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i \ Page A6 The Canadian Statesman, Bowmanville, September 22,1999 Efje Canatrian Statesman For 145 years, our first concern has been our community Former Publishers and Partners Rev. John M. Climie and W.R. Climic 1854-1878 M.A. James 1878-1935 • Norman S.B. James 1919-1929 G. Elena James, 1929-1947 • Dr. George W. James 1919-1957 . John M. James, 1957-1999 Produced weekly by Metroland Printing, Publishing & Distributing Ltd. Also Publishers of Clarington This Week P.O. Box 190,62 King St. \V„ Bowmanville, Ontario UC 3K9 Tel: 905-623-3303 HOURS: Monday to Friday 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. Fax: 905-623-6161 Internet - statcsman@ocna.org ' Publications Mail Registration No. lit 07637 Publisher - Tim Whittaker Editor-in-chief -- Joanne Burghardt Managing Editor - Judi Bobbitt Advertising Manager - Brian G. Purdy Advertising - Lavernc Morrison, Sharon Goodman Office - Junia Hodge, Nancy Plcasance-Sturman Editorial - Brad Kelly, Jennifer Stone, Jaequic Mclnncs Building a library Now that the need for a new library in Bowmanville has been identified as the first priority in the library board's four- ycar plan, the real work has just begun. While a new building is at least three to four years away, user demands on the current library system continue to grow. All of the municipality's four library branches have seen growth in usage. In the last two years, the library system has seen a 67.5-pcr cent jump in demand for its services. Library board chairman Craig Brown calls that "phenomenal", noting there's unlikely to be another library "in all of Ontario" that's shown the same growth. The current main branch, 35 years old, was built when the population of Bowmanville was 7,000. Today, the population of the town is four times that and the library building offers 60 per cent of the per capita space recommended for library services. services. The community, responding to an invitation from the library board to put together a wish list, has been vocal in identifying what's needed in a new library. Top priorities include parking, research resources, children's programs, longer hours of operation, Internet access and/community meeting rooms, The list goes on. All that's left to figure out is where the library is going to be built, and how. Currently the library board operates on just over half the per capital funding that goes to libraries in Oshawa, Whitby and Ajax. While there's been no talk yet of community fundraising fundraising projects to support a new library, that can't be far behind. To date, no capital finances have been earmarked for the project, but it's expected the money will conic from development development charges levied against new residential subdisivions and the tax base. Community fund-raising projects and corporate donations should be considered, too. The Garnet B. Rickard Recreation Complex was built with community help; it not only gives residents ownership of a facility but alleviates some of the tax burden. Everyone can contribute a page to this book. E-Mail your comments on this opinion to nnews@durham.net. Submissions which include a first and last name, as well as the city of residence, will be considered for publication. fr- AT LAST, AFTER FIVE HOURS I'VE finally pone it! it> better 7 SET A PICTURE OF IT OR THE GUYS WILL NEVER BELIEVE ME! WOW, FIFTEEN PECKS OF CARPS! ..SEVEN, SIX, FIVE, FOUR THREE, TWO, ONE... Prepare grads for big event To the editor: Certainly, the new millennium will bring unimaginable changes. What wondrous wondrous times! The next 1,000 years will witness the most spectacular event of earth's history - the return of Jesus Christ. While earthlings earthlings will be busy cloning each other, exploring deep space, increasing in material gains, or inventing their unimaginables, they must be careful of their quest for these temporal things. What will it profit any of us to gain these 'great things' and lose our soul, or what poor mathematical judgment we have if we will trade eternity for a mere 'three score and ten' years. So, we should let our grads face the future with confidence. We should develop within them these traits: love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control. We should ensure that they love God with all their heart and mind; and their fellow human beings as themselves. By so doing, we will eliminate all the 'isms' that the human race faces. To those who ask "What will our grads face in the future?": The answer is an unprecedented increase of sinfulness and sensual activities, greed, hatred, strife, deterioration of the family, drunkenness, drunkenness, crime, pervasive homosexuality, licentiousness and more. While our grads will be immersed in their laboratories, space stations, mansions or in other great forms of entertainment and discoveries, let me just warn them to be ready for the return of Jesus. Jeannette J. Hutchinson-Mounsey Time for tough enforcement To the editor: On