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A6 THE OAKVILLE BEAVER Wednesday June 7, 2000 T he Oakville Beaver Ian Oliver Publisher Neil Oliver Associate Publisher Norman Alexander Editor Kelly Montague, Advertising Director Steve Crazier Circulation Director Ten Casas Office Manager Mark Dills Production Manager Riziero Vertolli Director o f Photography Metrdand Printing, Pubishing & D etrtxitng lid ., indudes: Ajax/Pickering News /Vk^rteer, Afcton HerakVCouier. Barrie Advance, BarryS Bay This Week, Botton Enterprise, Brampton Guardan, Burtngton Post. Bcrington Shopping News, City Parent. CoSn^voodAAfesaga Connection. East York Mirror. B ln Advocata'Country Routes. E to tx x k e Guardan. Rarmborough Post. Georgetown independent/Acton Free Press, K ro n e Business Times. Kingston This Week, Lindsay This Week, Markham Ecnomist & Sun, Midland/Penetanguishine Mirror. M ilton Canadian Champion, M ilton Shopping News. Mssissauga Business Tmes. Mesissauga News. Naparee G lide, Newmarket/Aurora Era-Banner, Northumberland News. North Y ak Mrror, Oakvie Beaver. Oakv«e Shopping News. Oldtimers Hockey News, O rfe Today, O shawaW hittyOarington Port Perry The Week. Oven S a n d Tribune. P eterborough This Week, Piet on County Guide, Richmond Hill/Thornhifl/Vaughan Liberal, Scarborough Mirror. StouftviHaTJxbndge Tribune, Forerer Vbung. Oty of York Guardan OPINION RECOGNIZED FOR EXCELLENCE BY: THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: I Q J r Y vm ca iiS r t f r LCOME^P rA G O N i t D JiMCjlE B eII Fund ^ LiKOSy TV AUCTION United Way ol Oakville 467 Speers Rd., Oakville O n t L6K3S4 (905) 846-3824 Fax: 337-5567 Classified Advertising: 845-2809 Circulation: 845-9742 SK ^ at Am erica *OTT$& 1 CAthena CTawni B O a kville < 3 ^n kiS s FOTTBUSINESS EXCELLENCE TH E B R O N T E it U TTE R E LY C fa M ffru t O N T A R I O | oakville galleries | Editorials Water wars Prime Minister Jean Chretien is dabbling in the most cynical kind of poli ticking by using personal tragedy to make political hay. C h re tie n w as a tte n d in g a m e e tin g o f th e F e d eratio n o f C anadian Municipalities this week, when he reminded As the w orld population attendees that Ottawa provides $125 million increases and `have n o t ' to protect the quality of Canada's water. nations industrialize, there How crass. The not-too-subtle implication here is that w ill be increasing pressure Ontario Premier Mike Harris has not done a on our environm ent and a g o o d jo b an d th a t h e 's to b lam e fo r the prem ium placed on the W alkerton E -coli o u tb reak th at m ay have availability o f clean taken as many as 11 lives. drinking water. Someone should remind the PM that while Quebec municipalities pumped raw sewage into the St. Lawrence and many continue to do so, his government has done nothing. The same can be said of the cesspool that con tinues to be Halifax Harbour. Again, sewage runs freely into the environment. No doubt Chretien would respond that these are provincial matters if it suits him. You can't have it both ways Mr. Prime Minister. As the world population increases and `have not' nations industrialize, there will be increasing pressure on our environment and a premium placed on the availability of clean drinking water. And since Canada holds the bulk of this pre cious commodity, it behooves all levels of government to husband this resource. Using water as a political football is a travesty and shows, once again, that common sense is in short supply on all political levels. As consumers of natural resources, we owe it to our children and following generations, to pass on our water supplies in as pristine condition as is possible. The sight of politicians pointing fingers at each other in an attempt to shirk this responsibility is simply disgusting. Our prime minister could have risen above partisan politics on the clean water issue, but he chose the low road. Too bad. L e tte r s t o t h e E d ito r The Oakville Beaver welcomes your comments. All letters m ust be typed, signed and include the w riter's address and phone number. Send to: Letters to the Editor, The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd,, Oakville, OnL L6K 3S4 N o h id d e n a g e n d a in fu n d ra is in g e v e n t You have made suggestions in your June 2, 2000 editorial that somehow my fundraising activities for my upcoming reelection cam paign are unusual and suspicious. You also make the statem ent " M any q u e s tio n s b u t few answers", which might lead your readers to believe that I have not answered yedr questions and that I am trying to be secretive in my campaign activities. So, since you are in search o f answers to your in n u e n d o e s, I am p le a se d to respond here and now. "Is it ju st to raise m oney for their November municipal election cam paig n s? O r is it som ething else?" First of all, let me be very clear about this issue; the government heavily regulates the raising and spending o f m oney for political cam paigns. How m uch you can raise