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( 6 The Canadian Statesman, Bowmanville, July 26,1989 S&e Canadian statesman Durham Region's Great Family Journal Established 135 years ago in 1854 © Also Incorporating • ■ The Bowmanville News The Newcastle Independent The Orono News Second Class mail registration number 1561 Produced weekly by James Publishing Company Limited 62 King Street West, Bowmanville, Ontario L1C 3K9 416-623-3303 Fax 416-623-6161 cn John M. James Editor - Publisher Richard A. James Associate Publisher Peter Parrott Associate Editor Geo. P. Morris Brian Purdy Donald Bishop Business Mgr. Advertising Mgr. Plant Mgr. All layouts and composition of advertisements produced by the employees of James Publishing Company Limited are protected by copyright and may not be reproduced without the permission of the publisher. Subscription Rates Six Months --$11.00 One Year--$20.00 Foreign -- $60.00 per year Although every precaution will be taken to avoid error, The Canadian Statesman accepts advertising In Its columns on the understanding that It will not be liable for any error In the advertisement published hereunder unless a proof of such advertisement Is requested In writing by the advertiser and returned to The Canadian Statesman business office duly signed by the advertiser and With such error or corrections plainly noted In writing thereon, and In that case H any error so noted k not corrected by The Canadian Statesman Its liability shall not exceed such a portion of the entire cost of such advertisement as the space occupied by the noted error bears to the whole space occupied by such advertisement. Ottawa Must End Silence In the Abortion Debate Earlier this year the Supreme Court of Canada declined to rule the Joe Borowski abortion challenge specifically specifically because there existed no abortion abortion law on which they could rule. The burden of action clearly fell to Justice Minister Doug Lewis. Pass a law, the court was urging. The courts can do nothing without one. Since then, nothing but chaos has resulted from the continuing absence of such a federal law. There have been three cases brought by men seeking to revent their former partners from aving an abortion. When the American American Supreme Court ruled recently that individual states have the right to pass their own abortion legislation, Mr. Lewis (sensing that his worries were over) suggested - that Canadian provinces might want to do the same thing. Ontario Premier David Peterson Peterson has urged Ottawa to take action. The Conservative caucus and justice justice ministers who proceeded Mr. Lewis Lewis managed for their entire first term to delay any association with the in- flamatory issue. Prime Minister Mul- roney last week pledged new legislation legislation for the fall session of parliament. He refused to shorten the summer recess recess to deal with the issue. By refusing to rule on the issue of abortion, the Supreme Court reinforced reinforced a crucial tenet of our legal and political system. Unlike American courts of the past, our court refused to make social policy. Parliament, it stressed, must continue to create the laws; the Court must continue to interpret interpret them. The judges said nothing else in their statement. They clearly did not want to transform transform the Canadian judiciary into the nation's de facto lawmakers. Sadly, the high court's refusal to rule thus far has failed to move our Minister of Justice Justice from his perch of political cowar dice. As a result, a phalanx of lower- level judges are writing our abortion law in piecemeal fashion each time a new appeal comes before them. One S says that the fetus is a human _ and thus protected by the Charter Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Another declares that a woman's individual liberty liberty outweighs whatever rights her unborn child holds. Legal precedent seems of secondary importance, in relation to a judge's personal feeling about the status of a fetus. Setting aside the complications which religion, morality, and the militancy militancy on both sides all bring to the issue, issue, abortion is divisive for a simple reason. It is impossible to come down in the middle of the question of when a fetus becomes a human being. With no apparent chance of reaching reaching a political compromise, the federal government seems content to . leave our judges holding the bag. However, the only item on which the two sides in the bitter debate agree is that a federal federal law is needed. Those in favour of abortion seek a law recognizing women's women's unlimited right to an abortion. Those against abortion seek an ironclad ironclad federal law outlawing the procedure procedure except in the cases of incest and rape. As the debate turns into a national screaming match between the two determined determined sides, it is interesting to note how each faction labels the other. Those whom the media label as antiabortionists antiabortionists call themselves pro-life but are called anti-choice by their op- ponnents. Those whom the media call proabortionists proabortionists call themselves pro-choice but are labelled anti-life by their opponents. opponents. The semantics are reaching deafening levels, while the only sound we hear from Ottawa is that of silence. Credit Card Borrowers Should Count the Costs Granted, RRSPs, stocks, bonds, and guaranteed investment certificates are all worthwhile investment vehicles offering offering (in varying degrees) high returns, returns, financial security, and longterm longterm growth. Admittedly, real estate provides unique opportunities for financial financial gain, especially in this part of the countiy. Gold, we recall, often has had