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A6 THE OAKVILLE BEAVER Wednesday, August 9, 2000 The Oakville Beaver Ian Oliver Publisher Neil Oliver Associate Publisher Norman Alexander Editor Kelly Montague, Advertising Director Steve Crazier Circulation Director Ten Casas OfficeManager M ark Dills ProductionManager Riziero Vertolli DirectorofPhotography Metrdand Printing. Pubishng & Detributng Ltd., includes: Ajax/Pickering News Advertiser. AJfcston Heraid/Courier. Arthur Enterprise News. Bame Advance. Barry's Bay This Week. Bolton Enterprise. Brampton Guardian. B u rlin g to n P o st. B u rlin g to n Shopping New s. C ity Parent. CoingwoocVWasaga Connection. East Msrk Mrror. Erin Advocata'Country R outes. E to b ic o k e G uardian. F lam borough P ost. G eorgetow n independent/Acton Free Press. Hamston Review. H jc n a Business Tmes. Kingston This w eek. Lindsay This Week. Markham Economist & Sun. M idtand/Penetanguishine Mirror. M ilton Canadian Champion. M ilton Shopping News. Mesissauga Busness Tmes. Mcscsauga News. 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JAthem JAward "Zjhe ^ (Qakpille (^A w a rd s E B U S IN E S S EXCELLENCE Hn^Ie Bell FuNd 467 Speers Rd., Oakville O nt L6K 3S4 (905) 846-3824 Fax: 337-5567 Classified Advertising: 845-2809 Circulation: 845-9742 ^ 7 7L Canadian Community f^ C N A Newspapers Association Newspapers of America S K \ Suburban i;; TH E BR O N t r * U TTER FLY TV AUCTION U o K ? e y oakville galleries | O . n t a r i o m m fs te tu lliA E d ito ria ls S im p listic solu tion Parents, it's 11 p.m., do you know where your children are? After Aug. 15th, that well known phrase may be called the $6,000 question. On that date the Ontario government's Parental Responsibility Act will become law and make it easier for people whose property has been deliberately damaged by youths to recover up to $6,000 from parents through Small Claims Court. Under current legislation, parents can be sued for their negligence in supervis ing or controlling their children who have caused property damage or personal injury. However, much of the responsibility for proving the case falls on the vic tim. The new legislation puts more responsibility on parents to prove that they are not liable for damage caused by their children. According to Attorney General Jim Flaherty, strengthening parental responsi bility will help ensure that there is accountability for property crimes committed by young people. Whether it will reduce those property crimes is another question. The Parental Responsibility Act fits the Harris government's tough on crime image. It also follows the government's familiar pattern of increasing the punish ment, while doing little to prevent the crime. Despite the government's boasts, the new legislation really does nothing to make our communities safer. For one thing, it assumes everyone's ability to pay is equal. If you're "lucky" and are victimized by a rich spoiled brat who goes off on a vandalism spree to get the attention of their parents, then you might get up to $6,000 in restitution. But if you get victimized by a kid from a poor family struggling to make ends meet, good luck in getting your money. Raising children today is a difficult task. While parents have the ultimate responsibility for raising their children, there are many outside influences which play a role in shaping our children. Parents should not be held blameless, but even children raised in loving and caring families have been known to run afoul of the law. The issue of crime among our youth is a more complex than negligent parents. No one should be fooled into thinking punishing the parents will solve the prob lem. Canada * Customs NIAGARA FALLS WEST N IL E L e tte rs to th e E d ito r The Oakville Beaver welcomes your comments. All letters must be typed, signed and include the writer's address and phone number. Send to: Letters to the Editor, The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville, Ont. L6K 3S4 Le tte r of th e W eek Fresh a ir w o rth fig h tin g fo r Breathing, and living. The two go hand in hand. You stop living, you stop breathing. You stop breathing, you stop living. Profound, n'est-ce-pas? Hey, bear with me. These are the kinds of golden philosophical nuggets that earned the Senate the right to call itself the Upper Chamber. I joke -- but the right to breathe is a deadly serious issue. Our lungs and heart are at the nub of our existence. Every time someone starts up a car, or a new industry, or clears more land any where in the world, it has some effect on each of our capacities to keep doing what most of us love best -- staying alive. I celebrate the fact that environmen talists are fighting a valiant, global battle to reduce air pollution so that we humans -- the scientific wizards of the universe -- don't self-destruct. But it is a Herculean struggle. There are six bil lion people out there, soon to be 10 bil lion, and many of them are living at a subsistent level. They are desperate, and the fate of the environment isn't their most immediate concern. This means, sadly enough, that any inroads we make toward lessening the deterioration of the quality of our air over the next few generations are likely to be incremental, at best. I have at least made an effort to help out in this arena -- my Alternative Fuels Act, designed to switch the feder al government's fleet of vehicles to more environmentally-friendly fuels, came into effect in April 1997, and I am cur rently investigating just how diligent bureaucrats have been about implement ing it. But these small efforts are being counteracted daily by new, environmentally-destructive measures that work for people in terms of reduced costs, or increased profits, or just plain staying alive. The fact that the battle for clean air is up against such heartbreaking and deter mined opposition makes it much more difficult to accept the resistance in Canada to bringing in measures to try to minimize the damage to hearts and lungs caused by second-hand smoke. Some people try to pooh-pooh the effects of second-hand smoke. But according to Physicians for a SmokeFree Canada, second-hand smoke expo sure may be killing an estimated 4,700 Canadians annually. That may seem like a small figure compared to the 45,000-odd deaths caused by smoking itself. But smoking is addictive. Most smokers who smoke these days wish they didn't. The dissem ination of second-hand smoke, on the other hand, is a matter of choice, of con venience. I think smoking can at least go handin-hand with a recognition on the park of smokers that there is no need to pun ish others -- including service employ ees and smokers' own children -- the way smokers are well aware that they are punishing themselves. Two-thirds of the smoke from a ciga rette is not inhaled by the smoker. Exhaled (or mainstream) smoke mixes with smoke from the lit end of the tobacco (sidestream smoke) to form sec ond-hand smoke, which contain the same