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REA REN SR ERNE Cs -- wn A S a x Bh by Dean J. Kelly ARE OIL PRICE INCREASES JUSTIFIED A few short years ago the major oil companies (about 90 percent foreign owned) told Ottawa that we had enough reserves in the ground to last us for 400 years or more. Now we are told by these same people --- "our blue-eyed Arabs' we will be short of domestic supply in the early 1980s -- only about 5 years off. The false figures on oil reserves lead Ottawa to do nothing meaningful like setting up a National Oil policy. Canada sold about 1 million barrels a day to the U.S. at around $1 a barrel. A price war on gasoline is still going on in the Oshawa-Whitby and Toronto areas with gas going for around 71.9 cents before the increase. I talked with a large distributor in Oshawa and was told there was in fact a surplus of gas. On August 30 at one minute past midnight prices were jacked up on existing supplies. How can this be justified? Another 5 to 6 cents a gallon. Nova Scotia refused to go along with the increase and was pressured by federal Energy Minister Gillespie to get in line with a personal phone call to Premier Reagan. Reagan steadfastly refused to go along with the increase. Gillespie called foul--. Ontario is subsidized oil prices in Quebec and east of the Ottawa river to the tune of about $450 million a year BEFORE THE INCREASE! On the day of the price increases I talked for some time with a local fuel oil distributor who told me that his head office in Toronto had not informed him of any increase in price. The time was 10.15a.m. He told me that his parent company had a 5 million gallon oil tank in Toronto that was filled with furnace oil over 15 years ago and was still never touched. He claimed that oil at the time was costing the company about 3 to 5 cents a gallon. Todays price is about 48.1 cents a gallon, could yield a mark up of 1,600 percent (less costs of storage). Ottawa during the shortage scare three years ago bought a huge supply of Romanian low grade furnace oil for the capital buildings. Oil that was so dirty and polluting that the Environment Ministry condemned its use because of the pollution from the high sulphur content. Ottawa paid a premium price for an inferior unuseable oil. Meanwhile the gas companies are flooding the media with propoganda that they need the extra money to search for new deposits. No guarantee that the money will in fact go to exploration in Canada. A number of U.S. companies have pulled out of the exploration in the West. Meanwhile Imperial Oil, Shell and Texaco stocks are all higher. Imperial A up 75 cents a share (Aug. 26). The whole country is now paying for an inept Ottawa government that failed to inact proper safeguards and a workable safe National oil policy. The cost of almost every item could go up as the increased costs are passed on by truckers and handlers to the consumer... at a time when inflation needs to be halted...not increased. Inflation is being fed by Ottawa's decision on another front to increase postal rates. Letters to go up by 50 percent. Parcel post by 32 percent. And the kicker...a $1.00 charge to redirect a letter to a new address. How's that for '"'wrestling inflation to the ground" as promised by our Prime Minister, who in the last 'election warned that wages and price controls were not necessary as most inflation was 'Imported'. Turdeau also warned us that those opposition party demons would impose unjust controls. Remember the deluge of TV commercials by the Liberal party? Are you going to allow your wages to be controlled by the Conservatives, etc." Had they been imposed a year or so earlier as suggested, much of the furor coming to haunt the Trudeau government such as the unions national one-day strike of protest in October may have been avoided. INFLATION is everybody's business... it robs everybody and creates an unstable market. Speaking of the market, Bell Canada stocks have hit a 5 year high. Bell is paying an increased dividend costing the utility about $11.1 million above the regular dividend. At the same time Bell is asking Ottawa to_.% increase rates which in 1977 would give Bell an additional $190 million in revenue. Bell just had an increase approved by Ottawa in December which gave them about $105 million, raising its revenue to about the $2 billion level. Bell's profits rang up at the rate of an unbelievable $820,000. every 24 hours! Bell is already so rich they don't carry. insurance on their motor vehicles. In Ontario alone they own 5,464 cars and trucks and 1,250 buildings, with assets in the TENS OF THOUSANDS OF MILLIONS. They still want more..another $190 million of your money this year, in their never-ending yearly increases. The reason Bell often gives is that increases are needed to create investment capital. You pay more for your phone, so that investors in Bell stock will get higher dividends... your money. One of the most prestigious doctors in the U.S., Dr. Ernst Wynder says, "It should be the function of medicine to have people die young, as late as possible." Think about it, It may not be how long you live, but how well! oR ns ww Good Hockey Back Good, fast, hard-hitting and clean hockey is back, and this writer is amoung the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have returned with pleasure to that great traditional hockey night in Canada. There's been a lot of attitudes changed since the U.S.S.R. national team first faced off with Canada back in 1972 -- particularly the one about some kind of inherent superiority that makes our Canadian boys invincible, Instead, Canadians have found themselves more that occasionally out of breath, hard-pressed to out-goal, out-shoot, out-skate and out puck-handle their international adversaries. : Even in that dearly loved Canadian tradition of board-flattening, we no longer have a monopoly. International hockey has learned from our profess- ionals, and teams such as the U.S.S.R. are not likely to return to the innocent timidity they once displayed. But to say that we've simply proven our superiority without learning anything from international hockey would be foolish. We've discovered over the past few series that only the best kind of hockey will win games here, a requirement that seemed to be getting lost in the watered-down National and World Leagues where showmanship and violence was on the increase and general excellence on the wane. . Now, millions of fans are discovering that cheap theatrics aren't needed to make a thrilling hackey game; that indeed, it's a poor alternative td'good hockey. i On the other hand, we've proven that we can still play the best kind of hockey, and we can't help but be pleased at the changing attitude toward Canadian hockey from such severe critics as the Swedish press. With their childish, petty and naive sour-grapes tactics, the Russians have become the boors in inter- national hockey. A title they well-deserve. Lotteries Immoral What would you do with a million bucks? Or even $100,000? Dream a little, break out of the humdrum, the treadmill of paying bills. If you win a million, give half - or most - to chagity? Probably all of us have indulged in the seductive day-dreaming that goes with an Olympic lottery ticket or a Wintario. And, the government information flacks tell us, it enriches our coffers by some half billion dollars-a-year for such good things as sport and culture. Something for nothing. The age-old stuff of which dreams are made. But also the age-old stuff of which greed and avarice are made. And yet to knock these government-run lotteries -- which is what we're about to do -- is a little bit like knocking fun and human nature. What's wrong with dreaming? What's wrong is that lotteries are immoral, wasteful and degrading to the society sponsoring them. Having said that, we stand back while we are called stuffy, square and a killjoy. Lotteries are immoral in that they legally tell people that their hopes for material wealth are based on chance. They exploit the dreams of the poor to pay for the pleasures of the rich. Lotteries are wasteful in that more than half the proceeds are used for promotion and adminstration. To give an example, the Presbyterian Record notes that Wintario provides only 42 percent of its proceeds for grants to sports, recreation-and cultural associa- tions after spending 58 percent in prizes, promotion and administration. A straight canvass or taxation would go further and not be an unfair burden on. the poor. Lotteries are degrading because they pander to the greatest social evil our society faces today -- its idolatry of material things. Win more money to buy more things and you'll achieve everlasting happiness. But what is most disturbing about this phenomena is the almost tacit approval of the great majority of those who ought to be most opposed. Those who call themselves Christians may very well belong to churches which officially oppose gambling on the very Biblical grounds that gambling fosters greed and greed, along with avarica and covetousness, is a sin. Lotteries are legalized gambling. The churéhes must oppose them because it is wrong. It's that simple. Unchurched Editorial