some alluring qualities in the investment investment community. Nevertheless, the very best financial financial investment advice we can offer (did you not ask?) is to start a credit card company. Start small with a few partners and issue, say, 1,000,000 credit cards. Think up a catchy name for your card (Prosperity Card) and begin begin signing up establishments across the continent whose owners are anxious anxious to paste yet another colourful credit card emblem on their door. Obtain a mailing list from a university university or magazine subscription firm and mail a barrage of glossy advertisements advertisements explaining why no right-minded consumer can live without the Prosperity Prosperity Card. Throw in a tempting contest contest (first prize: a week in Guam) and the business should take off. A month or two into the venture, you may be disappointed that the profit profit is not materializing. When this happens, happens, you will need to examine the operations operations of your competitors to see how they continue to turn plastic into cash. There are numerous tricks which you, basically a fair and reasonable person, will not have thought of but which are crucial to the continuing success of the credit card industry. Firstly, you probably set your interest interest rate much too low. You thought 15 percent was fair? Wrong. Credit companies companies need to charge at least 20 percent percent just to survive. Some department stores go as high as 28 percent per annum. annum. Swallow your fair business sense •and boost your rate to a very competitive competitive 19.75 percent. But do not advertise advertise your rate on a yearly basis. Tell your customers that their interest charge is only 1,645 percent per month -- peanuts really. You might even in clude the daily rate of 0.054 percent. Still not in the black? Try adjusting the method, you use in calculating interest interest due. An example may help: If one of your loya,l customers draws $200 on your card on September 1 and pays back $150 by the end of September, September, do not feel obliged to charge inter- est in October on only $50. Join the ranks of your creditor counterparts and charge interest on the entire $200 until the entire total is entirely paid. Don't squirm: the banks (your competition) competition) do it consistently. Partial payment payment should not excite you in the least. Keep charging 19.75 percent until until the last penny is paid back. Rest assured, assured, this is standard and acceptable procedure in the business which you've entered. Be wary of House of Commons finance finance committee chairman Don Blen- karn. He is always yelping about this practice. He has even claimed that some consumers end up paying as much as 6,000 percent interest on an actual balance in their account. Pay him no heed; the government will take no action against you. The worst thing they, ever have done to interfere with creditors was to rant and rave about credit card interest rates as they headed headed into an election two years ago. When this happens again shortly before the next vote, simply lower your rates by a few notches until the election election passes, and. then hike them back up in bite size pieces. Better yet, learn the lesson of 1987 and lower them voluntarily voluntarily a year before the election, thus taking the steam out of politicians' politicians' populist calls for just such action. action. If you are willing to supress your conscience and be flexible in the world of credit, you too can turn a large profit profit from a bunch of small plastic cards. Free of government regulation, largely unnoticed by the public, and supported by a banking industry with virtually unlimited resources, your new business business is almost as profitable as Canada's Canada's newest number one growth industry: industry: official inquiries. Tyrone Resident Opens Exhibition at McLaughlin Gallery Tyrone artist Aleen Aked reached the pinnacle of her 60-year career on Thursday, July. 20th with the opening of her exhibition at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. Here, she is pictured at left with former councillor Ann Cowman who opened the exhi bition. Earlier, Mrs. Cowman was responsible for bringing Miss Aked's work to the attention of gallery director Joan Murray. The exhibition will continue until Sept. 3rd. Progress Needed " Dear Sir: I am always amazed at 11 the number of letters that j 3 appear in your "Letters to 'JT the Editor Column" that arer;. so negative and against any H change or progress. j*, In particular, the "Well-' 33 ington Development". I be- '• lieve that the proposed Sen-7' ior Citizen Development will" be a real asset to the "core" of the Town of Bowmanville: \ Not only is it needed, but it x will be a great improvement and addition to the town. Concerns about traffic con-, gestion in the area are with- 13 out foundation. We were away from Bowmanville Bowmanville from 1961-1986 (25 years) and on our return found the town had grown in every direction, but the core, 13 area had changed very little.:.