tawas tax records About 500 of them will be working on the GST and they are already legally en titled to strike If the auditors arent on the job theres a real possibility the an ttcipated cash flow into federal coffers will be diminished because some businesses will undercollect the sales tax from Indeed Auditor General Ken Dye warned recently the in troduction of the GST could create new opportunities for fraud and bloated demands for tax rebates on current corporate inventories The government would have to keep its up Trouble is the guard may not be there Unlike some other groups of federal employees the govern will not be able to compel a portion of the auditors to continue working in the event of a walkout There are no socalled designated auditors a term used to describe workers deemed essential to public health and safety Designated employees are forbidden to strike by federal law STRIKE THREAT A chaotic disruption is all speculation of course Unions tend to talk tougher than they really are and negotiations often go down to the wire before a set Vic Parsons is reached As any labor leader will tell you the threat of a stnke is a better weapon than the strike itself But there is clearly a wide gap between the auditors represented by the Professional Institute of the Public Service and Treasury Board which negotiates for the government The auditors complain that low pay compared with the private sector is causing headaches Ex perienced auditors wont work in the federal employ they argue because of the disparity The government has offered pay hikes that amount to four per cent a year in a 39month con tract This is significantly less than the current inflation rate The union wants increases of eight per cent annually in a 30- month deal This is bound to make inflation fighting Ottawa twitchy It also makes one wonder if the auditors know something the rest of us dont Most experts have predicted in of between six and seven per cent with the GST impact figured and a declining rate thereafter A conciliation board has come down the middle suggesting pay increases of 5 per cent a year over months MAILING BALLOTS Without any movement from the government side the union is mailing ballots out to members for a stnke vote The result is ex pected about midDecember Since its doubtful the union would be silly enough to call a strike in the slow Christmas period the crunch time will likely come in early January just as the tax is getting off the ground Its something else to add to the musings of SmallBusiness siter Tom Hockin who opined this week that he didnt think the GST should be passed on Christmas Eve and hurnedjy im plemented Jan Of course he doesnt have as much to say about it as the finance minister or Revenue Minister Otto Jelirek On another GST matter the government blew a chance to show it is open to legitimate beefs about the tax Conservatives in the Senate narrowly defeated a Liberal amendment that would have declared the North a GST free zone Theres no question the tax poses a disproportionate burden on northerners Because of the remotness of northern com they already pay exor bitant prices for goods including necessities The new tax will be calculated on top of those prices inflated by transportation costs thereby penalizing northern Canadians Whatever happened to John northern vision Havenot provinces suffer economic disparity By PAUL BAGNELL Ottawa Bureau Thomson Newsservice OTTAWA Promoting economic development in Canadas have not provinces has often been referred to as one of the federal governments most basic obligations More than years ago prime minister Pierre Trudeau called the goal of economic equality just as important as equality of language rights In 1984 the royal commission on the economy said regional develop ment is a fundamental tenet of the Canadian federation Yet almost 30 years and billions of dollars after federal governments began in earnest trying to stimulate economic growth in poorer regions of the country the challenge remains as daunting as ever The most recent comprehen study of regional disparity in Canada was completed in 1986 by Donald Savoie head of the Cana Institute for Research on Regional Development in Monc ton Savoie showed the indicators of regional disparity earned income unemployment rates provincial gross domestic products and government transfers as a percentage of per income moved only marginally from 1961 to 19B1 LITTLE CHANGE A look at Statistics Canada most recent numbers suggests little change during the 1980s For instance measured against the Canadian average Edward Islands per capita earned income wages and other employment income had risen only to 5 per cent in 1988 from per cent in In Saskatchewan the increase was only two per cent to 69 per cent of the national average over the same period The news is slightly better when provincial unemployment rates are compared In 1981 the highest unemployment rate in the country Newfoundlands was times as high as the lowest On tanos This was down from 4 times in the most recent unemployment figures for Oc tober of this year showed the gap was smaller but Newfoundlands rate was still 2 times higher than that of Manitoba which had the lowest unemployment rate Critics of government efforts to lessen these differences say Canada has lacked a coherent regional development strategy from the beginning University s Stephen MacDonald a specialist in regional development is one of those critics We dont seem to take a strategic view in this country of whats going to be down the road or years from now says Rather were look four or five years ahead And the flipflops national policies have done through are really quite amazing when you look at them He points to the change from the growth pole theory which concentrated assistance in selected urban centres to broad ly applied federalprovincial General Development Agreements in the mid1970s When we didnt get mediate results from the growth poles we went to GDAs That was a flip The GDAs now called Economic and Regional Develop ment Agreements are still in place providing federal money to a variety of ad ministered development pro grams But says they tend to be too short lived One of the real problems is that these are normally fiveyear agreements and sometimes they get renewed sometimes they dont When they dont some of the beneficiaries of the programs are left in a very shaky position Since 1974 when the GDAs began there has been a steady trend toward decentralizing the decision making in regional development programs and to enhance federal provincial co operation in the area COORDINATE Today three regionally based agencies the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency the Department of Western Diver sification and in Nor thern Ontano coordinate local planning and federal develop ment programs to assist the regions pnf ate sectors The agencies concentrate mainly on assisting small enter prises to get off the ground a strategy many experts say is essential in modem service- oriented economies A familiar complaint however is that the agencies are underfunded and unable to take advantage of larger opportunities The idea of working with smaller projects instigated by people who live in the area is marvelous and it seems to work says However one would have to have an awful lot of these small projects tied together to drag a whole province up by its bootstraps There need to be longerterm development strategies im plemented at the provincial level and supported by the federal government Thats where some of the funding is going to have to come from obviously If P I could develop on its own for in stance it would have developed long ago because there have been lots of efforts put in there sa Write us a letter The Herald wants to hear from you If you have an opinion you want to express or a comment to make send us a letter or drop by the office Our address is Guelpn St Georgetown All letters must be signed Please include your address and telephone number for venficaton The Herald reserves the right to edit letters due to space limitations or libel