chemicals that smokers inhale, often in greater concentrations. Being in a smoke-filled bar for eight hours is the same as smoking a fistful of cigarettes. Being in a smoke-filled home for the first 18 years of your life puts a young person at a real disadvantage of living a full and healthy life. If the primary mission in fighting air pollution is fighting for humanity's right to breathe, the best opportunities to make progress lie where we are fighting battles of convenience, not of necessity. Fighting second-hand smoke should be at the top of our list. We should encourage smokers to do the right thing. But we should also be willing to legislate to ensure that they do. This is a matter of choice, not des peration. Senator Colin Kenny W om en m ust be protected Gilian Hadley did everything she could to protect herself. She left her violent husband. She laid charges. She worked with police and the courts. And, on June 20th, she died at the hands of a coward with a gun, a man who was her estranged husband. Which raises the following questions: Did we do everything we could to protect Gilian Hadley? Are we doing everything we can today to protect the thousands of women like her who fear for their lives because of violent, cowardly men? There can be no debate about the answer. It's no. There is a lot of debate about what can be done and what should be done. Here is where I stand. Ontario's watchwords must be protection and prevention .When there is any risk of violence, crown attorneys must always take the position that bail should be denied or revoked. And we must ensure we have enough crown attorneys with enough resources so they are effective in keeping dangerous men behind bars. We must introduce mandatory risk assessment for men charged with domestic violence.They must be evaluated for the risk of con tinuing and escalating abusive behaviour. And judges should be required to heed those assessments when presiding over bail hearings. To be very specific, judges should have no discretion when dealing with a man assessed as dangerous. Such a man must be denied bail. If a man is not assessed as dangerous, but is grant ed bail under a restraining order, that order must be monitored and enforced.One effective way to do this is by requiring the man to wear an electronic bracelet that allows police to monitor his movements.If a man needs to be restrained by a court order, then he needs to be monitored to ensure the order is fol lowed.We must do more than advise women to leave abusive men. We must support them in that decision. That means adequate funding for shelters, the provision of second stage housing for women ready to leave shelters, and income support for women facing hardship. If a woman makes a decision that the only way she can be free is to start over with a new identity and in a new place, we should make that possi ble. It sickens me to think that a woman who has been robbed of her security would also lose her identity. But there are women who would like the same protection we now afford people in witness protection programs. If we are willing to provide such protection to mobsters and drug dealers who testify against their former partners in crime, surely we can afford the same protection to innocent women. These measures will protect women and prevent violence. Contrast this approach to that of the Harris government. It recently announced a "victims'justice action plan," which involved promises of more cell phones and access to the courts for women. I am a strong advocate of victims' rights. I believe in programs for victims.But shouldn't we dedicate ourselves to protecting women from being victimized? The government has merely shifted money away from pro tection and prevention. According to the government's own documents, annual spending on programs to stop violence against women has risen only marginally, at less than the rate of inflation, from $99 million in 1994-95 to $103 million in 1999-2000. Gilian Hadley availed herself of every protection the law affords women today. And yet she was victimized again, finally and fatally. So were her children, who lost their mother. We can't settle for a government agenda that says you start fighting crime only after one has been committed, that says you start helping people only after they've become victims, that says so little about prevention as long as you talk a lot about punishment. After all, we can't punish Ralph Hadley today, as much as we'd like to. And we can't save Gilian Hadley today, as much as we'd love to. Dalton McGuinty, Ontario Liberal Leader and Leader of the Official Opposition For art' s sake save gallery There must be others who feel as outraged as I do. The concept of removing one person's successful busi ness in order to provide parking for other businesses is repugnant enough. To remove a successful Art Gallery to do it, is totally absurd. Regarding your article of July 28th "They paved Paradise...Oakville gallery soon to be parking lot" -- let's not be missing what is gone, according to the song. To be successful at anything involving the arts these days in Canada is more than "difficult." McLaren-Bames Gallery represented and exhibited local artists' work faithfully and accordingly, have been a tremendous boost to our local art scene. How completely short-sighted it is for the Town to eliminate this Haven for art. Having a proper exhibition space is extremely important for an art gallery. Helen Barnes made this building into a perfect gallery. It is ridiculous for the Town to expect her to find an easy replacement space. Most businesses could, if neces sary, relocate more easily. The Town is, therefore, effec tively eliminating a downtown private Art Gallery. For a population the size of Oakville, which is cul tured and supportive of the arts, why is it that there are so few private galleries in the first place? Why would the Town eliminate one that is very successful and exhibits and nourishes local artists? Outrageous! To my knowledge, Helen Bames has given a lot of herself to this community. She was actively involved in the Shakespeare in the Park, as well as currently being the president of the Oakville Arts Council -- a volunteer position with a strong group that promotes and encour ages art and culture in Oakville. What a slap in the face from the Town! How short-sighted to eliminate ANY aspect of art or culture in this town. What disregard for the people willing to stick their necks out to bring it to us. What is happening to the beauty and grace that was once Oakville? This is just another example of how it is wilting. Come on, Oakville, let's think this one through a little more carefully. Let's hear from those who appreciate access to art and are willing to defend our right to have it. This is a beautiful art space we're talking about, soon to be black top and oil puddles. L . E rskin e Pud TWO FISHERMENCRUISING ALONG IN THEIR P'TM-'- by Steve N ease CANNONBALL DAP Co ANOTHER