*, I find it difficult to believe" that the people living in the': area would prefer to look at the old warehouse, weeds/j and rundown appearance of" the warehouse area as at,; the present time, rather than nave a modern complexé that can't help but increase,, the value of their property, ' -j The project is well 3 planned. It has had consid-7 erable local input and has lj been held up far too long. I 3 am sure the majority of the' people of Bowmanville be-, neve it will be an asset to 1 the town and welcome it. 3 Unfortunately, as so often, happens they are the silent! majority. Yours truly, 7 Elmer Banting. ,p ay of light has trie murky depths A ray pierced of political fundraising in this province, revealing a network of cronyism and nepotism from which we must be rescued. Donating relatively paltry sums of money, fundraising dynamo Patricia Patricia Starr apparently extended her reach all the way into the Premier's Premier's office, among other places. Official investigations investigations promise to drag into next year, sucking up tax dollars along the way, and likely changing very little. Despite legislative attempts attempts to open up the fundraising game for public public scrutiny, there seem, always to be ways for party apparatchiks to stickhandle around the rules and net vast sums of money. When charitable charitable donations end up sloshing around in a political political campaign fund, justice has not been served. When plum government government appointments are issued on any criteria other than ability, the integrity integrity of those governing is impugned. Last year's Ontario municipal elections operated operated under a new law designed designed to offer the public more information about the fundraising activities of candidates. For the first time, municipal politicians politicians were required to declare the donations they received and the ex penses they incurred. In Toronto some of the declarations declarations caused a few voters to choke over their morning coffee. Metro councillor and former Metro chairman Dennis Flynn raised over $66,000 for his campaign against a lone opponent. However, he spent only $37,000 of that total, leaving him a net profit of $29,000. The fancy new law designed designed to open up the process process makes no allowances for à candidate with a fundraising surplus. Mr. Flynn and other councillors councillors with, lesser profits are allowed to keèp the money and do with it anything they wish. The money might find its way into the next campaign or it might not. One Toronto councillor, Tom Jakobek, donated his $3,500 to charity. But several, as of yet, have not. Ana the public may never know what happens to Mr. Flynn's $29,000. Our own mayor, Marie Hubbard, ended up with a surplus of slightly under under $6,000 which she has invested in high interest bonds for her "warchest" going into the 1991 election. election. She makes no bones about it. Such actions are perfectly legal. That it is legal, however, only poin ts out one of the glaring glaring faults in the current law. Suppose that donor A gave a candidate the le- S al maximum of $750 for e election in November last year. That contribution contribution would go into the overall campaign fund. But let's suppose that a surplus remained after the election and that the candidate kept this amount for use in the next campaign. The odds are quite good that some or all of our imaginary donor's money found its way into this 1991 campaign starter starter fund. Suppose further that: this donor is disillusioned with the performance of the candidate during his or her three year term and wishes to support someone else next time. Does this donor have the Reader Outlines Opposition to Laidlaw Laidlaw Waste Systems Ltd. P.O. Box 5057 Station "A" Burlington,Ontario L7R 3Y8 Attention: Mr. Mike Pullen RE: Application for Rezoning, Rezoning, Expansion of Infill Newtonville Garbage Dump (Town of Newcastle). Dear Mr. Pullen: Once again, area residents residents have taken time from their families and jobs to participate in yet another of Laidlaw's endeavours to acquire acquire rezoning and expansion expansion approval for your garbage garbage dump in Newtonville. Once again, we found ourselves ourselves participating in this process, only to be stonewalled stonewalled by Laidlaw. Firstly, Laidlaw was not prepared for the public hearing hearing - four of nine, supporting documents were not provided. provided. How can Town staff or other agencies respond to Laidlawa applications when they are so ill-prepared? So, area residents attend the meeting with a view to make comments. Delegations Delegations at the General Purpose and Administration (GP &A) meeting (July 17/89) included included local environmental groups, citizens who lacked trust in Laidlaw and a mother speaking on behalf of her infant child's future. All emphatically indicated non-support of Laidlaw's application. application. As is also permitted, a representative of Laidlaw was given the opportunity to comment and speak in support support of the applications. Mr. John Kennedy (whom I g ather is a consultant for laidlaw) made submission. During the questioning by members of the GP & A, I was reminded of the famous "Family Circus" comic strip. Often times, when some mischief, or act of inappropriate inappropriate or bad behaviour takes place in the "Keane" household, and the query goes out as to who the culprit culprit is, or why the action was taken, no one makes claim to the occurrence - the is a resounding "I NO". This Monday past Mr. Kennedy had a classic case of "I DUNNO" - he just didn't have any answers. How can Laidlaw justify sending someone to answer the questions of our elected representatives who appears to know naught of what he speaks? When the Mayor queried as to the point of origin origin of the garbage,Mr. Kennedy Kennedy just wasn't clear whether or not it came from Peterborough County, Victoria Victoria County, and even fuzzier fuzzier about a Port Hope ori- & Dear John: In response to Mayor Hubbard's statement in your paper that Canadians are pampered: It would appear that the .attitude and arrogance arrogance of our federal government government to-wnrds the taxpayer has flowed down to our local government, What would you call pampered, pampered, could this mean no place to live, seniors taxed to the point they may have to sell their homes, Food bonks