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A6 THE OAKVILLE BEAVER Wednesday March 17, 1999 The Oakville Beaver Ian Oliver Publisher Neil Oliver .Associate Publisher Norman Alexander Editor Kelly Montague, Advertising Director Martin Doherty Circulation Director Teri Casas Office Manager Mark Dills Production Manager Riziero Vertolli Director o f Photography Mertrotand Printing. Publishing & Distributing Ltd., includes: A*ax/Pickering News Advertiser. Aftston HeralcVCourier. Barrie Advance. Barry's Bay This Week. Bolton Enterprise. Brampton Guardan. Burlington Post. B irtngton Shopping News. City Parent. Coftngwood/Wasaga Connection. East York Mirror. Erin Advocate'Country Routes. Etobicoke Guardan, Ramborough Post. Georgetown Independent/Acton Free Press. Huronia Business Times. Kingston This Week. Lindsay This Week. Markham Ecnomst & Sun, MkJand/Penetanguishine Minor. Milton Canadan Champion. Milton Shopping News. Mississauga Business Times. Mississauga News. Napanee Guide. Newmarket/Aurora Era-Banner. Northumberland News. North York Mirror. Oakville Beaver. Oakville Shopping News. Oidtimers Hockey News. Orillia Today. Oshawa/Whitby/Clarington Port Perry This Week. Owen Sound Tribune. Peterborough This Week. Pcton County Guide. Richmond Hill/Thornhill/Vaughan Liberal. Scarborough Mirror. StoufMteAJxbndge Tribune. Forever Ytxrtg, City o f Vbrk Guardan 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5567 Classified Advertising: 845-2809 Circulation: 845-9742 E d ito ria ls There is an easy way to deal with the latest education issue of whether to close Oakwood School. It lies in common sense and it's a concept little known to Ministry of Education bureaucrats who would rather deal with students as numbers instead of human beings. After all, humans are so, well, unruly. And who can blame them. Although we have computers in the classroom we have neanderthal thinking at the ministry. They're still clinging to ancient funding rites that have no bearing in real­ ity. From a statistical sense their decisions might make some sense but when put into practice, the system collapses. And so it is with Oakwood. There's little debate that 'mature' areas of south Oakville have a declin­ ing elementary school population....temporarily. Neighbourhoods undergo transformations over the years but usually there comes a period of time when entire areas, once virtually devoid of children, are reborn literally and figuratively, when new families move in. The result is a crush for school space, more portables and untenable learning situations. It's not rocket science, it's demographic planning and plotting it isn't hard...unless you're a ministry bureaucrat. It's also not a planning stretch to conclude that when new housing goes up, there will be (surprise) a demand for schools. The ministry conveniently ignores this fact and regularly underestimates the number of school places needed...hence, new schools, new portables, new problems, old planning. Oakwood students shouldn't be bused to Morden School. New develop­ ment a block from that school will soon blow student population estimates out of the water. If Oakwood is closed, what sense does it make to have more portables at M orden when a school is empty a few blocks away? Further, the Oakwood neighbourhood is ripe for resurgence and the same problems will apply. What is needed is a new northern school, that should already be in place, and the retention of Oakwood. It's easy to see the solution, too bad the min­ istry and its policies are so myopic. OPINION Letters to the Editor 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 P a rk w a y la n d s in p e ril...d o w e ca re ? Do we, the H alton R egion Taxpayers, care? There is an amendment to the Parkway Belt West Plan being processed through Ontario gov­ ernment at the moment. (Notices in newspapers stated that submis­ sions req u ested p rio r M arch 26th.) This amendment means... 1. 2 ,700 h ec ta res or 6 ,700 acres in Halton will be given over to the developers for housing, etc. 2. Parkway or greenbelt of this amount will no longer be enjoyed by the existing resident/taxpayer. Do any o f us rem em ber the w oods, fie ld s and o rchards between the QEW and Hwy. 5? 3. Quality of life will decrease - i.e. Our enjoym ent o f "open spaces." We will have to travel 20 km to find some. 4. C ongestion , po llu tio n , crim e, com m uting tim e will increase. 5. Developers now owning the land will increase their wealth tenfold overnight. 6. Third Line, for exam ple, will be "green free" till you are north of the 401. I would suggest that any Ward C ouncillo r, Town C ouncillo r, Halton Region Member, Ontario MPP and Canada MP who does not dem and a Referendum , on th is im portan t "P ro p o sa l" on behalf of their respective taxpay­ ers, should not be re-elected. Colin Davey Healthcare workers as frustrated as their patients Re: Mr. Lew is C a m p b e ll's M arch 3rd Letter To The Editor As a front line healthcare worker, my co­ workers and I deal w ith the scenario Mr. Campbell describes on a daily basis. I can assure Mr. Campbell my co-workers and I feel the same frustration he does. You can blame the Harris government but, ultimately, hospital administration is responsi­ ble for spending the funds where they see fit. It is quite obvious that front line healthcare workers and support staff are not the number one priority at Oakville-Trafalgar Memorial Hospital. In fact, to meet the budget challenge caused by the Harris cuts, O.T.M.H. reduced front line staff and support workers, rather than eliminating or reducing upper adminis­ tration and their support staff. OTMH service great Lewis G. Campbell's complaints about the Oakville-Trafalgar Memorial Hospital and its emergency department (Letters, March 3rd) are mostly old history. And totally different than my own fam ily's experiences over the years. My own recen t v is it is an exam ple . I walked into the hospital's emergency depart­ ment in January with flu symptoms and an uncomfortable pain in my shoulder. Within a minute - perhaps it was two - I was on a cot, the centre of much staff attention. My wife says the diagnosis of heart attack came within 15 minutes. Then I was wheeled off to inten­ sive care. That level of service couldn't have been better. You could not expect it from a small hospital in a very small town in, say, 1969. A.C. Dunbar What my co-workers