Friday. Sept. 3 there was a terrible terrible accident on Hwy. 401. It occurred about 20 kilometres west of a stretch of road between Chatham and London known as 'Death Alley'. The official report was that the "accident" "accident" was caused by a combination of "poor weather conditions (fog) and speeding". One clement of careless driving driving the report did not mention was following following loo close which may also have been contributing factor. A few days earlier, on Aug. 25, my wife and I drove westbound along the 401 on our way to Point Pelcc National Park. Just past the London tum-off, there was a sign posted on the right side of the highway declaring 'Road Safety by Enforcement'. Sure enough, within the next half-kilometre, three cars had been pulled over by police radar patrols. Obviously the drivers drivers of these vehicles had been driving too fast to read the sign. When we left Point Pelcc the following following morning, light rain was falling. By the time we reached 'Death Alley' travelling travelling castbound, the rain had turned into a very heavy downpour, reducing visibility to about 20 metres. I was driving driving in the right-hand lane and could barely sec vehicles in front of me, except those with all their lights on and others when their brake lights came on. But 1 was very conscious of the dri vers behind me hanging on to my rear bumper. They probably wondered why I reduced my speed. It was to give them a safe stopping distance in case I had to brake hard. Despite such terrible conditions, many motorists were driving at high speeds in the middle and passing lanes, many with only driving lights on. It has been suggested that the answer to this problem is better driver education. education. But all drivers in Ontario have to pass a rather stringent road test. Despite this, it seems many drivers forget the basic legislated and courtesy rules of the road. The best way to retrain drivers is not by further "education" but by more aggressive enforcement of existing rules, and not just speeding. It should be made an offence to "drive without due care and consideration for the safety of other road users" and applying this to such dangerous and discourteous offences as changing lanes without signalling, signalling, cutting in or following too close. That may be the only way to keep tailgaters off your back. Colin Waterton Let's hear it for taxes Dirty word makes plenty possible Is there anyone out there willing to put in a good word for taxes? Many will think nothing good can be said about them, particularly since Premier Mike Harris embarked on his crusade to make them a dirty word. The Progressive Conservative premier, premier, who has reduced personal income lax by 30 per cent and plans further cuts including slashing municipal municipal spending, has now become the national leader in the march to lower taxes. Mr. Harris has called on all provinces to cut taxes as their first priority. priority. He also wrote to Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien arguing that now he has eliminated his deficit he should cut taxes rather than improve services. The premier was even in Japan this week, saying tax cuts are needed to stop more highly trained Canadians flocking to the United States for jobs, The premier has chutzpah, because while urging others to cut taxes he has increased pay by up to 30 per cent of his already well-paid political staff, who arc on the government payroll but whose first interest is his party not taxpayers. Economic Development Minister Al Pallndini has joined by writing to Finance Minister Paul Martin Martin saying tax cuts would improve quality of life. Tory MPPs also approved writing to Liberal Liberal MPs in Ontario exhorting exhorting them to 'follow the Ontario Example' and cut taxes, because other provinces, particularly Ralph Klein's Alberta, started cutting taxes first. The claim by all these is tax cuts stimulate business business so government ends up with even more to spend, but this cannot be proven by Ontario's environment environment ministry, whose operating budget Mr. Harris Harris has cut from $276 million million to $165 million. Business, whose shareholders stand to benefit, is adding a chorus of support support unmatched since it lobbied successfully successfully for free trade a decade ago, This push for tax cuts has been given extra momentum by convenient reports that the 'brain drain' of highly- educated Canadians to the U.S. has soared to a record particularly because of higher taxes here. The Conference Board of Canada which represents business helped fuel it by finding a sharp increase in Canadians obtaining temporary permits permits to work in the U.S., but later conceded it exaggerated exaggerated because it counted Canadians who renewed their permits as new emigrants. emigrants. More reliable federal federal government statistics show only 1.5 per cent of Canadians who finished university in 1995 left to work in the U.S. within the following two