in all our major cities. Shortage of housing, and nursing homes keep your wage demands within inflation. inflation. No, we all know what pampered is : become a politician politician give yourself a 27% raise. World travel - see Hong Kong, Germany or where over you want to go; the taxpayer will pay for it. Toll the people you have $6,000 left over for the next election campaign. gin. However, according to a recent news story, not only does Laidlaw accept waste from Port Hope (who claims nowhere else to dump it), it does so at a pricey tipping fee of $95.00/tonne, which, incidentally, cost Port Hope $53,000.00 for dumping at the Newtonville dump dur-' ing the month of June alone! Contrary to any claims that the dump services the Region Region of Durham, it primarily services areas to the North and East of the Town oi Newcastle. Other statements made during Mr. Kennedy's submission: submission: a) "Laidlaw has tried to address the concerns of area residents at public open houses". - little notice provided for open houses. - the first one held on Valentine's Day - can't we get a break? - we protested at all Laidlaw's Laidlaw's open houses - our main concern is that the dump, as we all know, is historically ill-conceived, and that no environmental environmental assessment has been undertaken which sup ports this dump as a viable site. b) "There will be only one truck/day increase to the dump". - the dump shall reach capacity capacity in December of this year, at which time we expect expect it to close. Consequently, Consequently, should Laidlaw be granted granted rezoning and expansion approvals, the resulting "one truck/day" multiplies to a seven (7) long years in- with Laidlaw then crease, intending to multiply the idditic equation by 20 additional years of garbage amounting to who knows how many more trucks? How much more garbage? c) "Dust will be eliminated eliminated by watering roads and installing installing fences and berms". - "fences"? "berms"? - Are a couple of little hills going to prevent the dust from blowing in the breeze? Will the fences be posted with signs that state: "DUST - DO NOT LEAVE DUMP!" Really? d) Laidlaw has had discussion discussion with the Region of Durham regarding the utilization utilization of the Graham Creek sewage treatment facility for the processing of leachate. Apparently, these discussions discussions have not included the Town of Newcastle. Isn't the dump in the Town of Newcastle? Newcastle? Obviously, an entirely entirely new sewage system would have to be constructed from the dump to the . sewage treatment facility - and then where will the mixture go - into Lake Ontario? Not such a great solution for dilution - especially when the sewage treatment plant is adjacent to the water intake for the Village of Newcastle. What exactly are the discussions with the Region? Having said the above, it is no wonder that when people people in this community speak of Laidlaw, adjectives such as 'unprepared'; 'disregard to area residents'; 'misinformation'; 'misinformation'; 'misrepresentation': 'sneakiness' are tossed about. C'mon guys - get your act together! It would be truly truly refreshing if Laidlaw would: be prepared; be "up front"; better still - BE GONE! With sincerity. (Mrs.) Helen MacDonald right to ask for some ofj his money back? Can he' ask for a refund based on* the actual percentage-' which was left over from' last campaign? 1 ;; If not, the donor could; find himself supporting a candidate against his will. Of this weakness we at least can say that we are aware of it, even if it doesn't feel right. In the case of the other glaring weakness of the law, we may never be aware of it. It is embarrassing" simple to circumvent legal donation limit of $750. Each donation is listed dutifully by thé candidate receiving it. The documentation of each gift states the name of the person or company and the amount donated. In the case of corporate donations, there is no regulation stopping separate separate people in the same office from each donating $750. This is absurd. j If a. development com-- any wanted to direct 7,500 into a candidate'^ campaign bankroll, it would be as simple as handing over $750 to lti trusted employees and telling them where to donate donate it. As we have learned this spring and summer, anything is pos;- sible in the world of polit-- ical fundraising, so wê should not feel unduly cynical for presuming that companies would tiy just such a manoeuvre. * Indeed, given the revelations revelations about the Peterson Peterson government which wë continue to get in dribs and drabs, we really should not be surprised that this new municipal election fundraising law is full of weaknesses and opportunities for corruption. corruption. After all, it came directly directly from Queen's Park'. Politicians are Pampered 9 Letter- Writer Believes There are many Canadians Canadians living on this amount and some right in this town. No, Mayor Hubbard, we're not pampered, we work and pay through the nose for everything we get and if there is anything left after unjustified taxes to- spend, we pay taxes again. Come out of your pampered pampered world and see how the real world has to exist. As for the $25,000 to go to Hong Kong, it would be very interesting to see the real figures made public. After After nil it was our money. Nobody Nobody ever mentioned how much it cost us for the consultant consultant that was hired and sent over n week before. So, you see, wo are not pampered. All we want is a fair share of our dollars and have an elected body do the job they are paid to ao. Your truly, E. Roberts' 3 Hobbs Dr. "Wild Grapes" by John Van Bruegcn Honorable Mention in Visual Arts Centro's Juried Photography Contest and Show