and I find complete­ ly appalling is that over the last year-and-a- half, there have been more full-time manage­ ment and senior administration hired to date than front line healthcare workers. This can­ not be disputed by senior management, and if it is, an audit should be done, making public the number of top administration and the cor- While traveling eastbound on the QEW Sat. Feb. 27th, (about 2 p.m.) I encountered m any peop le th a t should be very m uch ashamed of themselves for their actions. There was a serious accident just before the Trafalgar Rd. exit, with apparent severe injuries. Within moments of myself enter­ ing the QEW at Dorval there were many emergency vehicles attempting to enter the highway and aid at the scene of the acci­ dent. I, as a concerned person, did my best to m ove aside and to allow these em er­ gency vehicles to pass through. In turn, by allowing these people to pass, I was cut off and a few rude gestures were made. I was only acting in concern of the peo­ ple who could have potentially life-threat­ ening injuries (when every second counts) and I do not commend any of the people at or around the scene. As irrational driving b ro k e o u t to ge t o f f the h ig h w ay at Trafalgar, o ther accidents were narrowly averted. I again would like to express my disgust to a ll th o se m ore w o rried abou t a few m etres' advancement to potentially hinder­ ing someone's life. A closing thought: if that were you or a responding salaries. If this were done, the people of Oakville and Mr. Campbell would see why there are no funds for more front line staff. Perhaps the O.T.M.H. administration is more concerned with its own well-being than that of its patients! S.L. family member in that situation, would you not want these em ergency vehicles to be allowed to pass as quickly as possible? L.C. 'Friends' glad for support Oakville is a community supported by many volunteers, whose work is strengthened by strong corporate sponsors. The Friends of the Library have had the good fortune to benefit from such a partnership with Oakville Place. For the past three years, Oakville Place has demonstrated its community spirit by sponsor­ ing a Reading Room raffle for which it donates the prize-furniture valued at $5,000 for our organization, our best raffle yet. The proceeds will go towards supporting children's library programs such as The Battle of the Books and Summer Reading Program, and for equipment not covered in the library's budget. On behalf of the Friends of the Library, I thank Oakville Place, its Marketing Director, Nancy Field, the merchants who provided fur­ niture and all the staff for their efforts on our behalf. The Friends look forward to continuing this valuable community partnership with Oakville Place. Barbara Dubrule Chair, Friends of the Library QEW: driver in sa n ity alive & w ell Letter of the Week D e b t= D o o m Over the past three decades, I believe income (edu­ cation) property, and sales taxes and accumulated gov­ ernment debts have recklessly proliferated because of selfish (municipal, provincial, and federal) politicians who were more pre-occupicd with dishing-out taxpay­ ers dollars to win re-election than to make tough deci­ sions geared to bettering the future standard of living of all Canadians. • Today, ag en d as lik e N .D .P. lead er H ow ard H am pton's that would revoke the 30% tax cut on wealthy Ontarians are probably more inclined to drive investment from Ontario to Alberta and to result in job casualties from the exodus of taxed-to-death entrepre­ neurs. Any new broad-based income or sales tax cuts by Premier H arris' Tories, while likely to generate accelerated economic growth in an already robust eco­ nomic climate, will do little to help the growing num­ ber of im poverished citizens that (Anne G olden's report illustrated) are facing trying times. In Ontario, it has been a little over four years since the minimum wage has been increased enhancing the volume of our competitive exports while simultane­ ously overlooking the fact that the busy full-time department store clerk's or fast food server's incomes have remained stagnant over this same period while their residential rents often increased in excess of the annual inflation rate. This deteriorating standard of living for the poor is fostering an environment where m alnutrition o f children leaves them inadequately energized to excel at school, where the working poor quite often cannot afford annual dental visits and which, frequently, leaves the poor no option but to buy cheap hunger suppressing junk that some corporations have the nerve to market as food. It is about time Canadian politicians act to thwart any disparities between the rich and the poor to the degree that we see south of the border where often people must work 60 to 80 hours per week to survive in their harsh capitalist society. If our politicians ven­ tured into a poorer area of town and witnessed lower income Canadians in a grocery store who due to eco­ nomic necessity have to choose either milk or orange juice, not both, they might grasp the need for future provincial income tax cuts targeted at lower income Ontarians and more, importantly, a multi-year escala­ tion of the basic income tax exemption by the 'tax and spend' happy Liberals in Ottawa. Lastly, and most vital, is the need for the M.Rs and M.RRs to comprehend, perhaps via a pie graph, the enormous chunk of government revenues that are con­ sumed for servicing debt interest. For the sake of the future pension and healthcare resources that the numerous baby-boomers will require, I appeal to the federal Liberals to abandon their meagre 1/2% to 1% annual deb t reduction stra tegy , w hich w ill take approximately 200 years to pay off at the present rate, in favour of a more prudent level that will lift Canada out o f one o f the worst and m ost threatening debt ratios o f the industrialized nations. The provincial Conservatives must, likewise, start to focus on dimin­ ishing the Hydro, W.C.B. (The Workplace Standards and Safety Authority), and the accum ulated debts while international interest rates are still low and the economy is in a state of expansion. Let's demonstrate that we care about the next gen­ eration as we enter the new millennium! David C. Searle R E C O G N I Z E D F O R E X C E L L E N C E B Y . . . 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