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PAGE 4THE CANADIAN STATESMAN, OCTOBER 23, 2002 www.durhamregion.com Tim Whittaker Publisher Joanne Burghardt Editor-in-Chief Chris Bovie Managing Editor Judi Bobbitt Regional Editor Fred Eismont Director of Advertising Eddie Kolodziejcak Classified Advertising Manager Kirk Bailey Distribution Manager Lillian Hook Office Manager Barb Harrison Composing Manager Œfje Canabtan Statesman ■ Clarington's Award-Winning Newspaper Since 1854 HOct. 23,2002 Metroland Printing, Publishing & Distributing Ltd. Rhone 905-579-440C Classifieds 905-576-9335 Distribution 905-579-440/ General Fax 905-579-2236 Newsroom Fax 905-579-1805 E-Mail newsroom@durhamregion.com 865 Farewell St., Oshawa ON L1 H 7L5 Publications Mail Registration No. 07637 infodurhamregion.com EDITORIAL e-mail letters to news room® (IurhnmrcRion.com Plenty of chances to get our free u shot this season Ï D o you know what time of year it is? It's time to get your annual flu shot, a chance to protect yourself from the ravages ùf the influenza season. Best of all, it's free - as it has been for the past two years - for everybody. In what can only be universally universally applauded as a good use of our health care dollars, the Province has once again taken the plunge and committed committed millions of dollars this year to flu shots for all. More than 10 million Ontarians are eligible to head to their clinics clinics or to many other sites to get the shot. Here in Durham there are many opportunities to head to local sites to receive a flu shot. A full schedule of times • and sites in every Durham municipality can be discovered discovered by calling the Durham Region Health Department at 1-800-841-2729. Why is the Province once again footing the bill for the flu shots? The answer is simple. Spending millions for this ounce of prevention'will*be . worth billions of dollars in" health care pounds of cure. The government took the plunge to provide free flu shots a few years ago after hospital emergency wards across Ontario were swamped with flu sufferers looking for relief from their symptoms. As a result, precious re sources which could and should be dedicated to more seriously ill patients were diverted diverted to flu victims. In addition, addition, hospitals found themselves themselves on critical care bypass and redirect constantly and were in need of all the relief they could get. There are some concerns surrounding the flu shot. So, here are the facts from the Ministry of Health: It takes 10 to 14 days before the vaccine vaccine can protect you from the flu so you could be vulnerable vulnerable to getting sick within this time period. If two weeks have gone by since your shot and you're symptom-free, consider yourself protected. However, the vaccine has between between a 70 and 90-per cent effectiveness rate for most people so it's not absolutely - guaranteed you'll be influenza influenza proof. Still, those who do get the flu after a shot apparently apparently have much milder symptoms than those who don't receive the vaccine. There are a few possible side effects but these are minor and rare. They can include include a bit of pain near the needle site, dr a'bit of fatigue! muscle soreness or low fever for a day or two after getting the shot. It's a small price to pay compared to several weeks of ■suffering from a full-blown case of influenza. Don't delay, get .your (free) flu shot today. dollghan.com LETTERS TO THE EDITOR OPINION ITER column included faulty insights To the editor: Re: 'It's a small world after all,' Oct. 20, 2002. My interest was renewed when I read the latest update from 'This Week' reporter Jacquie Mclnnes regarding the status of Clarington's pitch for ITER's $12 billion. The smalltown flavour she gave her travelogue describing I attractions of weather and menus, historical attributes of Lyon and homilies from the mayor of Vandellos in Spain were entertaining. Perhaps this should not have been paired with the information information the Spanish town is a nuclear nuclear community and is in the middle of decommissioning one fire-ravaged site. Certainly her observation this site "serves as a good example of the inherent safety of nuclear power, even mil letters to newsroom @cliirhuriiregion.i during accidents" might be less than reassuring to former inhabitants inhabitants around the site of Three Mile Island in the U.S. or those nations downwind of Chernobyl, Chernobyl, Ukraine. I believe investigating alternative alternative forms of energy is worthwhile worthwhile and necessary and though ITER's Canadian representatives representatives may continue their selling job beyond the boardroom to the golf course and relaxed dinners, dinners, they should stop short of fostering faulty insights on readers and citizens whose