from individuals and corpora tions and how much you spend are b o th rig id ly set out in the M unicipal Elections Act. At the end of a campaign period, all can didates are required to file finan cial sta te m e n ts w ith the Town Clerk and they are scrutinized for com pliance with the Act. So the answer to these questions is very clearly yes, the funds are for my N o v e m b e r m u n ic ip al electio n campaign; I couldn't do anything else with the money if I wanted to. M ost politicians, unless they are independently wealthy, raise their campaign budgets through fundraising, my event is no differ ent. Sim ilar events will be held throughout Ontario for the hun dreds of councillors, mayors and trustees that must mount election campaigns this fall. Politics is an expensive pursuit and to achieve and keep office, you need to have the money to communicate your message to the voters. I represent the largest ward in the Town of Oakville, a ward larger itself than the Town of Georgetown, and I am allowed to spend approximately $12,000. which I anticipate I will spend for my November reelection bid. I hope to raise $10,000 of that budget at this event. "Here are two municipal politicians trying to curry favour with the panjandrums of Queen's Park and to what end?" And "Still we question the appearance of a direct conflict of interest..." I am a political person,many of my friends are also political people and it just so happens that some of my friends hold office at Queen's Park. O ur fundraising event is being held at a well-known down town club with deep history in the Progressive Conservative Party and I invited my friends to attend. None of my Queen's Park friends will be paying to attend, they are my guests. How inviting a few M PPs to my event can "curry" favour is beyond me. True, I am well connected at Queen's Park, b u t is th at so m eth in g to be ashamed of? I have never hid my political affiliations, but I have also never brought my party to the council chambers either. However, I have used my personal contacts at Queen's Park to the benefit of my constituents and community from time-to-time. It is also true that I have had other political ambitions as well, but again is this wrong and does it give you the right ti impugn my motives for holding a fundraising event to finance my reelection campaign? As far as a conflict of interest goes, I have never been a toady on council to my political party or any individual and I do not intend on becoming one now. I always have and I will continue to, represent the interest of my constituents first, notwithstanding who my partisan friends are or who helps finance my campaign. Dem ocracy is expensive and unless we are prepared to be gov erned by only the richest in our society who are able to underwrite th e ir ow n c am p aig n s, then fundraising will continue to be the fuel on which democracy operates at all levels of government. Le tte r of th e W e e k Teachers need strong dose of the real world Re: letter from Barbara Sargent, Oakville Beaver, Wed M ay 31, 2000 I have come home from yet another very long day at work to read the very last letter from a teacher, or a repre sentative of tiie teachers' union that I can possibly tolerate without comment Do you all live in a land where you think you are the only hard working Canadians? Where you feel your work ing conditions are absolutely intolerable? Actually, you consider your situation to be worse than prisoners in jail. Let me enlighten you just a little on how many Canadians work. One third of Canadians work for small business, many o f which have neither pension plans nor benefits. These small business owners, which are responsible for one third of Canada's work force, have no paid vacation, no benefits, no pension, no paid sick time and no paid pro fessional development time. On the other hand,many have mortgages on their family homes to secure their business loans, haven't taken a salary that would in the least compensate them for their actual hours worked, can't remember when they last had time off without their cell phone, beeper, checking e-mail, faxes or daily call into the office, let alone a couple of weeks vaca tion. They also pay for their many insurance premiums to cover things like; extended illness, liability insurance in some someone wasn't happy with the work performed, extended health and the list goes on. Those who don't work for small businesses work for larger companies which, if you read the business section, have noticed that these companies get bought and sold aOn a regular basis. When the new company buys, many o f the old employees get the royal handshake. Please educate yourself and read the Government of Ontario's employment standards booklet and see what employment guidelines most workers who are not teach ers, must live by. That's the way the real world works. So here is where I get to the main point o f this letter. I worked for a large insurance company that I felt had little regard for their employees and didn't run