years and one-lifth of these have since returned home. Canadians also move to the U.S, because of higher pay, more exciting opportunities opportunities in bigger companies and head offices, more openings in research because more is done there and transfers transfers within companies as more Canadian Canadian firms have expanded into the U.S. with free trade and the economic boom. There are also jobs in the U.S. not available in Canada, particularly in nursing and other health care, precise ly because governments here have reduced taxes by culling spending on hospitals, Lower U.S. taxes arc only one lure. A supportive poll by a Toronto newspaper nevertheless claimed 82 per cent of Canadians believe a rising number of educated Canadians is moving to the U.S. because of higher taxes, which Mr. Harris repeated in Japan. Such orchestrated campaigns have made it difficult to stand up against tax cuts. Every year a right-wing think tank gets huge publicity and applause from media by declaring a day, which was July I this year, as Tax Freedom Day, when average families 'have paid all the taxes imposed on them by all levels of government for the year and started working for,themselves.' These taxes in fact paid for many services for Canadians, including medicare, which lower taxes in the U.S. do not provide. They paid also for police and fire protection, repairing streets, pensions, clean water, collecting garbage and ensuring safer workplaces so, although it is not fashionable to say so, they were mostly money well spent. New high school program still to be worked out It's a material world and wc work day and night to pay for it. Money is the great motivator. It gels us out of bed every day and sends us into our workplaces where wc do a job wc cither love or hate - all to put money in our pockets. When money is not the end result of our labours, wc have to rely on will. Volunteer Volunteer organizations organizations everywhere everywhere survive on the premise that the will to sec a job well done is enough to get you and I involved in their cause. Sadly, wc v work so much ' that most of us say we don't have, the time or energy for more altruistic pastimes. As a result, good causes suffer fronl a lack of volunteers. It would be safe to suggest each and every one of us docs or has benefited from a program run by volunteers. Guides, Scouts, minor sports, school councils, the Terry Fox Run, food drives, drives, clothing drives, charity golf tourna- ments - all arc run by volunteers. Wc have a chance to ensure there will be a next generation of volunteers by co-operating with the Province's initiative initiative to have students perform 40 hours .of community service over their high school lifetime. Amid all (he changes at the high school level this year - new curriculum, introduction of the four-year program - there is still a lot of work to be done on the volunteer front. But Education Minister Minister Janet Eckcr says there will be some direction coming from her office to help high schools gel the program under way. When those guidelines come down there should be flexibility left for high school principals to implement the program program as best suits their school. The new 'student advisers' would seem to be the most obvious people to assist students in the venture. Perhaps each school could have a 'volunteer bulletin board' where organizations arc invited to post notices of 'unpaid' volunteer volunteer opportunities. And 'unpaid' is a key phrase here. Cutting someone's grass for $10 is not 'volunteer' work. Mrs. Eckcr readily admits there will be kids who attempt to scam the system but she's not deterred. Volunteering is an education for the soul. The Province should be careful not to eliminate businesses from the program program because many employees do untold hours of community service every year. Employees volunteer to sit on committees for such organizations as the Alzheimer Society, the YWCA, art festivals, community betterment projects, projects, spelling bees, food drives, golf tournaments and much, much more. Those initiatives raise hundreds of thousands thousands of dollars for charity every year and ensure non-profit events that would not otherwise get off the ground become a success. Certainly no student volunteer should be doing work someone would otherwise have been paid to do. In the long run it's in all our best interest to ensure voluntccrism thrives in our community because what isn't delivered for free may one day have to be paid for - in all probability the cost will be the programs themselves. Write us ; The Canadian Statesman ; accepts letlers to the editor. All ! letters should be typed or neatly ! hand-written, 150 words. Each ; letter must be signed with a first ; and last name or two initials and \ a last name, Please include a j phone number lor verification, ! The editor reserves the right to ! edit copy for style, length and I content, Mail them to 62 King St. W„ Bowmanville, L1C3K9,; or fax to 623-6161, ;