support support they need. 71 1 : - : r\ Larry Codd i -. Whitby ITER not the answer To the editor: Re: 'Politicians become weathermen,' editorial of Oct. 20, 2002. The ITER project is a $12 billion experimental facility built on 50-80 years of wishful thinking. It will suck more electricity from the power grid during its 30-year operation than any other OPG customer. When this nuclear toy is decommissioned decommissioned in 2043, it will take another another 75 years to decommission decommission the radioactive mess left behind. Why not use a fraction of the ITER investment to retrofit Durham homes, factories, and commercial sites with energy efficient technologies? Why not invest in alternative green energy . technologies available today, especially wind power?; , Other countries are doing this and it generates more jobs and faster independence from nuclear nuclear and fossil fuels than the ITER pipe dream ever will. We are wasting money selling selling the world on the Durham ITER site when we should be selling Durham on the greater benefits of using proven renewable renewable energy and conservation conservation programs. Bob Willard Whitby e-mail letters to news room® (lurliamrcRion.com Preparing for the unthinkable OPINION e-mail letters to newsroom@durhamreRion.com Opposition cornes out swinging as stakes rise Y ears ago, when I was a reporter at our sister paper in Ajax, a man called to report a news story - his employee had saved a client's life. "What did he do?" I asked, expecting to hear a harrowing tale of a river rescue with mouth-to-moulh resuscitation. resuscitation. "He called 9-1- 1", came the answer. While dialling a telephone number is the closest any of us wants to come to a life-or-death emergency, emergency, there's a possibility possibility we might be called on to do more. Imagine the helpless helpless feeling of being alone with an unconscious person person who's stopped breathing, not knowing how to help. With that in mind, a small group of us gathered at the rear of the newspaper building this past Saturday morning lor the first of two days' instruction in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. resuscitation. While we were moulh-to- mouth with plastic dummies and feeling each other's wrists for pulse beats, I tried to have faith I'll probably never have to do this for real, But one never knows. I have a friend who works in a gym, where three or four people people drop like flies a year, Here at the paper, knock on wood, people collapse much less often (not counting lunch break). And while it's one thing to learn to monitor breathing and how to do chess compressions should breathing stop, it was another matter when the in structor talked about vomit, scooping broken teeth out of a mouth and ventilating a patient through the nose. Yes, that's a mouth-to-nosc situation. Can people really do that? None of us really knows how we'll react in a crisis until it happens. happens. I honestly don't know if I could deal with the more traumatic cases, but I'd like to think I could lake a deep breath and think clearly, remembering the basic steps I learned Saturday. Studies have shown the rate of survival in cardiac arrests drops 10 per cent each minute between the time of collapse and the time of defibrillation, defibrillation, if I remember the lesson lesson correctly. If a patient has access to CPR between the time the call is placed to 9-1-1 and the time the paramedics arrive. arrive. survival chances increase marginally. It would he nice, wouldn't it, to help a loved one, colleague colleague or even a stranger win his life back by that slim margin? margin? Of course, as the instructor pointed out, no patient we perform perform CPR on will ever get up, thank us and walk off. But we'd feel better having helped, and if everyone in the world had a basic understanding of CPR, each one of us might get that extra helping hand while the ambulance is racing to save us. So as squeamish as we might he, we're hack to talk about amputations next weekend. weekend. O ntario's political parties are warming up for an election that is showing all the earmarks and even facial bruises of being bitter. The election is not due until next year, but more is at stake than usual. If he gets turfed out of government it will be the first and last election as Progressive Conservative leader for Premier Ernie Eves. The Tories felt Mr. Eves would provide a more moderate style and policies than his predecessor Mike Harris, Harris, who earned back-to- back majority wins in 1995 and 1999. They see it as almost almost their right to be in government, government, having been in power 49 of the last 60 years. Should the Tories be defeated however, they would be in no mood to give a second chance to a 57-year-old leader who has never won an election. They would quickly go to another choice. Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty had one try to win an election in 1999, when he added to his party's vote. But if he fails to win again this time the Liberals, who usually have short shrift for losing leaders leaders and have had seven over the past four decades, would be unlikely unlikely to give him a third chance. They would he chagrined particularly particularly because Mr, McGuinty has led in the polls the past three years. The stakes are high also for the parties. The Tories will recall it took them 10 years and two changes of leader to win back government last time and will leave no stone unturned to avoid it happening again. The Liberals have led in polls so often but failed to win they lack confidence and, if they stumble again, it may be a long time before they dare entertain notions of winning. The Liberals have launched most of the attacks attacks that have seen the debate between the parties parties turn bitter. They showed recently that four ministers spent lavishly on entertainment and drew blood when one, Cam Jackson, was fired, and now claim Mr. Eves also overspent, but got his staff to pick up some of his tabs. The Liberals showed some who might want favours from government, including a racetrack racetrack eyeing lucrative slot machines, machines, donated handsomely to candidates in the leadership campaign campaign which Mr. Eves won. They showed Mr. Harris in his last days as premier secretly gave a huge tax cut to big sports organizations organizations who were his friends and the few ministers who knew about it never told Mr. Eves. The Liberals revealed half the defeated Tory candidates in the last two elections have been compensated compensated with government jobs, mostly on boards, patronage unequalled unequalled since the Tories of the 1980s. The Liberals and New Democrats Democrats also forced an apology from Northern Development Minister Jim Wilson, who called civil servants who offered advice he disagreed with politically partisan partisan and threatened to fire them. These arc legitimate concerns, but the Liberals have dug deeper to find them than some previous opposition parties. The Tories have retaliated by demanding Mr. McGuinty produce produce receipts showing how lie and his staff spent public money, which they arc not obliged to do. They have identified Liberals and New Democrats they named to public boards, but they arc few and every government appoints token opponents to counter complaints complaints it only looks after its own. The Tories also have criticized Liberal deputy leader Sandra Pupate! Pupate! lo, who has led the charges against them, for using a courier service provided for MPPs lo send a shipment under her own name on behalf of a friend. There is no suggestion the taxpayer taxpayer had to bear any cost, and any wrongdoing is nowhere on the scale of that committed by the Tories, but they have called on the integrity commissioner to investigate. investigate. Mr. McGuinty also has said he will make ethics an issue in the election and opponents of private radiology clinics are running newspaper ads showing a grisly dissection of a head and declaring, declaring, "We know Ernie Eves has a brain - why won't he use it?' and in an election the adversaries are likely to get even deeper under each other's skins. Judi Bobbitt Regional Editor Eric Dowd Queen's Park CLICK AND SAj^ Today's question: Would you be willing to give up some services to keep regional tax increases to a minimum? □ Yes □ No Cast your vote online at infodurhamregIcjji.com Last week's question: Should Canada maintain its current ties with the monarchy? □ Yes 53.3% □ No 46.7 % Votes cast: 120 HAVE YOUR SAY Question What are you dressing up as on Halloween, and why? Michael Lassila, 6 "I don't really know yet. I'd like to be something scared. I was a beekeeper last year because that's just what I wanted to be." Cameron McBride, 6 "I'm going to be Frankenstein. My mom will help, cause it's just what I want to be." Holly Matthews, 6 "A witch, a good witch. Because I would fly." Shania Kelly, 6 (Kite Cmmbinn &>tntc3»iaii is one of the Metroland Printing, Publishing Publishing and Distributing group of newspapers. The Statesman is a member of the Bow- \ manville Clarington Board of Trade, the Greater Oshawa ! Chamber of Commerce, On-! . tario Community Newspaper! Assoc., Canadian Community Newspaper Assoc., Canadian Circulations Audit Board andj the Ontario Press Council. The publisher reserves the right to classify or refuse any adver-i tisement. Credit for advertisement advertisement limited to space price ; error occupies. Editorial and! Advertising content of the j Canadian Statesman is copyrighted. copyrighted. Unauthorized repro-; duction is prohibited. < A°cna HHHÏ1