the compa ny like I would. I complained and grumbled constantly to everyone and anyone who would listen. Then finally I real ized I had a choice. I can choose security, a weekly pay cheque, a pension plan, benefits and the almighty profit sharing program or I can choose to get o u t If this is the way this company chooses to conduct busi ness, I either stop the complaining or make a life change. No one guarantees us that our em ployers w on't make changes we don't like or are easy for us to handle. No one guarantees us that when our companies get bought out we wont' be required to move across the country, let along to another country. I chose to get out, take a risk, make an investment in me and conduct business in the manner I deemed appropriate. You compare yourselves to prisoners in jail, but you forgot one most important factor. You aren't a prisoner, you can unbind those chains you feel have been forced around you. You can lock in your pension, forfeit your two and half months paid vacation, give up your paid sick leave and benefits plan and join the rest of the working Canadians. W hen did you last read a litany o f com plaints in the Oakville Beaver, from our many, many self-employed resi dents or for that m atter, the one third o f em ployees, employed in small business? We love our work, life is one big holiday. Please do us all a favour and quit those terrible jobs and join the rest o f us so that I will never have to spend one more precious minute reading your complaints or writing these responses to your annoying letters. We all thank you. J . Tobia C om m on S en se a w a tered - dow n clich e Five years into the C om m on Sense Revolution and the chickens are coming home to roost. Perhaps the horrible tragedy at Walkerton will finally bring home to Ontario's citizens the fundamen tal dishonesty that lies at the hart of the Common Sense Revolution. It used to be conservatives who dismissed socialist utopian dreams with that hoary old cliche: `There's no such thing as a free lunch.' But a free lunch is exactly what arch c o n se rv a tiv e (P re m ie r M ik e) Harris has offered voter in the last two elections. In effect, Harris has claim ed that he could cut taxes drastically while maintaining the quality of services. Now if there's one thing people can't resist, it's the promise of something for noth ing, and the voters of Ontario fell for it. And so the fun and games began. First there was the Squish the Citizen game Remember the jolly bouncing truck wheels? Citizens are driving along the highway then suddenly, out of nowhere, a great killer wheel. Squish! Seems there had been a cutback on roadside inspections. After all, who needs them? Isn't there something just a lit tle disturbing about a man who so reflexively blames others when his transgressions come to light? Even the Walkerton tragedy, it turns out, w as the fa u lt o f th o se pesky N D Pers. I t's never the fault o f Mike Harris. Then we had emergency room roulette. The rules are simple. You put a desperately-sick person in an ambulance, and the object of the game is to drive around Tronto in increasing desperation to find a hospital that can take the sick per son before they die. And then who can forget the suspense and terror o f M ikey's garganturan struggle to overcome the evil fo rces o f The S in iste r Squeegee Kids? The joke is, it's the motorists w ho are killing 1,000 people a year with their poisonous em is sions. So Mikey makes people feel safer by banishing squeegee kids. It's just too rich. Having given us farce, black comedy, surrealism and irony, now the inevitable tragedy-Walkerton. Nothing to laugh at here. Sadly, in the elections, the people of GreyBruce (county) even supported Mr. H a rris's C om m on Sense R ev o lu tio n , w ith its sp urious claim s o f painless tax cuts And they got their tax cuts. As the old saying goes, Be carful what you w ish for, because it ju st m ight come true. Naturally, citizens have every right to vote for tax cuts. But they should not delude themselves that tax cuts come without a price: in the safety of our roads and work places, in the quality of our hospi tals and schools, in the purity of our earth, water and air. Every day, people in Ontario die as a conse quence of dow ngraded govern ment services. Asthmatics wheeze their last in polluted air; students on summer breaks die in danger ous workplace accidents; breast cancer patients wait and pray and sometimes die. In our complex, interdependent, technological soci ety, we must look to our public servants to carry out thousands of tasks. The price we pay for this is high taxes, but, as the Walkerton tragedy illustrates, what we refuse to pay for in money, sooner or later we have to pay for in blood. George Patrick Stephen Sparling Pud l 'm d o in ' a speech by Steve Nease L - fell Fo r school on I WHAT IT WAS LIKE To BE A KID BASK IN THE CAVEMAN RAYS- NO COMPUTERS, NO CELLPHONES, No VIDEO GAMES, NO INTERNET, NO MICROWAVES, NO CABLE,, NO VCR's, JUSTTHINK- Pm '/Jtmf No CDs (